This letter was sent in an e-mail to The Hatchet Tuesday night.

Dear President Knapp, Students, and GW Community,

We hereby take responsibility for the flyering incident that occurred on Monday morning. This creative political action was part of a rich American tradition of raising awareness, in this case, about Islamophobia. We exposed the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week sponsored by the GWU Young America’s Foundation for the celebration of racism that it is. This is a real event that is being hosted at our campus. Most people who saw the fliers were offended, but with a second glance, saw that the absurdity of the message was clearly a horrific exaggeration of the racism that is behind this event.

We regret that some people were unable to discern the intent of these posters and took offense. We wanted to counter the true hate speech that is embodied by the upcoming Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week. We hoped students would feel outraged and come together (much like they did Monday night) and work to counter systemic Islamophobia and the equation of Islam with terrorism. It was inspiring to see that students directed their attention to the real threat. We want to reach out to our Muslim brothers and sisters in the Holy Month of Ramadan in hopes that they will embrace our misrepresented, but honorable stand against racism.

Campuses allied in their commitment to a hate-free environment and critical thinking should not allow Islamo-Fascism Awareness week to take place. The institutionalized and glorified type of Islamophobia of this event being imposed upon us from outside forces (The David Horowitz Foundation) is a dangerously divisive force. Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is the real threat to our community. We hope that the students who take offense to this and hear the call to action will do something to protest Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

It is to our great dismay that the student body and the media missed the clear, if subtle, message of our flier: the hyperbolic nature of the flier was aimed at exposing Islamophobic racism. As such, it is imperative that we unequivocally condemn racism (especially in its most egregious organized forms) on our campus. We hope that as a community we can come together to oppose the true racist propaganda that we initially set out to expose: Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.

Signed,
Adam Kokesh, Yong Kwon, Brian Tierney, Ned Goodwin, Maxine Nwigwe, Lara Masri and Amal Rammah
Students for Conservativo-Fascism Awareness