Student and faculty Islamists at Whittier College, reports the Investigative Project on Terrorism, have aggressively been trying to silence Nonie Darwish, a native of Egypt who has had the temerity to speak out against the persecution of women under sharia. According to a student leader, the manner in which campus president Sharon Herzberger and law school dean Penelope Bryan, both well-known feminists, have handled these slanderous attacks on Darwish has been craven.

Darwish faced earlier efforts to disrupt her speech at Wellesley College and the University of California-Berkeley (described here and here). She recalls how she was treated, all too typically, at Wellesley:

a large number of female members of the Muslim Students Association attended. As I described the plight of seven Iranian women awaiting death by stoning for sexual violations, I saw no compassion towards their sisters in Islam. I saw only rigid faces and hardened, unsympathetic hearts. Some even made faces at me as I spoke. These young, educated Muslim women live in America under the protection of the U.S. Constitution, far removed from the harsh realities of Sharia law I experienced.

Too few on campuses come forth to defend heroines like Darwish. IPT rightly observes that at places like Whittier, “the dignity of women and protection of their rights are top priorities – so long as they don’t interfere with the political agenda of campus Islamists.”