Shahid Alam compared the 9/11 hijackers to the Founding Fathers, sent a fiendishly anti-Semitic reply to an emailer who complained, and for good measure, falsely accused Jihad Watch and LGF of subjecting him to “orchestrated attacks–many of them death threats.” Then he had the temerity to complain about his academic freedom being threatened, even though MESA Nostra has made sure that people with his views dominate Middle East Studies departments all over the country.
What does he get for all this? An award. From WND, with thanks to all who sent in reports of this:
A university professor who wrote an article equating the 9-11 suicide-hijackers with American colonists who fought the British has been given an award for speaking out on controversial issues.
M. Shahid Alam, professor of economics at Northeastern University, was honored by the National Lawyers Guild with their Free Speech Award on Thursday.
In his article, Alam wrote: “On September 11, 2001, nineteen Arab hijackers too demonstrated their willingness to die – and to kill – for their dream. They died so that their people might live, free and in dignity.”…
Announcing the award, the leftist National Lawyers Guild noted Alam has been heavily criticized by commentors such as Bill O’Reilly of Fox News and scholar Daniel Pipes, director of the think tank Middle East Forum and a presidential appointee to the board of the United States Institute of Peace.
Guild member Bin Ahmad, a third-year law student at Northeastern, said Pipes “goes on national television and calls Dr. Alam a ‘radical Muslim’ and a ‘bomb thrower’ with ‘venom towards America.”
“These are outrageous allegations based on a selective and distorted reading of Dr. Alam’s writings,” she said. “Additionally, Dr. Alam has been the target of physical threats and harassment after excerpts from one of his recent essays were posted on websites of known, extreme right-wing organizations.”…
Jonathon Foglia, another Northeastern student-member of the Guild said Alam deserves the Free Speech Award because his work epitomizes the type of thought and expression the First Amendment protects.
“Dr. Alam is a man of profound scholarship and enviable bravery,” Foglia said. “His work is clearly core political speech. Anytime self-professed ‘patriots’ threaten and intimidate individuals on the basis of published words, we must all rally to the defense of the First Amendment and people such as Dr. Alam.”
The National Lawyers Guild recently defended New York lawyer Lynne Stewart, a member, on charges she helped a radical Egyptian sheik Omar Abdel Rahman pass secret messages to his followers urging terrorist attacks.
Stewart, 65, was convicted Feb. 10.