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MUSLIM STUDENTS ASSOCIATION -- WRIGHT STATE UNIVERSITY (MSA WSU) Printer Friendly Page

Wright State University
Attn: Miriam Khan
3640 Colonel Glenn Highway
Dayton, OH
45435

Email :
khan.20@wright.edu
URL: Website

Called for the construction of an on-campus prayer room for Muslims only
Annually participates in a Ramadan Fast-a-Thon

In recent years, the Muslim Students Association of Wright State University (MSA WSU) has participated in an annual "Ramadan Fast-a-Thon" along with as many as 280 fellow Muslim organizations, including well over 200 MSA chapters. The purpose of this event is to raise, through temporary fasting, public awareness of hunger and homelessness in Muslim communities. Recent endorsers of the Fast-a-Thon include:

Sheikh Muhammad Nur Abdullah, former President of the Islamic Society of North America and currently a member of the Shari'a Scholars Association of North America
Sheikh Abdullah Idris Ali, former President of the Islamic Society of North America and currently a Board of Advisors member of the American Muslim Council
Imam Zaid Shakir, Yale University's former Muslim chaplain who has expressed his desire to see the United States eventually become "a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law"
Sheikh Hamza Yusuf, who has supported the terrorist mastermind Omar Abdel Rahman and the convicted cop-killer Jamil Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown)

In February 2008, MSA WSU Vice President (and WSU student government officer) Mohammad "Moody" Kassem prominently posted an online poll on the Wright State student government website, asking: "If you are of Islamic faith, would you utilize a permanent [on-campus] prayer room?"

Kassem then began contacting Muslims all over the United States -- i.e., people with no ties to Wright State University or its local community -- and asking them to participate in this poll. His expressed intent was to use the poll results as leverage with which to persuade WSU to establish a permanent, private Islamic prayer room on its campus.

The text of Wright's email read as follows:

"Salaam everyone. So I need to ask a favor of every one of you. PLEASE go to www.wsusg.com and go to the poll on the right and vote for YES. This is the Wright State University Student Government website. I am conducting a survey for ANYONE to vote about getting a prayer room on campus. Inshallah [If Allah wills], with it, the next generations after us will have an official place to pray whenever they choose. If my plan goes well, I will be presenting this to the provost of Wright State University (Steven Angle) on behalf of the Muslim community and WSU Student Government. Get as many people to vote at that poll. The more the votes the better and stronger our point will be…. Please forward this [email] to all MUSLIMS that you know."

With this email disseminated well beyond WSU's service area, it rapidly spun up hundreds of affirmative responses.

Patrick Poole, Executive Director of Central Ohioans Against Terrorism, contacted Kassem two days after he had posted his online poll to ask why Kassem would use responses from people with no connection to WSU as evidence of strong support for the construction of an Islamic prayer room on campus. The poll was moved off the student government's main webpage within an hour of Poole's email to Kassem, though it did continue to run elsewhere on the site. Poole, however, received no formal reply from Kassem or MSA WSU.

MSA's national organization, the Muslim Students Association of the U.S. and Canada, has prepared and published a guide titled "How to Establish a Prayer Room on Campus," to help its student leaders press their schools with demands for separate, rather than shared, religious space on campus. A supplement to the guide specifically instructs MSA leaders to set up a "Prayer Room Demand Survey," precisely as Mohammad Kassem had done.

Much of this profile is adapted from the article, "Islamofascism Fraud at Wright State," authored by Patrick Poole and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on March 18, 2008.

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