The Man Behind the ‘Jihad’ Speech: Senior Zayed Yasin

By EDWARD B. COLBY

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

One week ago today, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews turned his gaze on Hilary L. Levey ’02 and demanded intently, “What’s your problem with this speech by this guy, whatever-his-name-is?”

“This guy” is Zayed M. Yasin ’02, who prior to the release of his Commencement oration’s title was a man with a slightly above-average campus profile. Now, with a speech relating the original meaning of “jihad” to the moral obligations of Harvard graduates, he’s all over the national media—and at today’s ceremonies he will arguably be the most-watched member of the Class of 2002.

On “Hardball,” as Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee tried to argue Yasin’s case—saying that the Harvard Commencement speaker aims only to reclaim the term “jihad” and give it spiritual meaning—Matthews keeps interrupting.

“I’ve heard ‘jihad’ used as ‘holy war’ my entire life,” he says bombastically, before calling Yasin, 22, “a kid known to have been a fundraiser for Hamas.” Over the previous eight days, Yasin’s speech—and sometimes Yasin himself—had become a target for many, with opposition mounting following the announcement of his address’s title, “American Jihad.” After an uproar on campus and in the national media, he returned to his original title, “Of Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad,” the day before the “Hardball” episode, but that change was not yet widely known. The dominant public image of Yasin was hardly a positive one.

Earlier that same evening, as the sun set over the Charles, Yasin sat in his ninth-floor Leverett tower bedroom, barefoot, his extended legs resting on the end of a sofa. After a long day of interviews, he had settled in for one final unexpected visit. The jacket of his nice gray suit removed, he reclined in a black desk chair. Despite the intense controversy of the past week, he smiled and laughed often, even about the death threat he received via a Blue Mountain e-greeting card.

“I’m not taking it too seriously,” he says. “It was pretty silly.” In recent years, he says, he has mellowed. He says he hopes that he and his critics—led by Levey and Benjamin Z. Galper ’02—will be able to issue a joint statement of either agreement or “respectful disagreement.”

It’s a startling contrast, these two very different images of Zayed Yasin—one the very public focus of a media frenzy, the other intimate and conciliatory. In one, Yasin is provocative and easily disparaged, the “this guy” enemy. In the other, he appears humble, actively working toward compromise. His story is a telling example of how, post-Sept. 11, one word can start a firestorm—and why for one week of intense controversy and scrutiny, a stubborn Yasin would not let go of that word.

How It Began

The “American Jihad” controversy finds its roots in a seemingly innocuous Crimson story dated two weeks ago yesterday, one announcing that Yasin—one of three students named Commencement orators—would “challenge seniors to apply the concept of the jihad to their lives after graduation” in his speech.

“It’s a little intimidating, but I’m looking forward to it,” Yasin, a former president of the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS), said at the time.

But within days, Yasin found himself in the center of a controversy, replete with national media attention and a campus petition opposing his speech. The number of signatures swelled steadily.

He says he had hoped, through the use of the word, to prompt discussion of its meaning, but neither he nor the six-person University committee who selected him expected the kind of reaction that ensued.

Debates raged on House e-mail lists as students questioned the appropriateness of Yasin’s giving a speech on “jihad” in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Some said the committee could have chosen any number of less divisive or touchy speech topics, and others criticized Yasin’s character and creditability.

One major criticism focused on Yasin’s support of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF). When Yasin was HIS president, the organization held a dinner fundraiser initially scheduled to benefit HLF, a group the U.S. State Department later alleged has ties to Hamas, an Islamic terrorist organization. HIS eventually decided, however, to donate the dinner’s proceeds to the Red Crescent, the Middle Eastern equivalent of the Red Cross.

“A person who shrugs off State Department warnings as merely an attempt ‘to criminalize the care of widows and orphans’ and ‘a very underhanded way of pursuing a political agenda,’” wrote David Montes ’03 in an Eliot House list e-mail, “is not the person I would want delivering the undergraduate English

Oration at Commencement.”

Some of the criticism has gotten personal. On the Eliot list, Deon D. Falcon ’02 wrote that the speech’s content would be “fine,” but that Yasin was “a ick for intellectualizing and expounding upon the meaning of the word ‘jihad’...he is hitting too close to home too soon, and is an ass for it.”

The following week, criticism reached a seeming high point with a few e-mails sent by Beau Briese ’01-’02 over the Christian Impact list. “Yasin is an apologist for men who do great evil,” read the second message’s concluding paragraph. “I pray for him; I pray that he changes his mind. But, if he does not reject Hamas and Al Qaeda, he should not speak at graduation.”

Briese says he speaks only for himself, but goes on to explain in a subsequent e-mail that “You must also mention what most of us, against Yasin’s speech, and as strongly against the administration for picking it, believe: That evil committed in ignorance is evil nonetheless, because you are responsible for your ignorance.”

“Yasin has publicly rejected terrorism and violence, and said that Hamas is not fronting HLF,” he continues. “That is not the same as saying he publicly rejects Hamas and Al Qaeda, though you may interpret it that way. Many people, unfortunately, play with the meaning of words.”

On the other side, many students lined up to support Yasin.

“A few more points about Zayed’s so-called anti-Semitism and support for terrorist groups: during his tenure as president of the Islamic Society, he arranged for several dialogue groups with Hillel, and HIS also started its regular interfaith dialogues between itself, Hillel and CSA, which have continued through to today,” wrote Rita Hamad ’03, former president of the Society of Arab Students (SAS) and a close friend of Yasin’s, on the Eliot list. “And he defended the HLF based on his work with them in Albania, where he was doing public service work.”

That Friday, May 24, a group of students, including Levey, started a petition drive opposing Yasin’s speech.

“In the wake of the events of September 11th, which have been described as part of a Jihad against America, it is essential that well-meaning members of all faiths condemn the use of violent Jihad anywhere in the world,’’ the petition reads. “Unfortunately, Mr. Yasin’s own public actions and statements undermine his ability to deliver this important message on peaceful Jihad.’’ The petition concludes by urging that Yasin “publicly condemn violence in the name of Jihad and condemn organizations associated with violent means.”

Concerned students met with Dean of Continuing Education Michael Shinagel, who read excerpts from the speech to the students, but said the University would not release the speech or replace Yasin.

Shinagel also sent an e-mail reassuring Harvard community members about the provocative title, which he and Yasin came up with together. Yasin says he had originally considered the final title, “Of Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad,” but that Shinagel recommended a shorter, punchier title, and the two shortened it to simply “American Jihad.”

The First Interview

By Saturday afternoon, when Yasin sits down in the Adams House dining hall for his fifth Crimson interview of the week, he already sounds tired of talking about the controversy.

Before a question has fully been asked, he defends himself against the various things that have been said about HIS and himself, saying that he is neither an anti-Semite, nor a supporter of terrorism. You can tell I’ve done this before, he says dryly.

Yasin says his is not a political speech—it is not about Israel, Palestine, Sept. 11 or U.S. foreign policy. Instead, he says, it is about supporting “jihad” as it has been used by the majority of the world’s Muslims through 1,400 years of Muslim scholarship.

“It’s the importance of striving to do the right thing,” he says. “We have an obligation to struggle and to morally engage ourselves with what’s going on in the world.”

Over the course of a 40-minute conversation, it becomes clear that Yasin doesn’t hesitate to say what he thinks.

“Harvard is not nearly the best place to hone one’s moral compass,” he says—pointing to attitudes of competitiveness, an aggressive drive to succeed, and selfishness that are “somewhat common” and “can cloud moral issues.”

Some of the criticism of his speech, he says, stems from his having Islam and America relate in a positive manner. He’s seen this on House e-mail lists and in personal ad hominem attacks: “There is a group of criticism that fundamentally objects to having a Muslim-American give the speech,” he says. “That’s very saddening. I expected better of the Harvard community.”

“I’m very naturally a very direct, a very forthright person,” Yasin says. “[Even] if I wanted to, I couldn’t hide anything. Sometimes I would like to, but I can’t pull it off.”

And yet, few people know the senior causing all the trouble—he’s never met most of the critics who are speaking so sharply about him.

“Part of his intention was to make people think harder, but I don’t think even he anticipated it would be this big of a problem,” says Hamad, who was SAS president at the same time Yasin was HIS president. “He’s really sincere and honest. It’s just personal attacks, and he’s a very good-hearted person.”

As Yasin talks excitedly about the various extracurriculars he’s been a part of at Harvard, aspects of his personality that would never be brought up on “Hardball” come into focus.

He started out doing a lot of technical theatre work, he says, but then got burned out by mid-fall of sophomore year. He worked as an EMT his first year at Harvard, and has also been heavily involved in the Harvard-Radcliffe Friends of the American Red Cross, an organization which does CPR and First Aid instruction, food pantry volunteering and disaster services. He also served as president of the group.

But his most visible campus role—and one which had at times brought him criticism and controversy before “American Jihad,” in some disputes with leaders of Harvard Hillel—was as president of HIS his junior year.

It was a difficult job, he says, because it was so multifaceted: ministering to a religious community with internal religious diversity, dealing with the University administration and serving as the community’s public voice. He admits there are a lot of things he wishes he had done differently during his year as president—but the large amount of public speaking he did during his tenure helped him to become more articulate.

A biomedical engineering concentrator, Yasin says he likes to build things and put them together. Last summer he worked in the Harvard Biorobotics lab, where he worked on a project which explored the mechanics of heart disease surgery. The project aimed to use robots to perform minimally intensive heart surgery through pencil-sized holes, instead of the more traditional method of cracking open the patients chest.

The previous summer, Yasin, then a Weissman intern, worked in Zambia developing public health information systems. But it was the summer he spent with children in Albanian refugee camps, the summer after his first year at Harvard, that indirectly brought him grief over “American Jihad.”

While critics charge that the HLF is a terrorist front organization, Yasin staunchly defends it, saying the work he saw the group doing there was marked by dedication and professionalism, and that they had provided “excellent care in such difficult circumstances.”

Despite the controversy, at this point Yasin said he was glad he was going ahead with the speech, and its title, even if he “didn’t expect this kind of acrimony.”

“Some things are too important not to be talked about,” he said. “I would rather bring up difficult issues that we have to deal with...than to let them simmer in a much more subtle and a much more hurtful manner.”

The Next Week

Over the next week, the media frenzy intensified. As with any number of stories this year involving Harvard and controversy, the media took the story and ran with it, except this time it was already amplified by its Sept. 11 context. Yasin, Levey and Galper were featured on various talk shows and in reports, and The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe all filed stories.

University faculty and officials defended the choice of Yasin’s speech, and decried the personal attacks made on him.

“I think it’s disgraceful and think it’s criminal,” said committee chair and classics department chair Richard F. Thomas, discussing the death threat. “I hope legal action will be taken.”

Despite student criticism and concerns about the content of the speech, Thomas also said the tradition of not releasing Commencement speeches beforehand would not be changed while he is on the committee.

“It’s never happened before,” he said. “I don’t see why it should happen this time, unless the student orator wishes to release it.”

Meanwhile, following discussions earlier in the controversy between Yasin and committee members, as well as e-mail communication between Yasin and some students, Yasin met with Galper and Leverett House Senior Tutor Catherine Shapiro Wednesday morning, May 29. He also met that day with Thomas—the meeting at which, according to Shinagel, Yasin agreed to change the title of the speech. He also agreed to add a sentence condemning violence in the name of jihad, including a condemnation of the Sept. 11 attacks. He had condemned both publicly before.

The next day, Yasin met with Galper, a former president of Hillel, and Thomas. Galper said the changes were “a step in the right direction,” although he said he still had concerns about the speech—that Yasin, for example, had still not specifically condemned groups that fund or actively participate in violent jihad. Petitioners also said they were considering handing out flyers on Commencement Day explaining their opposition to the speech and the way in which it was chosen. But the controversy, clearly, was dying down.

The Second Interview

Still, the question remains: why didn’t Yasin issue a public statement to try and defuse the situation sooner? Thursday night, over the course of a second, half-hour interview, a fuller picture of Yasin emerges, hinting at the answer.

His father, a Bangladeshi immigrant, came to the U.S. in 1971 and met Yasin’s mother, who is mostly of Irish-American descent, at UCLA. Yasin was born in Chicago, and has subsequently lived in Indonesia, suburban Chicago, Southern California, and finally Scituate, Mass., where he attended the small town’s public schools from the sixth grade onward.

“A lot of things I really value about life—having a family, having a strong and close community—were definitely influenced by living there,” he says, his head leaning on his hands, clasped together in the air behind him.

In person Yasin is confident and direct. He does not use many hand gestures, but mostly communicates inflections with his voice and eyes. And on this day, despite the whirlwind of the previous week and the reporter in his dorm suite, he is relaxed.

His belongings in disarray, he mentions that he hasn’t even packed. He cracks more jokes. Asked to describe his high school self, he says how he played clarinet, and also wrestled for three years: “I wasn’t very good at it. Pretty bad, actually.” Explaining his “eclectic” musical tastes, he says he likes a lot of Irish and folk music, and Hindi music as well. Commercial music, he says, feels processed and “very refined,” but English or American or Irish folk is “less processed. When you listen to folk music, it still has that raw edge—like biting into sugar cane.”

He lists the many interviews he’s given: WBZ radio, The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Reuters, Fox’s local outlet and Fox News (where he appeared with Galper), with still others yet to come.

“I was on the phone at 7:10 this morning on Texas talk radio,” he says, laughing.

Because he has been so busy, he says, he hasn’t been practicing the speech itself much, which he says he needs to focus on more now.

He says he has changed much since high school—he is now a lot more focused, driven, spiritual and religious, and is “maybe not as angry as I’d been in high school.”

“I’ve always talked too much,” he says—but adds that his experience leading two organizations has prepared him for the week just past.

“If I hadn’t had that kind of experience over the past two to three years, I wouldn’t have been able to do this,” Yasin says. He has been helped, he adds later, by an “incredible amount of support” from people both inside and outside Harvard, even from those who do not usually weigh in on these kinds of political issues (though his original intent, he has noted before, was to have a nonpolitical speech).

This summer he will be going to northern Pakistan on a Stride Rite fellowship, where he will be working in “medical informatics,” doing disease mapping and technology work—using the Internet to allow rural doctors to stay in contact with big-city hospitals.

In high school, he says, he backpacked and hiked a lot—and consequently he is looking forward to doing field work in Pakistan’s mountains.

After medical school, international health is his planned career, although he’s not sure if he’ll stay in it long-term, referring to the “international health nomadic thing.”

“You want to put your efforts where they’re most needed, and that’s often internationally,” Yasin says. “[But] I want to live a semi-normal life. We’ll see how it all works out.”

But before Pakistan, Commencement—and Yasin’s long-awaited speech—remain. When it is suggested that the controversy is one big misunderstanding, an extended exercise in wordplay, Yasin subtly acknowledges that things could have been handled differently—but mostly sticks to his guns.

The compromise, he says, is “maybe not the explicit sign-off they’re looking for,” but he feels it is justified. The sentence he agreed to add, furthermore, was simply added to a paragraph in a similar vein that was already there. And while he will say that there has been some wordplay through the controversy—the speech’s title has now been changed because of a fear that having the word jihad upfront would distract the audience from the speech’s message, he says, perhaps tellingly—he does not regret his decision to go forward.

“The way things have turned out, any use of the word jihad in the public sphere, the Harvard sphere, would have produced such a strong response. Once the word jihad was uttered, such a reaction was inevitable, sadly,” Yasin says. “If anything, this has convinced me more and more that this is a speech that needs to be given.”