January 9, 2007 — Pace University administrators threatened to sic the cops on a Jewish-student club if it went ahead with plans to screen a critically acclaimed film about radical Islam, the head of the group charged yesterday.
Michael Abdurakhmanov, president of Pace Hillel, said two deans warned that showing the documentary film would implicate club members as suspects in two hate crimes involving the desecration of the Koran at the university’s lower-Manhattan campus last fall.
In addition, Abdurakhmanov said an assistant dean physically restrained him as he attempted to defend the film and his group in a meeting with administrators.
“The message was pretty clear, if you show this film, you’re going to incriminate yourself,” Abdurakhmanov said.
Pace spokesman Chris Cory acknowledged that officials encouraged Hillel to postpone the screening until tensions over the hate crimes dissipated, but dismissed the accusations of coercion as “far-fetched,” “implausible” and “unprofessional.”
Hillel had planned to screen “Obsession” during Judaism Awareness Week in November. The school stepped in after receiving complaints from Muslim students that the film negatively portrayed Islam.
In September and October, copies of the Koran were found in toilets in men’s rooms on the Manhattan campus. Those incidents were followed by the discovery of a swastika scrawled on a bathroom wall and a Hillel event poster.
Abdurakhmanov, a 20-year-old psychology major from Brooklyn, said neither he nor any member of his club had reason to believe they were suspects in the Koran incidents until the dean of students, Marijo Russell O’Grady, suggested it.
“Her words were if you show this film, the police will be looking into your records further,” Abdurakhmanov said.
He added that he knew of no one who had been contacted by the NYPD’s Hate Crime Task Force. An NYPD spokesman declined to say whether there were any suspects in the cases.
In a second meeting with university administrators, Abdurakhmanov claims an assistant dean, David Clark, twice pushed him into a seat when he tried to stand to speak.
Phone messages and e-mails left for the president of the Muslim Students Association, which objected to the film and attended the meetings, were not returned.
“The bottom line is the university never told them not to show the film,” said Cory, the Pace spokesman. “This was a good-faith effort by the deans to mediate between the Muslim Students Association and Hillel.”
SPME
