Claim: * A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave

IzakDavid13 · Jun 28, 2012

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/wichman.asp

Hooray for Michigan State University (The Spartans) and Professor Wichman!!!

Well, what do we have here. Looks like a small case of some people being able to dish it out, but not take it. Let's start at the top. The story begins at Michigan State University with a mechanical engineering professor named Indrek 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.’*
============*
Enter Professor Wichman.*
==========================================*
In his e-mail, he said the following:*
===============================*
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*
=============================*
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.*
==========
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.*
============================================================*
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.*
This political correctness crap is getting old and killing us.*
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Origins: * On 28 February 2006, Professor Indrek Wichman, a tenured professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan State University (MSU), sent the e-mail embedded in the example above 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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Your thoughts?

And also your thoughts on the terrorist affiliated CAIR organisation?

Northside Storm · Jun 28, 2012

I realize he's an engineer (some of those types are blunt as hell), but surely he realizes the irony of this statement?

If you do not like the values of the West – see the First Amendment – you are free to leave.
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You know, trying to stifle speech that is trying to stifle speech isn't some magic-ass candy grab that turns two wrongs into a right.

IzakDavid13 · Jun 28, 2012

Don't look at this from an us against Islam point of view, but more from an us against political correctness gone mad point of view.

Northside Storm · Jun 28, 2012

IzakDavid13 said: ↑

Don't look at this from an us against Islam point of view, but more from an us against political correctness gone mad point of view.
Click to expand...

I don't understand what the hell the obsession is with "political correctness" in this context, in most places, you Islam-bash, you are applauded (as is the case here). It takes nearly nothing from the professor in terms of courage. At worst, some Islamic crazy sends a death threat.

Courage is exposing the crimes of the real crooks where your views are decidedly not welcome and you can be punished for them by the system itself. That takes a lot more. Some people put their life on the line just so dirty laundry is aired out (Bradley Manning). That is fighting "political correctness" gone wrong.

IzakDavid13 · Jun 28, 2012

Northside Storm said: ↑

I don't understand what the hell the obsession is with "political correctness" in this context, in most places, you Islam-bash, you are applauded (as is the case here). It takes nearly nothing from the professor in terms of courage. At worst, some Islamic crazy sends a death threat.

Courage is exposing the crimes of the real crooks where your views are decidedly not welcome and you can be punished for them by the system itself. That takes a lot more. Some people put their life on the line just so dirty laundry is aired out (Bradley Manning). That is fighting "political correctness" gone wrong.
Click to expand...

I believe that Islam is one of, if not the biggest threat facing the civilised world today. I would go as far to call it the scourge of society.

But with all my happy feelings with the upcoming draft, I decided to tone it down a bit.

AroundTheWorld · Jun 28, 2012

I disagree with these parts of what the professor says:

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.
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That is wrong because he is basically indicting Muslims for being Muslims, and his statement could be understood as calling ALL Muslims "dissatisfied, aggressive, brutal, and uncivilized slave-trading", which is completely out of line, unfair and an incorrect generalization.

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..*
Click to expand...

That does sound like he "has it in" for ALL Muslims. I understand why he said what he said, but he went overboard. It sounds xenophobic.

Had he just said "those of you who do not respect our laws and our understanding of free speech are free to leave", that would have been okay. But the way he phrased it, he is just basically going too far and being unfair to all those Muslims who do respect free speech, laws and non-Muslims.

So while I can see where he is coming from, I think his mail was wrong the way he sent it and his claim that he thought it was just going to one student is really not supported by the wording in the mail (he addresses the whole association and speaks in generic terms about Muslims).

I think he could not have complained had he been reprimanded.

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Claim: * A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave

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Claim: * A Michigan professor sent an e-mail telling Muslim students to leave

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