Arab and Islamic advocacy groups are doing their best to shut down Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, with an array of underhanded tactics that should concern all Americans. Patrick Poole has an article today looking at a former Congresswoman turned shill for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, who is thuggishly pressuring Columbus State Community College to censor the event: A Former Congresswoman Tries to Censor Islamo-Fascism Week.

Since leaving Congress in shame in 1993 and her subsequent guilty plea on charges related to her role in the House checking scandal (where she had more than 200 overdrafts), Mary Rose Oakar has kept a low public profile. But now Oakar has waded back into the waters of controversy by encouraging higher education officials to suppress student free speech related to the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

FrontPage has obtained a copy of a letter dated September 7th by Oakar in her position as president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) to Columbus State Community College President Valeriana Moeller saying that Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week (IAW) events “should not be tolerated.” The letter is also signed by ADC Executive Director Kareem Shora.

Last week I reported in my article, “Censorship State,” that Columbus State student life director Timeka Rashid had banned student leaders of the Terrorism Awareness Project (TAP) from posting promotional fliers based on her supposed understanding of the “campus climate and culture and recent concerns brought to the President.” In a separate email to one of the student leaders, Rashid appealed to Mary Rose Oakar’s letter as the source of these “recent concerns” and the grounds for her denial of the group’s posting fliers advertising their Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week events. Rashid refused to comment for last week’s story.

According to Columbus State TAP student president Josiah Lanning, he was instructed by Rashid not to contact Oakar, nor was he provided a copy of the letter by Columbus State despite repeated requests for it. Until FrontPage forwarded Lanning a copy of Oakar’s letter on Friday afternoon, he had not seen a copy nor was he aware of its contents, despite the fact that college administrators were using it to justify their censorship of the student group.

Read it all…