David Horowitz opened his lecture on terrorism - part of "Islamofascism Awareness Week," a program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center - with a joke.
"I hope you checked your pies at the door," he quipped, recalling the incident in which New York Times Columnist Thomas Friedman was pied as he began his lecture in Salomon 101 last spring.
Three uniformed officers at the back and three at the front of the slightly less than half full MacMillan 117 and Horowitz's own private bodyguard made any pies-to-the-face unlikely.
Horowitz, a Jewish writer and activist who holds adamantly pro-Israel views, said the purpose of his lecture was to counter "liberal orthodoxy" on campus. "You have one of the worst faculties in the United States," he said. "These people are communists - they are totalitarians."
The lecture was titled "Helping the Enemy to Win: Support for the Jihad on American Campuses."
"Islam is a fundamentalist religion," Horowitz said, adding that the Quran left very little room for interpretation when compared to the Hebrew and Christian Bibles.
Sean Quigley '10, Herald opinions columnist and executive editor for content of the Brown Spectator, which brought Horowitz to campus, said in his introduction that one purpose of the event was to bring an uncommon point of view to the Brown campus.
"We're not intending to attack Islam specifically or campus Muslims," Quigley said.
The Spectator invited the Brown Muslim Student Association to participate in the event, but BMSA declined, said Anish Mitra '10, the Spectator's executive editor for production and a Herald opinions columnist.
Horowitz criticized Muslim Student Associations on campuses across the country for observing "Nakba," which he described as a day of mourning the creation of Israel.
Horowitz likened observance of Nakba to white Americans holding a day of mourning on the anniversary of the end of South African apartheid.
Horowitz said one part of the Hadith - or sayings of Mohammad - which reads "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say, 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him,'" is "a call to genocide."
He said MSAs around the country had refused to condemn the passage and criticized its removal by the University of Southern California from the MSA page on the university's Web site.
Regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, "there is no right on the Arab side - there is none," Horowitz said.
The Arabs invented the idea of a Palestinian identity on the advice of communists in order to gain the sympathies of Western leftists, Horowitz said.
Zionism is the "only national liberation movement in the world opposed by the left - because they're Jewish," Horowitz said. "The left is the fountainhead of anti-Semitism in this country - Jew-hatred."
"People like Jimmy Carter are only genocide enablers. He's a Jew-hater," Horowitz said.
During the question-and-answer session, one audience member told Horowitz he would "vomit" facing the liberal bias in Brown's classrooms. "This whole university is a project of the left-communist-feminist-Nazi-fascist media," he added.
In response, Horowitz criticized a former professor of black philosophy at Brown for having radically liberal views. "Could you imagine a professor teaching white philosophy?" he asked.
The same audience member answered, adding, "Maybe you could teach it here."
But another questioner thought the first audience member was mocking Horowitz. "He's being sarcastic. Stop responding to him!" he said.
One audience member pointed out that the United Nations labels Gaza and the West Bank "occupied territories."
"The U.N. General Assembly gave a standing ovation to a cannibal: (Ugandan dictator) Idi Amin," Horowitz said. "That's who runs the U.N."
When asked whether he considered the views of Christian fundamentalists such as Alaskan Gov. Sarah Palin dangerous, Horowitz said, "Sarah Palin wouldn't hurt a fly - maybe a moose."
Will Grapentine, who graduated from Roger Williams University in May, said he thought it was encouraging to see students with different beliefs show up with open minds rather than protesting outside.
Grapentine, who said he has seen Horowitz speak many times, is running for state representative as a Republican in Rhode Island's 69th district.
"I thought that it was good to see diverse opinions ... at one of the most progressive institutions in the country," he said.
Natasha Pradhan '12, who comes from a Muslim background, said after the lecture that she did not agree with Horowitz's statement that the Quran leaves little room for interpretation in comparison to the Bible.
"Of course there a lot of different interpretations of the Koran." She said she felt Horowitz held many baseless preconceptions about Muslims.
