A crowd gathered on Thursday outside of the City University of New York building in Manhattan to protest the university's intention to host radical anti-Zionist and Sharia law advocate Linda Sarsour on Friday as a commencement speaker for the degree ceremony of its Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.
Sarsour, 37, who helped organize the Women’s March in Washington in January, has drawn criticism in the past for her advocacy of Sharia law in the United States and her attacks on prominent anti-Sharia figures.
In 2011, Sarsour slammed Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born activist and critic of radical Islam, writing in vulgar language on Twitter that Hirsi Ali deserved to be physically assaulted for her views.
“Brigitte Gabriel = Ayaan Hirsi Ali,” Sarsour wrote. “She’s asking 4 an a$$ whippin’. I wish I could take their **** (female sexual organs, ed.) away – they don’t deserve to be women.”
Sarsour is also an avowed anti-Zionist, having shared the stage with a terrorist murderer who killed two Jewish students in a supermarket bombing in Israel.
Sarsour praised convicted PFLP terrorist Rasmea Odeh when the two addressed a left-wing conference in Chicago on April 2nd, saying she was “honored and privileged to be here in this space, and honored to be on this stage with Rasmea.”
In 2015, Sarsour hailed Arab stone throwers targeting Israelis, calling them “The definition of courage”.
The protest was led by right-wing activists Pamela Geller and Milo Yiannopoulos. Geller, president of the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and Yiannopoulos, a former senior editor at Breitbart News, were joined by Assemblyman Dov Hikind, (D-Brooklyn).
Geller said the invitation extended to Sarsour was “obscene,” describing her as a “pro-terror vicious anti-Semite” and punctuating her remarks with, “Surely CUNY can do better!”
“Why would CUNY have a commencement speaker who supports terrorism and believes in throwing rocks?” Hikind said at the Thursday rally.
Eyewitness accounts reported that, as speeches were underway, a crowd of counter-protestors in support of Sarsour nearly drowned out the speakers. They called the speakers "fascists" and spewed other profanity at them.