September 24, 2001

HBU officials apologize for speaker
___By John Hall
___Staff Writer
___HOUSTON--Evangelist Anis Shorrosh compared Mohammed to Satan and condemned a Muslim student to hell at Houston Baptist University.
___Shorrosh's comments, delivered two days after terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., offended Muslim and Christian students alike.
___Shorrosh was invited to speak at the university about the basic tenets of Islam. A group of students walked out of the service after he denied the truthfulness of the religion and quoted a Bible verse to suggest a relationship between Satan and Mohammed, the prime prophet of Islam.
___After the presentation, a small group of Muslims met with Shorrosh to discuss his views. According to a report in the university's student newspaper, The Collegian, a heated conversation followed.
___One of the Muslim students accused Shorrosh of stereotyping all Muslims without knowing them or their beliefs.
___Shorrosh responded: "Your religion is a lie. Your Allah (god) is the devil himself."
___A second Muslim student then condemned Shorrosh to hell. Shorrosh countered, "No, you are going to hell."
___Just as the discussion was dying down, Shorrosh infuriated the crowd again when he said, "Those students were so angry, if they had had a knife they would have killed me."
___According to the newspaper report, the Muslim students responded with "comments suggesting that his attempted assassins 'should have cut off (his) head.'"
___The verbal fighting ended with each side again condemning the other in the presence of students, staff and faculty.
___University officials denounced and apologized for Shorrosh's statements.
___"You don't invite someone to come to your house to insult you," HBU President Doug Hodo said in a "letter to the university family" that appeared in a special edition of the campus paper that afternoon.
___"Unfortunately our 'guest' insulted our students, faculty and staff," Hodo said. "Events of Thursday hurt many of you and me, and the words of our speaker caused great pain."
___The university does not have a problem with Shorrosh's basic statements regarding Islam, because they express a common Christian viewpoint, noted Jack Purcell, the school's vice president for student affairs.
___However, Shorrosh should have been more sensitive to his audience at such an emotional time in the nation, Purcell said.
___"This issue is not what was said but how it was said," he said. "When you're in an environment of people with other faiths, you don't insult them. I don't think you have to apologize for your theology, but you don't have to say it in a way that is intentionally insulting in a setting where you are speaking to an audience of several faiths."
___Shorrosh expressed no remorse about the comments.
___Many so-called Muslims are peaceful people, but the true followers of Allah are violent people, he claimed. He insisted Muslims have tried to kill him several times as he has attempted to evangelize or debate them.
___"I sincerely love all Muslims," Shorrosh said. "I am one of thousands of Christians who every Friday night fast and pray for the fall of Islam."
___In order to overcome the Muslim influence in America, Shorrosh advocated deporting all Muslims who have entered the country since 1991 and cannot prove they are not connected with any terrorist organizations.
___The United States should call all U.S. citizens back to America and drop atomic bombs on the capitals of several countries in the Middle East, he said.
___HBU officials called a campuswide meeting for the next afternoon to discuss Shorrosh's comments. About 275 students participated in a question-and-answer session with several administrators.
___Because of this meeting, as well as many individual meetings with Muslim students, the student body has begun discussing Muslim-Christian relations more thoroughly, Purcell said.
___ "That is the good thing that has come out of this--that there has been increased dialogue between Christian and Muslim students," he said.

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