Conservative Muslim’s opinions produce “existential worry” at University of Michigan

Omar Mahmood, a Muslim student at the University of Michigan, is a conservative. Worse, he expressed his conservative views as a columnist for a school publication.

As a result, Mahmood was subjected to vandalism. Messages were left on his apartment door calling him obscene names and telling him to “shut the f*** up.” The vandals also left a picture taken from Mahmood’s Facebook profile with his eyes X’d out. This page contained more obscenities.

The identity of the vandals is unknown. However, their political persuasion can be inferred. They left one of Mahmood’s columns, a satire of campus political correctness, at his door with yet more hateful language scrawled on it.

The vandals aren’t the only ones persecuting Mahmood. According to NRO’s “College Fix,” after publication of the satirical column in the Michigan Review, the Michigan Daily told Mahmood he must either resign from the Daily or from the Review.

Mahmood says the Daily’s editor explained that he had created a “hostile environment” among the editorial staff and that someone felt threatened because of what he wrote. Here is Mahmood’s “hostile” column. It simply mocks political correctness, incantations of “white privilege,” and the culture of victimization. See if you can find anything that can be construed as “threatening.” I can’t.

I doubt that the complaining school newspaper staffer could either. More likely, he or she just invoked the magic words necessary to punish someone whose views he or she doesn’t like.

But sadly, we can’t completely dismiss the possibility that the University of Michigan has descended to the point where Mahmood’s satire — which attacked no race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or creed (other than mindless liberal dogma) — is too upsetting to handle for those who live in the cocoon of soft campus leftism.

Perhaps the offended Michigan Daily staff member will seek to have his or her exams postponed.

If anyone should be “existentially worried,” though, it should be the satirist whose residence was vandalized.

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