Faizel Patel, Radio Islam News, 2015-03-27
Renowned former anti-apartheid activist and international academic, University of Johannesburg Professor Farid Esack, has been banned from speaking on the topic of Palestine by various French Universities.
Esack, who is the Chairperson of the UJ Academic Freedom Committee and Head of the Religious Studies Department at UJ, embarked on a French speaking tour last night.
Esack has also been accused of being anti-Semite.
“I haven’t been banned from all the universities yet. My first speaking engagement was supposed to take place last night at Paris number 1 or Sobon University.
Esack said Sobon University received letters from the local Israeli lobby group accusing him of heading an organisation that has been responsible for all the violence, primarily in Woolworth’s stores in South Africa.
“On the basis of these letters they decided to withdraw permission for me to speak. The meeting did go ahead but not at the university itself but at the gates of the university on the road.”
“The local BDS has attempted to engage with the university which pretended they (letters) really are not the reasons why they banned the meeting, They insisted it was on technicalities and given all the threats it had received it was in the interest of law and order,” said Esack.
Esack said of the six speaking engagement he has, two other universities are reconsidering his permission to speak. But he said there is pressure on them where a petition has been circulated and signed by more than 300 academics and a few South African cabinet ministers appealing to the universities not to succumb to the pressure from the Israeli lobby groups.
Esack also highlighted that he has no doubt that all Zionist lobby groups liase with each other.
“Letter by letter, word for word in the letters submitted to the French universities was the same letter that was given to Parks Tau, the Mayor of Johannesburg when it decided to engage in the twinning of the city with Ramallah. So the South African Jewish Board of Deputy’s letter was copied word for word.”
Speaking about the Germanwings plane which was deliberately crashed by a German pilot in a remote region of the French Alps on Tuesday morning killing all 150 people on board, Esack emphasised that if the pilot had been a Muslim, there would have been uproar in France.
“If it was found out that it was a Muslim pilot or if a Muslim had anything to do with it, the whole of France would’ve been up in flames. There would’ve been millions of people again marching on the streets against Muslim terrorism.”
Esack said that because it the pilot happened to be a local, white European man who was reported to be emotionally disturbed ,deeply troubled, socially disaffected, pathological, always had issues in his life, nobody was interested in his religion his cultural background or which particular part of Europe he came from.
“Had it been a Muslim than every single Muslim in France would’ve been terrified of their lives and you would have seen the whole world converging onto France to say ‘oh poor France, oh poor Germany,” said Esack.
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