UNC seems to think Muslim professor's defamation is just "disagreement"

sounds like Leslie Strohm is afraid to confront Omid Safi with the "facts"...a perfect ingredient for becoming a "dhimmi"

"I'll let you know if I hear again from Leslie Strohm."

Don't hold your breathe.

This is a variation on Holocaust-denial syndrome: Lies are ideas, facts (like the Holocaust) are opinions. It is truly a bizarro world that these people contort themselves into when they will do anything to avoid the unpleasantness of having to call the Islamic spade a spade....

Why not sue this Omid Safi. I am sure American law will take his statement as a cognizable offence and ask for reparations to be paid by him to Dr Spencer.

I am sure if the courts do pass a favorable order, it will mean considerable embarrassment for the university also.

Sanjay

Robert Spencer a "hateful man"?
Robert Spencer threatening a man and his family with death?

Nothing could be further from the truth.
Sue the bastard for defamation.

Defamation, slander and vilification is now mere 'disagreement'. Except when we do it to Muslims....

We don't have enemies anymore. Only future facebook friends.

(Steyn)

Correction:

Except when we do it to Muslims.... should read: except when we tell the truth about Islam....

If you really think you have been defamed, man-up and take it to the courts.

This Strohm lady is a wall and a waste of time.

If you won't, stop complaining. It does not behoove you.

He will not answer you,Robert i bet on that.

This professor is an axample of what affirmative action has done to American education.. How many people with chips on their shoulders are teaching the youth of this nation to hate America?
If we get to replace the dictator Obama with a conservative, we are going to have to close the schools and colleges for at least a year to weed out those who have been doing their best to undermine America by radicalizing the youth here.
If not for affirmative action, would this professor be employed within America anywhere?

I find it a quite interesting use of words that Robert Spencer "has been welcome", whereas Omid Safi still "has the right" etc. But that is a small matter.
Death threats cannot be explained away as mere expression of views in any way whatsoever. We almost get the impression that it is not "informed and civilly" to call attention to them.
Also it makes one wonder about the University´s general attitude towards outsiders. Are they automatically closing ranks? It is too obvious they want no more of it, it is to be forgotten.
Finally: is Omid Safi´s message representative of what is being passed around among scholars?

Your whistling in the dark Robert (pun intended). Unforunately you have hit the bureacratic brick wall.

Ouppss ! It's a lady Sorry !...I though the name was a name of a guy.
Anyway when someone says he has received Death Threats ( Safi ) from someone well known like Robert, Why did he not call the police for an investigation.....

It's time for a lawsuit. Sue him for libel. This could be very damaging to your reputation as a writer and I would not let him get away with this.

If Safi were telling the truth he would have had a lawsuit on your lap, Robert. You can bet on it.

they have the name, address even the e-mail is signed Robert, I mean it's easy to catch Robert.....I am trying to be a detective this morning at the Hercule Poirot.

Way to go, Robert ! I hope that you continue to hold their feet to the fire !

They won't do anything because Safi is a Muslim.

And appearing "Islamophobic" is a big no-no in Academe.

Who cares that they mass-murdered 3,000 Americans on 9/11, or 13 American soldiers on 11/5? Muslims must be kow-towed to, and protected. Because they're such valuable contributing members of society. Like Safi, and CAIR, and the Said sisters' father. (sarc)

Sorry, guys, as a person with both a brother and a daughter who are lawyers, I've been told repeatedly how difficult it is to win a defamation lawsuit (Can he prove that it was Safi who typed the words into Facebook? etc.). Better for Robert to publicize as much as he can what a lowlife Safi is and win in the Court of Public Opinion.

No matter how much you educate them, the garbage people will always out.

I think the salient point is that "Brother" Safi is not acting in the manner of an American college professor.

This is not a free speech issue. The issue is that Safi accused Robert Spencer of making a threat when he did not do so. The very least the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill should do is censure "Professor" Safi.

I would dismiss him, but then I feel that UNC has a reputation to uphold.

Just write your own face book letter stateing that in your opinion "professer Safi" eats bacon, and sleeps with his male aid.

You know, "that witch thine right hand holdeth"

:-D

If he wants to have a war of (false) words than give him one.

You know what I heard???

Her responses were pathetic. I swear I could hear her thinking as she wrote the words: "What, and elephant in the room? Where? I don't see one."

The University seems not to deny what Omid Safi has allegedly written: they looked at the evidence and ignored it by almost hinting everything was part of an exchange between Robert Spencer and Omid Safi. But it was not, a third party was involved, and as such it was unprovoked and unwarranted. Oh well, they have all read Sell´s Quran translation, mr. Safi is probably playing the victim card when he is not embarrassed by the whole business.

I thought her answer was pretty clear.

One set of facts is as good as any other set of "facts". Just as one religion is the same as any other religion, one God is the same as any other god. There is no fixed set of ethical standards of behavior for UNC staff. There is no objective reality, just a blurry, shapeshifting universe of equally valid opinions.

Dr. Safi also has the right to express his ideas and views.

'Oh I see said the blind mouse'...Maybe Leslie and Safi are friends...maybe really good friends. They may even go so far as to go out for donuts and coffee...She probably wants to protect him by minimizing...
Those must be some pretty good donuts...

the august minds of the university, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, no less, do not consider LIES and CHARACTER ASSASSINATION as part of JIHAD. thus they cannot connect dots for so much fog about

... no interest in truth, then, there

Leslie Strohm is not only dismissing this death threat, but she is giving this evildoer, Omid Safi, a pass.

Well Leslie, you had your chance to make things right the easy way, so now it's time to play hard ball.

Contact law enforcement and an attorney, Robert ...

As a "limited public figure" Robert would have to prove Safi sent the email with "actual malice". If the email was sent to just one person and Safi never intended it to be sent to others, the elements of proof would not be met and Robert could lose.

Losing in court would give Safi and others the opportunity to boast ~ falsely ~ that Robert lost because he actually did make the death threats and that would make the situation much worse.

MSA = Genocide... Duh!

http://www.thefoxnation.com/culture/2010/05/12/watch-us-muslim-student-confesses-she-wants-2nd-holocaust

Dang! That Leslie Strohm seems to be even worse than the head-cutter... It made my blood boil just to read what this individual wrote in reply!!

That university is staffed by scum, through and through. Safi and anyone who stands with him is a POS if the lowest kind. They are guttertrash and aren't worth the phlegm I would spit at them.

The burden of proof is on Omid Safi to provide evidence that Robert threatened him, but of course he can't. Robert, on the other hand, has written proof that Omid lied about these threats; so it stands to reason that Robert has a case against Omid -- not the other way around.

She didn't catch your question Robert, as it's hard to see what you're reading through that burqa.

If if she did catch the question, she didn't understand it, because she was "educated" by the same system she now represents. Which means she has no critical thinking skills of her own.

You should sue them, win, then use the winnings to sponsor "Leaving Islam" messages on local buses there.

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill respects the rights of individuals to express their views. The University also recognizes that intelligent individuals can and do disagree.
..................

This is not some "disagreement" between "intelligent individuals" about this or that aspect of Islam, or Shari'ah, or Jihad—it is a lie—a deliberate slander meant to discredit Robert Spencer—not as a scholar, or a commentator, but as *a human being*.

If Mr. Spencer had indeed made such threats-something I do not for an instant believe—then he would have put himself beyond the scope of civilized "disagreement", whatever the merits of his position might otherwise be.

Professor Safi knows this. Who is going to care about the fine points—or even main gist—of the arguments of someone who would stoop to *issuing death threats to an academic and his family*?

This is not a case of Professor Safi "expressing his views"—this is Leslie Strohm, and by extension the University of North Carolina—giving a pass to out and out character assassination.

More:

Our hope is that, to the extent that you and Dr. Safi disagree -- whether as individuals or as professional speakers or writers -- you do so in an informed and civil manner, in keeping with the University's traditions.
..................

This last bit must be especially galling. She is essentially *warning Mr. Spencer* to behave in a "civil manner in keeping with the University's traditions"—in other words, no more death threats from you, Mr. Spencer.

She is doing more with this than simply giving Safi the "benefit of the doubt"—she is essentially *giving credence to his charges against Mr. Spencer*.

Of course, this is not only a warning to Mr. Spencer about those putative death threats—it is a warning against continuing to pursue the issue at all.

That this comes from Robert Spencer's Alma Mater must be especially painful.

The only thing more disgusting than Professor Safi's ridiculous and defamatory accusations against Robert was the determined and repeatedly demonstrated unwillingness of Vice Chancellor Strohm to acknowledge the facts, to admitt that professor Safi had done anything wrong, and to dimiss the whole issue as a simple misunderstanding between Robert and Professor Safi.
Further, I find it a case of adding insult to injury that instead of replying to Robert himself on a matter of such importance, Dr. Thorp decided to try to downplay the scandalous nature of the situation by asigning the task of replying to Robert to his assistant, Vice Chancellor Strohm as if the matter was of too little importance for him to be bothered with.
As for waiting for a reply from Ms. Strohm, I'm am sure that Robert is not holdong his breath.

One more point I had intended to make—the projection involved in Safi's charges are striking. It is common for Muslims, when backed in a corner over an argument about Islam, to issue threats—including death threats—to both their opponent *and* their loved ones.

That Safi is claiming that a civilized man such as Robert Spencer is doing the same thing is to claim that Muslims are the *victims* of threatening "Islamophobes", instead of the actual situation–where Spencer and others speaking out against Jihad have received endless death threats from those Muslims who "defend Islam".

Could not resist. I just sent this to the same folks I sent my polite email to when Mr. Spencer first brought this up:

I regret that no one from your office was able to respond to my request sent Tuesday 4/27, but I simply couldn't wait for a response to submit my article on Dr. Safi's behavior to USCA's Pacer Times. I recently read Ms. Strohm's response to the email Mr. Spencer sent you on the subject, and was nothing short of appalled by the unfortunate verbal failings of the aforementioned member of your staff. To clarify for future reference, since you are a nationally renowned center of learning, I have included the Webster definitions of the two terms which Ms. Strohm demonstrated herself to be unfamiliar:

Disagreement:

Pronunciation: \ˌdis-ə-ˈgrē-mənt\
Function: noun
Date: 15th century
1 : the act of disagreeing
2 a : the state of being at variance

Threat:

Pronunciation: \ˈthret\

Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English thret coercion, threat, from Old English thrēat coercion; akin to Middle High German drōz annoyance, Latin trudere to push, thrust
Date: before 12th century
1 : an expression of intention to inflict evil, injury, or damage
2 : one that threatens
3 : an indication of something impending

I can only imagine that Ms. Strohm's response stems from a rhetorical ignorance, since, as a practicing attorney it goes without saying that she would be obliged to recognize the WORLD of difference, in legal terms, between a disagreement, and an actual threat to someones person. If not, I'd strongly suggest that UNC Chapel Hill may be in need of more competent and discerning legal counsel.

Where's a lawyer? Robert needs an attorney. Use the same tactics of CAIR. But Robert actually has a case. Unless it was all an Islamic misunderstanding.

Robert, you have to follow through with this. Professor Safi needs to have this on her record. Has she ever done something like this??

Leslie Chambers Strohm will have certainly spoken with Omid Safi about this matter, he will also have certainly poo-pooed it as being inconsequential using words that were likely not flattering to Robert, and she, being surrounded by the same clique of tenured radicals spoken of by Roger Kimball and David Horiwitz will find it easy to dismiss Robert, and furthermore will be congratulated by her administrator colleagues for doing so. Her opinions would, of course, apply to the rest of here, as well.

Some background info on Strohl from the UNC Gazette announcement when she was appointed as General Council in 2003, which provides a glimpse into the kind of things that go into the hiring of a university administrator. Notice all the words of praise sprinkled throughout the piece. Her age would suggest that she was able to take advantage of the same minority/diversity preferences as Obama and his wife did. I loved the Order of the Coif thing.
-----

"Strohm comes to Carolina from Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, where she was a partner in a 600-member firm that is among the nation's 85 largest and has offices in St. Louis, Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago, Kansas City, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Before joining Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, she spent eight-and-a-half years in posts including deputy general counsel and acting general counsel at the Washington University in St. Louis, among the top private U.S. research universities.

"In Leslie Strohm, Carolina is fortunate to be attracting an exemplary legal professional whose experiences and successes -- particularly in higher education, business and health care -- have prepared her exceptionally well to meet the complex challenges we face in Chapel Hill," said Chancellor James Moeser.

"Strohm was selected and recommended to Moeser by a search committee chaired by Mike Smith, dean of the School of Government. As general counsel, Strohm will serve as Carolina's principal lawyer. She will provide legal advice and counsel to the chancellor, trustees, administrators, faculty, staff and students.

"Other duties will include analyzing laws, regulations, proposed legislation and policies to assess their possible impact. Keeping the campus community informed about legal risks and their management will be among other priorities. Strohm will serve as a liaison with the Office of the President, the State Attorney General's Office and other authorities on legal issues.

"At Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, Strohm was on a team focusing on corporate and health-care matters. During her 10-year tenure, Strohm worked on innovative projects that led to the creation of some of the nation's first integrated health-care delivery systems, joint ventures between publicly traded companies and physicians, and multi-state health-care enterprises. She was also involved in a number of projects for both public and private universities.

"At Washington University from 1984 to 1993, Strohm was instrumental in deliberations resulting in the university's first policy addressing AIDS and HIV infection as well as a policy and protocol for responding to challenges by animal rights activists. She secured a precedent-setting ruling in the nation's first campus case to consider if an HIV-infected student should be able to continue his dental studies. She teamed with faculty and administrators on technology-transfer initiatives involving a venture capital company and structured associations among start-up companies, the campus and faculty inventors. She drafted policies on issues such as conflict of interest and academic review for students.

"An Indiana native, Strohm earned a bachelor's degree and Phi Beta Kappa honors from DePauw University in 1978. She received a law degree and scholarly writing and Order of the Coif honors from the University of Michigan Law School in 1981."

I don't know whether Leslie Strohm is a man or a woman, but, whichever he/she is, he/she has disgraced both him/herself and his/her university. The word for this fake reasonableness is cowardice. The university can see perfectly well that Professor Safi has acted inappropriately and is sidestepping that fact in the hope that it will go away. An institution that would behave that way needn't worry about compromising its standards: it doesn't have any.

The University administration's role in this type of situation is to defend itself and its faculty. Nevertheless, if Robert wants to pursue this legally, it is advantageous for him to pursue this, as he is doing, by dealing with the University first. It is useful for Robert to be able to show that he has made an attempt to resolve the issue with the parties first. (Attempting to resolve this issue with Omid Safi may seem absurd to us, yet what Strohm suggests is not entirely unreasonable in light of the apparent facts in this case and what the one who is accused of defamation in some cases is first asked to do, i.e., apologize and retract the defamatory remarks. Strohm seems to be suggesting or implying that Robert communicate with Safi directly in asking for a retraction and apology). The University is stonewalling on this and isn't really addressing the issue in a substantive way, but it will be useful for Robert to have these email exchanges as evidence when he wants to build a legal case (i.e., to show he exhausted other avenues before resorting to a legal procedure). If Vice Chancellor Strohm fails to reply within a reasonable time period or produces more vague, non-substantive, non-committal stonewalling, the next move would be to launch a legal case against Safi. At that point, when notified that he is being sued, Safi might then try to apologize for and retract his allegations, in order to avoid the legal procedure, which would become a matter of public record.

UNC is Indicitive of the Smoke & Mirrors show in Acedemic America .
Behind the VEIL of Tar Heels Basketball in the Smith Center, Tar Heel Football in Keenan Stadium,Coffee on Franklin Street, and Tar Heel Apparel stores ,is a VILE NEST OF VIPERS!

Traeh,

Some of the posters with legal knowledge would probably give you a better answer as to how this would play out in court proceedings. I'm only giving my opinion as a layman. My two cents: I think the combination of the email evidence (assuming it is genuine) where Safi claims to a third party that Spencer threatened to kill him, and the (assumed) fact that Safi did not ever contact police regarding the alleged threat (strongly indicating that Safi does not believe his own allegation; i.e., that Safi himself believes his own allegation is false), weighs heavily in Robert's favour. Whether this is enough to make Robert's case, or whether much more evidence is needed, and extensive damages shown, etc., in a court of law, is another matter. Some false allegations are deemed defamation per se, and this includes falsely accusing someone of a serious criminal act. Safi's allegations seem to fit this category. But all of this gets into legal territory that is outside my area of expertise.

Even if Robert's suggestion about sedition laws is enforced - it is only delaying the inevitable...demography is slanted in favor of the Islamic world and if it stays that way then I'm afraid Allah's religion will be made victorious at some stage in the future.

Robert,

As you well know...

This is all the product of one thing..... Middle East Petro dollars pouring into America over the past 25 years... now to the tune of over 4 billion per year out of Saudi Arabia alone.

We need a law on the books....NO foreign donors to our universities....PERIOD.

Also... should include funding of Mosques for overseas as these are simply forward BASES... not churches per muhammad.

The story of Omid Safi and his resistible rise deserves more attention. Eager to move on to pastures new, he tried the MESA Nostra web. There was a plan to have him smoothly inserted into Harvard Divinity School without too close a look, one pushed by Leila Ahmad, Diana Eck, and William Graham (who received tenure not because his department voted it, but apparently as part of the deal by which he would take over the deanship from Thiemann), but the other faculty members did not allow themselves to be rolled over This was not the usual outcome. Too often faculty members who are not specialists in Islam in departments of religion or schools of divinity, unaware that not one of the great Western scholars of Islam (Joseph Schacht, C. Snouck Hurgronje, Arthur Jeffrey, Henri Lammens, Georges Vajda, etc.)coud in the current atmosphere, be hired or, if mistakenly hired, be promoted in American universities today, for loyal myrmidons of Mesa Nostra are always on the lookout to suppress those who might be too independent and too truthful and thus too dangerous, in their studies of Islam.

In a closed world where great emphasis is put on academic "autonomy" (though tens of millions of Saudi, Kuwaiti, and Emirati dollars do not apparently compromise "autonomy") and on leaving other faculty members alone, and not daring to judge their work unless one is directly in the field, this has allowed for a scandalous situation to develop, one that will continue unless other faculty members, in related departments (history, government, and so on) and intelligent and strong-minded administrators, not afraid to vet hiring and promotion themselves precisely to ensure that a closed group does not hire and promote itself, which is what happens all too often in Islamic studies (in departments of religion, Middle Eastern studies, etc.).

In Chapel Hill, Omid Safi was pushed by, among others, Carl Ernst. If you were in the same department of religion as Carl Ernst, but you were not a specialist in Islam, would you dare to question his pushing of one Omid Safi? Given what that would mean for faculty "collegiality" -- i;e., getting along with people at tedious meetings, and hoping for a lighter course load, or recommendations for grants, or the favors that are horse-traded in academic life, you would have to be very brave indeed, and very concerned about the teaching of Islam in this country (and that might come to you, but only slowly) to take a stand. You very likely wouldn't do it, and you would find ways to justify your (understandable) desire to avoid trouble for yourself.

So Carl Ernst pushed for Omid Safi at UNC/Chapel Hill, and it is to Ernst, the man who fell in love with Sufi Islam (and mistook his own love for that kind of thing for an "understanding" of Islam, the Islam of a different kind that we have all come to know, in fits and starts, about). Ernst was also a defender of, and perhaps the instigator of, the decision to require entering UNC freshmen to read Michael Sells's bowdlerized Qur'an -- "The Lyrical Suras" -- that leave out, of course, all of Sura 9 and a great deal more, giving the kind of Qur'an that Rumi-loving summer-of-love the-bead-game readers could possibly accept. A year ago or so, Carl Ernst flew off to to Tehran to receive a prize bestowed by bigshots of the Islamic Republic. But, his defenders say, it was for his "scholarship." Think of an American academic going to Berlin in 1937 to receive a prize for his "contributions to the study of German literature" from a certain Joseph Goebbels. It is to Ernst, in the main, that Omid Safi owes his present position.

One hopes that the highly intelligent faculty members at Chapel Hill will take note of how Islam is being taught at their institution by Safi and Ernst, -in an academic version of the "Mosque-Outreach-Days" where deep and sincere "attention" ostentatiously lavished on students -- you know, the chicken-with-pita dinners at the professor's house, the kind of thing that gets rave reviews as demonstrations of how much the professor "really cares about us" in the new edition of RateYourProf, while what would count is whether or not, in the instant case, the students have been properly informed, or have been misinformed, perhaps grossly, about the ideology of Islam, and about the history of Islamic conquest, and subsequent subjugation, over the past 1350 years, of so many different non-Muslim peoples and the supppression of their cultures, in the monotonous "diversity" of Islam, only Islam.

Take note, and possibly let drop, in their own lectures to students, a different and more truthful view. It is not, after all, elementary particle physics we are discussing. An intelligent historian can certainly work up the material for his own use, and need not go to Safi, or to Ernst, for guidance -- for monitory guidance I suggest such people google "MESA Nostra Contest" and they will see, I hope, the point. And they can read Martin Kramer on teaching about the Middle East, or Ibn Warraq's "Defending the West" on the hollowness, falseness, and perniciousness, of the late Edward Said and his "Orientalism" that has been a jobs-program for so many who, as Hamid Dabashi said, would never have been hired without the work and influence of "our Edward." How true.

Ha ha, I have certainly started to view the concept of "Orientalism" in a different light. "Neo-Orientalism"?

Is it realistically possible to organize groups to target alumni and their offerings to the pillars of "higher" learning? Getting in their wallets will stop the stupidity.

I have a new word for the English Dictionary: Fants. It is a pun on fact plus fantasy. It came to me when I looked at Robert complaining in this article about Omid Safi who has produced and published FANTS about Robert. I have come to the conclusion that most of what is published in or by islam is fant.

And BTW, Robert, please sue Omar Safi for his horrible fant.

Here are some articles by Omid Safi. You will find such gems here as these:

"Who Put Hate in My Sunday Paper? Uncovering the Israeli-Republican-Evangelical Networks behind the “Obsession” DVD", 2008. [Safi does not address the content of "Obsession" at all here]

“The Times, They Are A-changin’: A Muslim Quest for Justice, Gender Equality, and Pluralism” [yes, I always think of Muslims when I think of "gender equality" sarc/off]

"I and Thou in a Contested World: Beyond Islam Vs. The West"

The article above includes this passage:

"We are perpetually surrounded by cliche´s of ‘‘clash of civilizations,’’ ‘‘Islam versus the West,’’ and so on. We insist that it is part of our task to rise up to an acknowledgement of a fluid, hybrid world in which nationality and ethnicity, religion and race, sexuality and gender, class and political commitment each frame one facet of larger, broader, more cosmopolitan identities. Neither religion
nor nationalism will be accepted as a monolith that somehow exhausts one’s identity. In the words of Edward W. Said, in the aftermath of colonialism all identities are hybrid, fluid, and overlapping"

This is meant to appeal to Western multiculturalists; Muslims hardly think this way. The reference to "colonialism" is an especially nice touch.

"Challenges and Opportunities for the Progressive Muslim in North America"

The above article begins in this way:

"In today’s political climate, it is a cliché to begin a discourse on Islam and Muslims with the talk of “crisis.” It is not my intention here to add to that unrelenting assault on Muslims."

This is his view—that there is an "unrelenting assault on Muslims". Here we see the same queasy combination of aggression and whining victimhood that he has brought to his dealings with Robert Spencer.

http://omidsafi.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=18&Itemid=35

Poor Spencie is upset that someone defamed him, despite this being his MO for over half a decade. Look Spencie, I have a better idea for you, why don't you waddle your round ass down to North Carolina with your little hag from New York in tow and start a protest. You could even bring those guys from the Florida Security Council to film it, like when they filmed you getting embarrassed by a barely literate illegal Arab immigrant during the entire Rifqa Bary controversy that was fed by you and Pammy cakes - oh by the way, how come we don't hare about your dear Rifqa anymore?

Ladies and gentlemen, observe the spew of ugly invective from 'DustanH' above:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/11/26/2754284.htm