Photo: Harvard Islamic chaplain Taha Abdul-Basser, '96, who believes there is "great wisdom" in the death penalty for converting from Islam.
From the Internet to the media, slowly: Yesterday's Harvard Crimson carried a story on the Harvard Islamic chaplain's support for capital punishment for Muslims who leave Islam
as revealed in an email the chaplain "allegedly" wrote. (We're still at "allegedly"--although no one, including the chaplain, has disputed the authorship of the email.) I posted the story here on April 4. What caught my eye in this week's Crimson story was the "clarification" flagged at the bottom of the following Crimson paragraph:
“I believe he doesn’t belong as the official chaplain,” said one Islamic student, who asked that he not be named to avoid conflicts with Muslim religious authorities. “If the Christian ministers said that people who converted from Christianity should be killed, don’t you think the University should do something?” [SEE CLARIFICATION BELOW]
Scrolling down, I found it:
CLARIFICATION: The April 14 article "Chaplain's E-mail Sparks Controversy" included a quotation from a named Harvard student, who was later granted anonymity when he revealed that his words could bring him into serious conflict with Muslim religious authorities.
Got that? For opposing death for apostasy, for opposing the Islamic chaplain's continued tenure based on said chaplain's support for death for apostasy, a Harvard Muslim student felt compelled to call up the Crimson to seek post-publication anonymity to avoid coming into "serious conflict with Muslim religious authorities."
This isn't the Swat Valley. This isn't Taliban-controlled Afghanistan--or, for that matter, Karzai-controlled Afghanistan. This isn't Iran. This isnt Iraq. This is what sharia creep looks like in America...in Harvard Yard.