by Mac for ASKEW
Dec 18 - 2006


Brigitte Gabriel, Lebanese ex-patriot and human rights activist, is grateful that her speaking engagement at the University of Michigan on December 4 went without a hitch, thanks to some heavy security at the event. The extra security was organized hastily by the university's event organizers, after Gabriel received news of a threat just hours before:

The event organizers worked furiously to place heightening security after we were alerted on Sunday of a Muslim call going out that stated "Muslims, Arabs, and their friends and allies should give Gabriel a proper welcome."

The security included K-9 teams, a personal body guard, and heavily-armed police. To add to the atmosphere, several news entourages and their camera crews were also present.

Gabriel is widely reknowned as a speaker for human rights. Her childhood as a Lebanese Christian allows her to speak intimately from personal experience on the dangers of radical Islam and its plans for the West. Although Gabriel was spurred years ago - after many years of childhood spent hiding in a basement - to speak out about Islamofacsism, she has gained the hostile attentions of Islamic radicals living in the West with the publication this year of her book, "Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America".

Gabriel emphasized in a letter to this author and others, that moderate Muslim students at the university, who invited her and organized the event, were greatly upset at the threats, and did all they could to put proper security in place for her visit. But Gabriel sees the incident as the latest evidence that freedom of speech is not safe in America or anywhere in the West where radical Muslim threats go unchecked and unchallenged.

The event went without a glitch not because of the respect of the civilized Arab Muslim students who wanted to give me an uninterrupted platform to express my views about Islamofascism and terrorism but because of the large presence of security personnel and the TV cameras that kept others wishing to agitate from behaving badly. Knowing that they will be wrapped up and swiftly taken away in a moment by the police officers as the cameras recorded their foolishness on national television kept them in their seats.

She is concerned about the trend in the atmosphere she sees at the universities at which she speaks; the zeal to quell any non-liberal voice has become more blatant, until many conservative speakers don't feel safe. She feels that much of the problem is complacency on the part of university officials and the general tax-paying public, that comes with PC thinking:

So many conservative speakers and organizers assume that hopefully the students will behave, because we should have the right to free speech in our country. They show up usually with two police officers giving the enemy the benefit of the doubt. You cannot give your enemy the benefit of the doubt. You are to assume the worst and be prepared for it.

The talk was successful, continued Gabriel, because of moral courage on the part of organizers, and her own conviction that she won't be silenced by fear...

You have to take your enemy at their word and defend yourself and show them that you will not put up with any nonsense from them, that you mean business. They wanted to show Brigitte Gabriel the proper welcome, Brigitte Gabriel wanted to ensure she was prepared to reciprocate. As a Middle Easterner I know what they respect.

Gabriel expressed her concern for the youth of our universities, who seem to be increasingly spoonfed only one point of political view; recent media studies would suggest that there is such an imbalance of left-wing educators and staff at our state universities, that many right-wing professors are being forced to left - either due to subtle harassment in the form of isolation from other staff and being overlooked for tenure or other perks of employment, or even more blatant threats to their safety and that of their families. Such an atmosphere, in which certain political voices are determinedly silenced on our campuses, does not bode well for the education of well-rounded youth.

Our founding fathers endured so much and most died in poverty, giving so much to give us the freedoms and the blessings of America that we enjoyed up to this day. Now is the time for our generation to rise up and defend what they have worked so hard to give us, so that we may pass it to our children and their future generations.

Moral clarity, courage and unshakable determination are what is needed now to take back our universities. Fear, intimidation and political correctness need to be thrown by the wayside and we should move forward in the fight of our lifetime.

Brigitte Gabriel heads the non-profit human rights organization, American Congress for Truth (ACT). All quotes come from a letter sent directly to the author. She is the author of hundreds of nationally published articles, and is a frequent speaker at regional and national events and news channels, including CNN, MSNBC, and FOXNews. Her book Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America is widely available. See our review of the book HERE.