Listening to Zayed

I have met the enemy, and it is not Zayed Yasin.

The enemy came my way probably the same way he came yours: via the news on the morning of Sept. 11. We watched the towers fall, hoping we would wake up. Now our lives are pervaded with the uneasy stench of great evil.

Freedom of speech and thought should be one of our most cherished comforts during such times. But unfortunately, it is at its most vulnerable. As a private institution, Harvard has no legal obligation to protect free speech. But as the world’s leading academic institution, it does. And so I was glad to hear that Commencement would include an oration by Zayed M. Yasin ‘02, who has chosen to speak on the original spiritual meaning of jihad. And I was glad to see the University support Yasin’s attempt to reclaim the word’s holy meaning.

I have watched with considerable sadness and disappointment as a vocal minority protests Yasin’s speech. At press time, 309 graduating students, 170 other students, 57 faculty members, 551 alumni, 141 parents, 3,460 community members and 68 emergency services personnel—4,756 people in total—have signed an online petition opposing the choice of Yasin and urging the public to consider his background as they listen to his speech. It also calls on Yasin to publicly denounce violence in the name of jihad and the events of Sept. 11 in the speech.

Yasin has done this before, and he has agreed to do it again in the speech. But his critics continue to assail him, with few specifics. Much of this has been done without the standards one would hope for from an academic community. Disappointingly, the debate has at times descended into ill-informed and downright false character assassination. Many of those criticizing him have not taken the time to contact him, to ask questions, to find out facts. He has been called everything from “an apologist for men who do great evil” to “a fundraiser for Hamas.” Neither is true. The latter statement was made on national television.

Yasin has been heavily criticized for a fundraiser held almost two years ago by the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS) when he was its president. HIS was considering donating the proceeds to two groups, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) and the Red Crescent. The Bush administration now says HLF supports the terrorist group Hamas by “direct fund transfers,” supporting of schools “encouraging children to become suicide bombers” and enabling it “to recruit suicide bombers by offering support to their families.” But in the end, the organization that benefited from the interfaith fundraiser was not HLF, but rather the non-sectarian Red Crescent, which is a member of the International Red Cross. Yasin has said that the Red Crescent was a more appropriate recipient, because the charity effort was interfaith.

But Yasin, who has observed HLF’s work in Albania firsthand, did dispute the Bush administrations condemnation—particularly HLF’s support of the families of suicide bombers. “I think that this attempt to criminalize the care of widows and orphans is a very underhanded way of pursuing a political agenda, and that it is absolutely unconscionable to attack an organization that takes care of the poor, the sick, because you disagree with the causes that may have contributed to these people’s destitution,” Yasin told The Crimson earlier this year. Now, he says he does not know enough to feel comfortable either supporting or condemning HLF: “On one hand, I know firsthand that they do wonderful work in very difficult situations. On the other, I understand that some very serious allegations have been leveled against them.”

Yasin has publicly and strongly condemned violence—in a Crimson op-ed among other places. He is a humanitarian: he has worked with emergency personnel and the Red Cross, both in the U.S. and abroad. We know little about the speech, except that after the outcry began, Yasin changed its name from “American Jihad,” to the original title, “On Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad.” He has promised to talk about our social obligations as part of privileged Harvard: the struggle to find our internal moral compass.

Some protesters have claimed that there is some political agenda behind the speech, noting that at least one selection committee member signed a recent petition for Harvard to divest from Israel. But this is an illogical objection: support of Israel is certainly political, in any case, and the speech does not address the conflict in the Middle East.

We have heard nothing yet. Those who want to debate Yasin should engage him, not just smear him. When Yasin and I spoke right after the controversy began, he told me that none of those who were leading the charge against him had taken the trouble to contact him. Yet the level of argument against him sank to a low not worthy of the Harvard community, especially the misleading attacks regarding the HIS fundraiser.

Following the outcry, University President Lawrence H. Summers issued a lukewarm statement supporting Yasin, including this sentence: “I am pleased that there have been a number of constructive conversations that have addressed potential divisions in our community associated with his speech.”

If anything, Summers did not go far enough. While he did condemn a death threat that Yasin received, he failed to address the negative personal attacks that have been made on Yasin—something he could and should have done strongly as a University president interested in maintaining standards of debate within our academic community.

Showing greater eloquence, Leverett House Master Howard Georgi did Summers one better. “I believe that not only threats but also personal attacks on Zayed’s character are reprehensible, and have no place in the community of scholars...While he has a definite point of view, he is thoughtful, reasonable, and works to encourage civil discussion and dialogue. We should wait for Commencement and find out what he has to say.”

There are those who have said that Commencement morning is an inappropriate time for controversy—especially for the word “jihad,” which has become so painful to some of us after its distortion last fall. I cannot agree; we have spent four years at Harvard, and the best thing that Harvard has taught me is to engage the issue. If we do not argue with some substance, if we do not take the time to consider, to listen, to open our minds in new ways, to test our assumptions and others, we are missing out on the one big principle we should have learned: nothing is beyond question, and the basis of an academic community is the willingness to listen. Jihad does not have to have a violent meaning. Words are what we make of them.

Commencement means beginning. As we continue into the real world and real life, what could be a more appropriate beginning than this—Yasin turning our pain of last fall into a hope for a new beginning and some moral direction? He’s not saying we have to agree with all his moral decisions—maybe you disapprove of HLF, and maybe you don’t. But the speech doesn’t have anything to do with HLF. Like most graduation speeches, it has to do with you. Yasin is saying that each individual should take up the cause of jihad—internal struggle—to find a moral compass in our-post Sept. 11 and post-graduation lives. It’s hard to argue with that.

I am glad that I went to a University that would choose such a speaker during such difficult times. I am glad that we would not let the events of Sept. 11 pervert the meaning of one of the world’s great religions without letting someone, one of our own, speak in its defense. I am glad that in a time of great sorrow, ours remains one of the great institutions of the world, standing in defense of the freedom of speech and debate that is fundamental to an academic community. This exchange of ideas has become vital to me as a journalist, an author and a scholar. This brand of intellectual discourse and constant questioning is both so Harvard and so American. We cannot allow it to be taken away from us—that, truly, would be the triumph of evil.

Vasugi V. Ganeshananthan ’02, an English concentrator in Lowell House, was managing editor of The Crimson in 2001.