A professor who won a free-speech battle with his community college over his teaching about Islamic terrorism now is being sued by a Muslim student and the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations, known as CAIR.
After a student complained about the content of Nicholas Damask’s World Politics course, officials at Scottsdale Community College in Arizona promised he would apologize.
But he didn’t, and the college later apologized to him when the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education pointed out his freedom to teach “subjects that may be controversial” was protected by the U.S. Constitution.
Now, however, the Investigative Project on Terror reports student Mohamed Sabra and the Arizona branch of CAIR filed a lawsuit against the professor on June 2 in federal court.
The complaint seeks an injunction against the Maricopa Community College District, which SCC is part of, and Damask to block use of course materials deemed to “have the primary effect of disapproving of Islam.”
The report noted there were three questions on the Islamic terror module in the course to which Sabra objected:
- “Who do terrorists strive to emulate?” (Muhammad)
- “Where is terrorism encouraged in Islamic doctrine and law?” (The Medina verses, i.e., the portion of the Quran traditionally understood as having been revealed later in Muhammad’s prophetic career)
- “Terrorism is ____ in Islam.” (“justified within the context of jihad.”)
The lawsuit charges that the “only objectively reasonable construction of Damask’s actions is that his primary message is the disapproval of Islam.”
“Damask’s module quiz forced Sabra to agree to his radical interpretation of Islam. When Sabra did not, he was penalized by getting the questions wrong and impacted his grade,” the complaint states.
Sabra told Damask the quiz offended him and his religion.
Damask, responding in two emails, explained that the quiz questions came from the course reading material. Sabra then posted a screenshot of the quiz to social media, which resulted in death threats against Damask and the college, IPT reported.
“The college has protocols if a student has a complaint,” District Governing Board member Kathleen Winn told the Arizona Independent News Network. “This student didn’t file a formal complaint. Professor Damask’s academic freedom is protected. I hope CAIR is not using this student to forward their agenda without regard for the student’s interests, freedom of speech, and academic freedom.”
The report said CAIR’s Arizona chapter is using the controversy to raise funds, with claims that Damask’s class “threatens Muslim lives.”
The IPT report said: “CAIR has long fought to sanitize educational texts of considers derogatory against Islam. It entered into a formal partnership in 2010 with the 57-nation global Organization of Islamic Cooperation’s (OIC) Islamic Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (ISESCO) to ‘redress the image of Islam and Muslims in textbooks.’ Like CAIR, the OIC condemns connecting Islamic doctrine and terrorism in the minds of Westerners as ‘unfair,’ saying it has “created an unfair misinterpretation of the Islamic message in the Western and Non Muslim worlds.'”
The lawsuit also attacked Walid Phares, the author of “Future Jihad,” complaint he writes that jihad is not a “spiritual phenomenon that would be and was abused by extremist ideologies” but rather a call for physical action.
CAIR contends Damask “failed to articulate that other more acceptable, and in fact ‘mainstream’ views of jihad have nothing to do with violence, but instead he improperly urged students to accept his personal opinions.”
IPT noted CAIR was the creation of a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Hamas-support network in the United States, according to internal documents seized by the FBI.
The complaint alleges Damask distorted the Quran in order to support his “gross misinterpretations” of jihad.
