I received the email,
Muslims @ Michigan State, based on an email written by a prof at the University. The email – – scroll down to item #4.
The attempt behind the email has a Parallel:
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Nazi manipulation to turn the Polish people into animals, to make them into an enemy, to make it possible for the Germans to invade Poland and kill and take.
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Today, the War Machine Bullies in the West must have “enemies” >> we need Muslims to be bad people. Or the Russians, or whoever.
The email (item #4) has the look of another hoax aimed at Muslims to stir up hate instead of dialogue (maybe there isn’t a professor who sent the email?) . . . . so I checked it out on Snopes (Urban Myths).
MY REPLY TO THE PERSON WHO SENT THE EMAIL TO ME:
Hi – – -,
People should receive the part of the Snopes report that was deleted by the originators of this.
I think the deletion is deliberate. It changes the picture.
I have appended a couple of related items which I hope will be helpful.
/Sandra
(I forgot to say: PLEASE! understand the role of propaganda in bringing down democracy. When the propaganda is circulated by us, ourselves, WE are the ones bringing down our own democracy! (Explanation, item #3).) Which is why I always take the time to respond to these hate-stirring emails.)
APPENDED
- THE PART THAT WAS DELETED FROM MUSLIMS @ MICHIGAN STATE
- FREE SPEECH EXCUSE IS LAME, PROF ABUSES POWER , by Andrew March, assistant professor
- (Excerpt) Ego – its role in putting democracy to rest. (Hoax: A German’s view on Islam)
- THE OFFENDING EMAIL – – you might want to scroll down and read this first.
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1. THIS IS THE PART THAT WAS DELETED FROM “MUSLIMS @ MICHIGAN STATE”:
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/wichman.asp
Origins: On 28 February 2006, Professor Indrek Wichman, a tenured professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan State University (MSU), sent the e-mail . . .. (insert: item #4) to the Muslim Students’ Association of Michigan State University. The message was a response to the Muslim group’s having handed out free cocoa during a public awareness event about controversial cartoons that depicted the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist. Wichman’s letter prompted the Muslim Students’ Association and twelve other student and advocacy groups to call upon the university to officially reprimand the professor.
MSU officials have declined to issue a reprimand, saying Wichman’s comments constitute free speech. Terry Denbow, spokesman for MSU, said while Wichman’s views in no way represent the university’s views, they do not violate the university’s antidiscrimination policy. However, Denbow noted, Wichman “was cautioned that any additional commentary … could constitute the creation of a hostile environment, and that could … form the basis of a complaint” under the school’s antidiscrimination policy.
Wichman told the Detroit News the letter had been intended for a one particular person, not the entirety of the Muslim Students’ Association; he had believed the e-mail address he used was that one student’s inbox. However, students who lead the association said the e-mail address was part of the group’s official Web site.
The professor expressed in interviews that he had regrets about the e-mail: “I used strong language in a private communication that I would certainly not have used if this communication would have gone public. … For the record, I thought it was a private communication and it was written in haste. I think a very minor thing has been blown completely out of proportion. I wrote it in 60 seconds. It was not like I sat and pondered over this thing for days. It was like you talking one night to your wife or your kids.”
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2. FREE SPEECH EXCUSE IS LAME, PROF ABUSES POWER
By Andrew March
assistant professor
http://statenews.com/article/2006/05/free_speech_excuse_is_lame_prof_abuses_power
05/16/06 12:00am | Updated 08/28/09 6:22pm
Professor Indrek Wichman obviously does not get it. In his letter “Prof explains reasons for offensive e-mail,” (SN 4/28), he seeks to portray his infamous e-mail as a free speech matter. It is not, and portraying it as such is self-pitying and disingenuous.
If he was interested in airing his views on free speech, Islam and the Middle East, he should have written a public letter, such as to The State News. Instead, he wrote a private e-mail directed personally at students. And during this incident he has, in fact, appealed to the “privacy” of that e-mail as an excuse.
The crux of this matter is the faculty/student boundary. In his e-mail, he referred to himself as an MSU professor, and proceeded to write abusive, harassing comments to students, some of whom could potentially be in his classes.
For me, the core question is one of abuse of power and position and violating the responsibility professors have toward students.
To address students in the second person and as “dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Moslems,” to tell, I presume, mostly U.S.-born Muslims that they are “free to leave” and to write that it is his hope to God that they return to where they came from is a clear act of aggression, abuse and hostility toward students.
That is the crux of the matter — not free speech, not terrorism, not Danish cartoons and not the Muslim Students’ Association protests.
Could a professor get away with writing a single e-mail of a sexual nature toward a student or group of students? No, and for good reason. That, for me, is the proper analogy.
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3. Ego – its role in putting democracy to rest. (Hoax: A German’s view on Islam)
Earlier I posted this other email I received (A German’s view on Islam) – – the same issue as MUSLIMS @ MICHIGAN STATE, but portraying us as the “silent majority”.
EXCERPT:
MY REPLY TO A German’s view on Islam (changed my thinking)
. . . . . BUT HERE IS THE THING that becomes evident through A German’s view on Islam:
By looking OUTSIDE, and assigning blame (creating enemies, The Muslim Fanatics), we unwittingly BECOME the ‘silent majority’ in our own country, who SHOULD have spoken up about our own situation, but didn’t.
If people were not so busy shaking the stick and bombs at “others”, they might be able to see what is happening right here.
If democracy falls, it will be because of the blindness caused by ego. Ego wants “us” (our country) to be seen as “good” . (We’re good. The Muslims are bad.) Ego also diverts us to other “ego identifications” – – possessions, social status, physical appearance, family history – we are so caught up in all that, we don’t see the invaders coming.
We can’t even see the Corporate Force when it turns and is now directed at the soul of our own country.
A definition of “ego” is helpful:
The most common ego identifications have to do with possessions, the work you do, social status and recognition, knowledge and education, physical appearance, special abilities, relationships, person and family history, belief systems, and often nationalistic, racial, religious, and other collective identifications. … / Eckhart Tolle
So in Ego .. Hoax: A German’s view on Islam (and in this second example, Muslims at Michigan State): it is not so much a ‘silent majority’, as a majority who are blinded to what is happening in their own country, through the role of ego with its nationalistic, racial, religious, . . . identifications.
Attack Muslims because they are Muslim? . . . but WHO is launching illegal wars? WHO is dropping bombs from drones? WHO is using radioactive, “depleted” uranium in (chemical) weapons? WHO is breaking the International Laws against torture?
If you want to stop what is happening, you have to JOIN WITH “the peaceful majority”, be they (quoting from the email) Muslim, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Rwandans, Afghans, Iraqis, Palestinians, Somalis, Nigerians, Algerians.
The thing that is CHANGED since WW2: it IS possible to join forces with peaceful Muslims. And create a critical mass that will stop the war-profiteering that will poison us all with chemical & nuclear weapons. If climate change doesn’t do us in, first.
With most people unbelief in one thing is founded on blind belief in another. – Lichtenberg
The ego and its identification with nation, race and religion does not see the very thing that it accuses “the other” of being. The “terrorists” (or fanatics, or killers – – whatever you want to call them) are us, ourselves. Doesn’t matter what country we live in.
As Pogo said, “I have seen the enemy and he is us.”
If you fail to recognize the role of our own “fanatics” we are going to find ourselves in a police state right here in Canada. All the signs are there, and the machinery has been put in place, step-by-step. It is deliberate and progressing nicely.
By-The-Way: to rally support for arresting Cheney when he comes to Canada on Oct 31, I joined every Peace, including every Muslim peace group I could find on Facebook. (Justice is PREREQUISITE to peace.)
I searched on the word “peace”. Not one group came up that had the name “peace” and “Christian”. Not saying that there aren’t any – – just that none came up. I will look further.
/Sandra
P.S. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that terrorists do not exist in other countries and that a strategy is not required. John Ralston Saul spells it out better than I ever could. Please see
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4. THE OFFENDING EMAIL: Muslims @ Michigan State
This is the email I received and responded to. I believe that it, and other emails circulating in networks are designed to fuel hatred targeted at Muslims.
I am grateful to the tireless efforts of the Ecumenical groups in many North American cities that bring various religious denominations together, Muslim, Christian and other, to discover that we all share common values and objectives. We are after all, all human beings. Our ancestors are the same people.
The portion of the following report deleted from the mass email distributions is in Item #1. I found it through curiousity that maybe the whole thing about Michigan State University and the professor’s email to the Muslim Student Association might have been a hoax. It isn’t, but part of the full report, another point-of-view, was deleted. /S
Sent: November-23-13 10:18 PM
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: Fw: Muslims @ Michigan State
About time someone stood up for our rights.
GO, MICHIGAN STATE !
Very interesting — the University is standing by their professor and not bowing down to special interest groups!
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/wichman.asp
Professor Wichman E-mail
Claim: A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave the country.
Status: True.
The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indred Wichman.
Wichman sent an e-mail to the Muslim Student’s Association.
The e-mail was in response to the students’ protest of the Danish cartoons that portrayed the Prophet Muhammad as a terrorist.
The group had complained the cartoons were ‘hate speech.’
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Enter Professor Wichman.
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In his e-mail, he said the following:
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Dear Muslim Association,
As a professor of Mechanical Engineering here at MSU I intend to protest your protest.
I am offended not by cartoons, but by more mundane things like beheadings of civilians, cowardly attacks on public buildings, suicide murders, murders of Catholic priests (the latest in Turkey), burnings of Christian churches, the continued persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt, the imposition of Sharia law on non-Muslims, the rapes of Scandinavian girls and women (called ‘whores’ in your culture), the murder of film directors in Holland, and the rioting and looting in Paris France.
This is what offends me, a soft-spoken person and academic, and many, many of my colleagues. I counsel you dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading Muslims to be very aware of this as you proceed with your infantile ‘protests.’
If you do not like the values of the West – see the First Amendment – you are free to leave. I hope for God’s sake that most of you choose that option.
Please return to your ancestral homelands and build them up yourselves instead of troubling Americans.
Cordially,
I. S. Wichman
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
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As you can imagine,
The Muslim group at the university didn’t like this too well.
They’re demanding that Wichman be reprimanded, that the university impose mandatory diversity training for faculty,
And mandate a seminar on hate and discrimination for all freshmen.
Now, the local chapter of CAIR has jumped into the fray.
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, apparently doesn’t believe that the good professor
Had the right to express his opinion.
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For its part, the university is standing its ground in support of Professor Wichman,
Saying the e-mail was private, and they don’t intend to publicly condemn his remarks.
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Send this to your friends, and ask them to do the same.
Tell them to keep passing it around until the whole country gets it.
We are in a war.
This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.
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If you agree with this, Please send it to all your friends,
If not, simply delete it.
GO, MICHIGAN STATE !
