Muslim students at Arkansas State University tried to prevent a critic of Islamic sharia law from speaking as part of a campus lecture series.

Nonie Darwish, Egyptian-born author of Now They Call Me Infidel, spoke Wednesday at the university in Jonesboro, Arkansas, but only after the chairman of the student Lecture-Concert Series read a protest statement by the president of the ASU Muslim Student Association (MSA). In the decade since the 9/11 terror attacks, Darwish has gained international prominence as an outspoken critic of Islamic culture. She is director of Former Muslims United.

More than 100 Musliim students attended Darwish’s lecture, according to Emily Alexander of the ASU Herald, and walked out en masse midway through, following the example of MSA president Saddique Abobucker. 

In a letter sent to university administrators Monday, Abobucker and other MSA officers called Darwish a “hate monger,” warned that her lecture would lead to “bullying of Muslim students on campus,” and said that her lecture would be tantamount to “inciting to riot.” The MSA letter “urged the administration and legal department of ASU to stop Darwish from speaking here.”

Islamic extremism has made headlines in Arkansas the past two years after Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, a 26-year-old American-born Muslim convert, shot two soldiers at a military recruiting office in Little Rock in May 2009. Muhammad, who reportedly told police he shot the soldiers to protest what the U.S. military “had done to Muslims in the past,” was sentenced to life in prison July 25 this year.

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