Students wear Nazi-style yellow stars in ‘shameful’ anti-Trump protest
by Gabriel Pogrund
Protesters wore yellow star badges similar to those worn by Jews during the Holocaust at an American university protest against Islamophobia.
Around 100 student and staff were spotted around the University of San Diego campus with badges bearing a crescent moon and the word “Muslim”.
A university professor and students jointly organised the protest following discussions in a class entitled ‘Islamic Faith and Practice’.
They were demonstrating against perceived Islamophobia by Donald Trump and fellow Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Bahar Davary, an American-Iranian professor of theology, taught the class and told the Times of San Diego: “What it symbolises is that there have been people who have been made to be the ‘other’ throughout history’.
‘By wearing these, we’re simply inviting conversation about this topic,’ the American-Iranian professor continued.
However, Jewish groups roundly condemned the protests. Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which researches and teaches on the Holocaust, said ‘the imagery is off.’
“When we talk about the yellow star, let’s remember who instituted it. . .You had to wear it under penalty of death.”
The local representative of Israel advocacy group StandWithUS, Sara Schoonmaker, said: ‘While protests against anti-Muslim bigotry are understandable and legitimate, using the Holocaust in this inappropriate and shocking way serves to trivialize and deny meaning to the unspeakable horrors that Jews suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany,
It is being reported that that Ms Davary has instructed her students not to wear the stars off campus in case they are misunderstood.
Donald Trump was widely condemned earlier this month after calling for a temporary moratorium on Muslims entering the US, saying its government needed to ‘figure out what the hell is going on’.
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