CAIR Launches Campaign Against Florida Professor Prof. Jonathan Matusitz is being criticized by CAIR for stating his view that there is a connection between Islamism and terrorism.
University of Central Florida (UCF) associate professor Jonathan Matusitz is coming under fire from the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Officials of the group sent a complaint to the university, asking it to review the content of Matusitz's courses.
Matusitz, 36, who won an award from the university for his outstanding performance, teaches several communication classes at UCF, including one called Terrorism and Communication and another on intercultural communication.
CAIR, cites a YouTube video of Prof. Matusitz – at a speaking engagement off campus -- in their claim that he has an anti-Muslim viewpoint.
In the video, Matusitz stresses the link between terrorism and Islamic culture. He also suggests countries should resist the global spread of Islam.
"Why do so many Muslims, relative to other religions, want to kill us?" he asks in the video. "The answer is easy, very easy. It is seven letters: culture."
He also says that Islam cannot be changed.
"How can you change a movement in which you have 1.5 billion members? It's impossible," he says. "We just have to resist it and just elect people who are willing to resist it and just be true Americans. That's the only answer. We're not going to change Islam."
UCF spokesman Grant Heston said the school has received no complaints from students or Matusitz's colleagues about his work.
Heston said Matusitz was not speaking on behalf of UCF when he made the remarks. "Dr. Matusitz expressed his opinion, which is his right," Heston said.
Matusitz said on the show that he refuses to be "politically correct just to please everybody."
Matusitz, according to his bio on the UCF website, came to the U.S. from Belgium in 2000. He received a Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma in 2006. Matusitz has published 95 academic papers and has made presentations at more than 100 conferences. He also taught at a NATO-affiliated military base in Belgium and wrote a book titled Terrorism & Communication: A Critical Introduction that was published last year.
"I think that in academia, I'm sure a lot of people don't share my views," he said. "But I also think that a lot of people share my views, but they're not as open as I am."
In another YouTube video, Matusitz cites a statistic that indicates the vast majority of victims of terrorism were victims of Islamic terrorism.
"So when my colleagues tell me that Islam is a religion of peace, I tell them that Islam is a religion of pieces: Piece of body here, piece of body there," he says in the video.
Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for CAIR, said he does not understand how a publicly funded university such as UCF could allow a professor to promote such hateful views.
CAIR - an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial
It should be noted that CAIR was designated by the federal government in 2007 as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood front whose leaders were found guilty of financing Hamas. The government included CAIR on a list of U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities that made up its secret Palestine Committee.
Here is a local TV station's report on the issue:
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