Monday, April 16, 2007
Members of the Islamic Center of Johnstown wanted Ayaan Hirsi Ali's appearance canceled, saying her attacks on Islam are unjustified and Muslims in the Johnstown area get along well with everyone else.
"I don't want her to poison anyone's mind," Mahmood A. Qazi, the center's founder and past president, told the Tribune-Democrat in Johnstown. "She doesn't believe in God. How can she talk about God?"
Qazi and Islamic Center president Fouad ElBayly met with Jerry Samples, the school's vice president of academic and student affairs.
"They expressed their concerns and I understand their concerns," Samples said.
Islam, however, has been discussed at other campus events, he said. Qazi and ElBayly also wanted to discuss Islam on campus later and Samples agreed.
Hirsi Ali, a Somali native and former Dutch member of parliament, is scheduled to speak Tuesday evening at Pitt-Johnstown as part of an annual lecture series.
After she penned the script for the film, "Submission" , a fictional study of abused Muslim women with scenes of near-naked women with Quranic verses written on their bodies , its director, Theo van Gogh, was murdered on an Amsterdam street in 2004. His killer, Mohammed Bouyeri, repeatedly shot van Gogh, then slit his throat and thrust into the filmmaker's chest a letter threatening Hirsi Ali's life.
Later, a fight within her political party over Hirsi Ali's Dutch citizenship, brought down the government.
Hirsi Ali, who joined the Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute last year, also wrote the best-selling autobiography, "Infidel," which gives a graphic account of how she rejected her faith and the violence she says was inflicted on her in the name of Islam.
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Information from: The Tribune-Democrat, http://www.tribune-democrat.com
Source: AP, April 16, 2007