Report from San Francisco State University
Organizing against IFAW was slow going at first. The College Republicans there are well-connected and organized and had intimidated many student groups from taking them on. The school administration had told groups such as General Union of Palestian Students, the Women's Center and the Muslim Student Association to ignore IFAW. Accordingly, they were not very responsive to the idea of politically taking on IFAW.
But this changed the Thursday before IFAW, when an ad appeared in the campus newspaper advertising “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” The advertisment said: “Concerned students at SFState hold events to raise consciousness about the threat of Islamo-Fascism. Like the Nazis before them, the Jihad believe in their racial superiority, considering all ‘non-believers’ to be ‘infidels’ worthy of annihilation.” When organizers showed a Muslim student the ad, IFAW suddenly became something real, something harmful and dangerous. She said she felt betrayed by those who told her to keep quiet. There was an immediate discussion with a group of Muslim students about the real agenda behind IFAW, the way in which it was intended to whip up a pogromist atmosphere toward Muslim students, but also the bigger picture of attacks on women, ethnic studies, progressive professors, and critical thinking more broadly. Differences were put on the table, in a friendly and non-antagonistic way, about religion, and such subjects as honor killings.
The MSA students were so inspired, they asked the organizers if they wanted to go out and talk to all the other clubs about IFAW. They all went together and talked to La Raza, the LGBT group, an Asian student group, and others. These groups took material from Defend Critical Thinking exposing IFAW and gave it out to people, arguing very passionately why all people should oppose this. As a result, all of the IFAW events at SFSU met determined opposition – at the main event, the majority of the crowd stood up with their backs to the speaker, right-wing talk radio host Brian Sussman.