Nation-wide Week of Campus “Obsession” Screenings

Pace University will be screening the milestone documentary “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West” on campus, April 18th. The event, sponsored by Pace Hillel, will include a speaker from Obsessionthemovie.com and an open forum with a question and answer session following the movie. Pace University is participating in the nation-wide Obsession screening event designated as Islamo-Fascism Awareness Day by the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Dozens of colleges across the nation will be showing the film this week as part of the center’s new program, the Terrorism Awareness Project, in order to awaken students and faculty to the gravity of the threat of radical Islam to our nation and civilization.

The event is primarily for students and faculty but is open to the public as well. Pace Hillel President Michael Abdurakhmanov mentioned that he would enjoy seeing local outside support, and asked me to spread the word, so I am writing this as an announcement of the event to readers, colleagues and local media. No RSVP is required, but since seating is limited to 130, and appropriate security will be in place, people interested in attending should arrive early to guarantee a seat. Event information is as follows:

Pace University
1 Pace Plaza, New York, NY 10038
1-800-874-PACE
Entrance: Spruce Street - use the side gate entrance to walk through security and up to the second floor, Lecture Hall South. There will be signs.
Time: 12:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Copies of the film and refreshments will be available for free

This screening at Pace in particular, is a spectacular breakthrough for academic freedom due to Michael’s courage to stand up to Pace administrators and the campus chapter of the Muslim Students Association, that launched a campaign to silence him and censor the film, complaining that it was critical of Islam and would incite hatred against Muslims. His successful battle since November that I’ve been covering and actively supporting here on Democracy Project culminated in Pace President Caputo issuing a public apology to Hillel and the Pace Jewish community. Once in the glare of the media spotlight, Caputo revealed the shame of an academic institution that was caught red-handed suppressing free thought and speech, admitting, “…Hillel was coerced and intimidated into not showing the film Obsession last semester.” He vowed to restore a commitment to “a University community that values its diversity of thought” and “an atmosphere at Pace in which a free exchange of ideas may flourish.”

In a letter of gratitude to all supporters, Michael wrote: “Only several hours after the situation went public the support from across the country came pouring in. What seemed to be a horrible ordeal for any student to go through now became one of the best moments of their lives…. Students in this country should know and be encouraged to stand up for what they feel is right and to never feel alone.”

Once the injustices were exposed in the media, calls for interviews flooded in from far and wide. Concerned lawyers offered advice and put legal pressure on the school, and dozens of companies and organizations such as The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) and many others wrote letters and called Pace administrators to demand that they right the wrongs. Michael wrote: “Due to all of these combined efforts the Pace Administration released a public apology to the Pace Hillel for the actions taken against them this past fall.” The University is also making amends with plans for a special "Spiritual Center" for Hillel and other religious organizations on campus.

The importance of this film cannot be stressed enough, as well as the efforts by courageous individuals to promote it in the hostile environment for free expression on campus. This is the most urgent battle of our time, since Obsession reveals a clear perspective that is rejected on campus and ignored in the media. Rather academia and journalists schooled in radical thought constantly condemn the Bush administration and disregard and botch world history and the real root causes of the present war against the West.

High School teachers and professors who have already shown the film in their classes have said that many of their students came away with a totally different perspective on the war in Iraq. While Muslim students complained that it is anti-Islam, as a professor of International Relations mentioned in an email, others realized that the Islamic world wasn’t suddenly transformed into a Jihad against the West because of the current foreign policy of the Bush administration as they had come to believe. Students said they were shocked to learn the truth about the radical Islamists vow to destroy the infidel Americans and Jews. One High School teacher who recently showed the film in class said her students were stunned by the scenes of “Death to America” chants in mosques and madrassas and the suicide bombing footage showing the slaughter of innocent men, women and children in the name of fundamentalist Islamic theology.

We must all applaud and actively support the efforts of students and faculty who are bold enough to speak out and show this documentary on campus and in their classrooms. These are the front lines in the war of ideas and it is our civic duty to be willing to join the battle in whatever capacity we can.