Shoebat speaks uninterrupted, Muslim students act like imbeciles

I just returned from Walid Shoebat's speech, which he gave at Freeborn Hall on the campus of UC Davis in Davis, California, which is located about 20 miles west of Sacramento. Security was very tight, and there was no way that I was going to be able to get my digital camera past their phalanx. My MP3 player is another story. That one got by unmolested, so I was able to capture the entire speech/Q & A on the MP3 player's voice recorder. Mr. Shoebat played to a packed house; so packed, that his speech was about 30 minutes late getting under way because it took so long to seat everyone. I have always been horrible at guessing crowd numbers, but it had to be somewhere between 500 and 1,000 people in attendance. A good number of those spectators were members of the UC Davis Muslim Students Association. As you can guess, they are not big fans of Mr. Shoebat. In fact, they were handing out flyers to the crowd lined up outside Freeborn Hall. The flyer talked about what a fraud Mr. Shoebat is and how he should be deported from the United States for being a terrorist. Wow! I think this is the first time they have ever wanted anyone deported for terrorist activity connected to militant Islam.

Freeborn Hall had a bunch of chairs on the floor in front of the stage and podium. Behind those floor chairs was a sort of pull-out stadium-style seating. I sat a few rows up that so I could see over all the people sitting on the floor level below. In these floor seats - front and center behind the reserved seating - sat the Muslim students. They were all wearing white t-shirts and a strip of red duct tape on their arm in some sort of show of solidarity. Some wore a strip of the tape over their mouths with the word "silenced" written on the tape with a black marker. This is where college student protesters can just get silly. How in the hell were they being "silenced"? As these students sat or stood around talking before the speech got underway, several of the students were scurrying about, making sure everyone was in the proper uniform, pointing this way and that, coordinating whatever it was that they were planning on doing. While I watched them do that, I looked around and took in the fact that this was the first time that I had ever attended something like this on a college campus. I have always heard and read about these events, but I had never had the chance to attend one. I felt creeped out by this air of Orwellian doom that hung over the place where I got the chilling feeling that if these students and some of the other attendees were not deterred from acting on their true feelings, then you would want to be anywhere but there. I find it hard to put into words the feeling that I had.

Once the presenter came out to introduce Walid Shoebat, I hit record on my MP3 player. The presenter made it clear to the audience that disruptive monkey business would not be tolerated, that any disrupters would be arrested, and that video cameras were on hand to record any disrupters for use in legal proceedings against them. Nevertheless, the Muslim students made their presence known. As soon as Mr. Shoebat began to speak, the students, in silent unison, stood up and remained standing for about 5 to 10 seconds, then they sat down again. It was bizarre. The first thing Mr. Shoebat did was take issue with some of the errors and mistruths that had been attributed to him on the flyer the MSA students had been handing out outside Freeborn Hall. The funniest one was where the students said Mr. Shoebat was lying about his friendship with another terrorist because nothing could be found linking the two. This was supposed to be a blow against his bonafide credentials as a former terrorist. Mr. Shoebat made the students out for the immature fools they are when he pointed out that they had spelled his friend's name wrong. He spelled the name for them and then told them to Google it and they would find all the corroborating information they needed. He really punked them on that one, making them look like incomptent fools - like that was hard to do. He also shot them down on their insistence that he be deported from the United States for being a former terrorist. He told the students that if they had done their homework, they would know that he can't be deported because his mother was an American, and so was he.

Mr. Shoebat then launched into his life story, his birth to an American mother and a Jordanian father, his mother becoming trapped in the male-dominated world of Islam, and his childhood of indoctrination into the world of hating the infidel, his career as a terrorist, his moment of clarity when he had a civil conversation with a Jewish woman while on an airline flight and found that maybe Jews and Christians weren't dogs and monkeys after all. Throughout the rest of his speech, there were several more times when the Muslim students in the audience would creepily stand in silent unison, keep standing for about 5-10 seconds and then sit down again. I specifically remember them doing this when Shoebat, while talking about his conversion to Christianity, questioned whether or not Muhammad was really a prophet. I could tell the Muslim students didn't like this one bit. Shoebat engaged them by pointing out that in this country, he could say that he didn't believe that Joseph Smith of Mormon fame was a prophet, or that Jews can say they don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah, and that is OK. But question Muhammad's status as a prophet, and the Muslims will give quite the reaction that you don't seem to get from any other religion. Mr. Shoebat did an excellent job of insulting these Muslim students in a very tactful and fact-filled way. The Muslim students later stood up a third time when Mr. Shoebat criticized the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a poop-stirring organization which decries the slightest negative comment regarding Islam. This is the organization that has gone after the Fox show 24 when the season's terrorists are Muslim. Several members of CAIR have been arrested and convicted of supporting terrorism, and higher-ups in the organization have stated that they would like to see the United States be governed by Sharia law.

When he finished his 45 minute speech, Mr. Shoebat began his Q & A session. This was the cue for the Muslim students to silently leave en masse. As they filed out of Freeborn Hall, they all had their hands raised while making the "peace" sign. At one point, an audience member said something to the effect of, "If you want to live in peace with us, then why are you leaving?" One of the male MSA students turned around and gave a hateful glare that sent a chill down my spine. One of his more sensible colleagues put his hand on the hater's back and gave him a nudge toward the door. Mr. Shoebat made a comment that he was sorry to see them go and not get to field any questions from them. He has a very sarcastic and playful confrontational style that diffuses any chance of physical hostility, yet does a masterful job of pointing out the foolish positions of his opponents. The man was an electrifying speaker.

The Q & A was very informative, but of course you always get the chatty hotheads who want to give their own lecture rather than ask a question. One questioner tried to tell Mr. Shoebat that the Muslims in the middle east didn't oppress anyone, and gave the Christians in Egypt as an example. Mr. Shoebat shut him down right there, and gave a masterful history of the treatment of the Coptic Christians in Egypt, the treatment of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks, the Black Christians in southern Sudan, and a few other examples. These dummies got up there thinking they could blow smoke up this Shoebat's caboose, somehow forgetting who they were talking to: an ex-PLO terrorist who lived, breathed, and ate the Quran, hating the infidel, nursing historical grievances.

When the Q & A came to an end and everyone filed out of the Hall, the Muslim students were all outside holding signs, the biggest of which said Islam is Peace. Yes, that cliched statement was apparently the best they could muster. The last time I checked, Islam meant Submission.

I would love to post any or all of my audio of the speech, but I confess ignorance as to how or whether or not I can do it. At least you got this much of the lowdown from me in this post. Attending this event was a significant investment of money and especially time, but it was a priceless experience, both from listening to the speaker, and watching the antics of some of the audience members.

Good Day to You, Sir

*Update - This afternoon, I found a story (horribly biased against Shoebat by the way) from the Sacramento Bee that gave the audience count as 1,800. I told you I am bad at guessing the size of crowds!