Setting The Record Straight

Campus Watch corrects false allegations made against it.

Campus Watch Responds:

It isn't often that a critic who takes on an apologist for radical Islam joins the apologist in misrepresenting Campus Watch, but the anonymous blogger "Effendi," which means "lord" or "master" in Arabic, has managed to do just that. In a critique of Sunny Hundal's recent post at the Guardian, which I corrected last week, Effendi writes:

His [Hundal's] comparison to the public demands of UCL [University College London] to address the radicalisation problem to Daniel Pipes' Campus Watch is patently dishonest. Campus Watch was a campaign to identify and vilify Muslim academics at Universities in the USA. But Student Unions in the UK do not operate under University control and the Islamist clerics who are invited by ISOCs are external speakers, not academics working within universities. Identifying and criticising ISOCs which associate with jihadist and clerical fascists who have a record of inciting hatred of homosexuals, Jews and heterodox Muslims can not be compared to Campus Watch.

Campus Watch, of course, was never--and is not now (we clearly still exist)--"a campaign to identify and vilify Muslim academics" anywhere. This is itself a "patently dishonest" characterization of CW, which critiques Middle East studies without regard to anyone's religion or nationality. Over the years, we have critiqued Christians, Jews, Muslims, and standard-issue agnostics or atheists.

Moreover, CW does not "vilify" anyone: we offer rigorous critiques of the work and words of academics. We may even display a sense of irony bordering on humor at times. But vilify? Absolutely not.

(Posted by Winfield Myers)