'Peak absurdity': Islamophobia accelerating global warming?

In what some are calling "peak absurdity," last week MIT's Department of Global Studies and Languages sponsored a lecture entitled – really – "Is Islamophobia accelerating global warming?"

The lecture was given by "future generation professor" at Melbourne University named Ghassan Hage whose academic credentials included authorship of such tomes as "White Nation: Fantasies of white supremacy in a multicultural society" and "Against Paranoid Nationalism."

The lecture description was as follows:

This talk examines the relation between Islamophobia as the dominant form of racism today and the ecological crisis. It looks at the three common ways in which the two phenomena are seen to be linked: as an entanglement of two crises, metaphorically related with one being a source of imagery for the other and both originating in colonial forms of capitalist accumulation. The talk proposes a fourth way of linking the two: an argument that they are both emanating from a similar mode of being, or enmeshment, in the world, what is referred to as 'generalised domestication.'

"Gobbledygook, from beginning to end," one person commented.

"House of War: Islam's Jihad Against the World" conveys what the West needs to know about Islam and the violent, expansionary ideology that seeks the subjugation and destruction of other faiths, cultures and systems of government

Fox News confirmed the opinion: "The description's air of uber-academic applesauce has been the topic of much online mockery – and confusion. Mediaite said it couldn't 'make heads or tails of it.' Tablet, meanwhile, turned to deriding the subject matter itself, and satirically proposed examining whether anti-Semitism is responsible for the rapid disappearance of the pygmy hippo."

Ghassan Hage (Source: Twitter)

Eric Worrall at Watts Up With That notes the University of Melbourne is acquiring a reputation for exploring unusual climate-related themes, such as how Democratic freedom paralysis efforts to combat climate change, how to restructure government, and how to maintain the flow of green subsidies when climate skeptics win elections.

"What two things do liberals dread the most?" rhetorically asked John Hinderaker at Powerline blog. "Of course – global warming and Islamophobia. So it probably was only a matter of time before someone alleged a connection."

Hage was born in Lebanon and settled in Australia. He is a supporter of the anti-Israel "Boycott, Divest and Sanctions" movement and has likened Israelis to "slave owners" on Twitter. He also wrote, "Marxism is not a dangerous idea try Zionism."

In an essay entitled "A Massacre is Not a Massacre," he referred to Palestinian militants as "freedom fighters." He refers to airport security as an example "in which Westerners require from those they racialize an exact obedience to the letter of the law."

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A private institution ranked the seventh best university in America, the average MIT student spent $58,240 for tuition and other expensesin the 2014-2015 academic year.