Just a five-minute walk from Ground Zero, the Pace University "mindcrimes" controversy continues. LGF linked to this Democracy Project post earlier today:

Hate Crime Arrest for Desecration of a Koran

Democracy Project director Winfield Myers alerted me to the news about the recent arrest of a man for desecrating the Koran at Pace University as it was picked up by LGF:

NEW YORK (AP) A 23-year-old man was arrested Friday on hate-crime charges after he threw a Quran in a toilet at Pace University on two separate occasions, police said. Stanislav Shmulevich of Brooklyn was arrested on charges of criminal mischief and aggravated harassment, both hate crimes, police said.

I have been involved over the past year battling the censorship and outrages of the film police at Pace, where the administrators caved in to Muslim Student Association’s pressure and threatened police action against Hillel if they showed the film Obsession. This brings us back to the starting point of this drama last year when a Koran was found in a toilet, as reported in the news at the time:

NEW YORK (AP) - A lower Manhattan college is investigating how a paperback copy of the Quran from the campus library ended up in a public toilet, school officials said Tuesday. The discovery at Pace University was among three separate incidents in the past two weeks involving vandalism with racial or religious overtones. In the other two, racial slurs were scrawled on a student’s car parked at a satellite campus in Westchester County and on a bathroom wall at the downtown campus.

These incidents fueled the MSA to pressure the administration to shut down the Pace Hillel events. After these incidents the Council on American-Islamic Relations jumped into the act holding a town meeting at Pace University to combat “Islamophobia.” The administration appeased them by changing the designation of the Koran incident from “vandalism” to “hate crime” and referred it to the New York Police Department's hate crimes unit. This has presently resulted in the arrest of Stanislav Shmulevich to the cheers of CAIR and it's not known whether or not he's a student and no further evidence in the arrest has been offered at this point. Justice has been served in the eyes of those who are determined to see Sharia law prevail.

The other incidents “with racial or religious overtones” at Pace University were swastikas painted on a bathroom wall and on a Holocaust memorial event poster, the desecration of a Menorah on campus and other vicious antisemitic attacks which never rose to the level of hate crime, nor should they so along as burning the American flag is free speech and the photograph Piss Christ was the winner of "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts. However, this demonstrates clear evidence of a double standard lurking at Pace, throughout academia and trickling down throughout the body politic where Muslims and certain identity groups get preferential treatment while others are spurned.

As this news story unfolds, Stanislav Shmulevich, whether a student of Pace or not, should seek legal representation to overturn this outrageous violation of his constitutional rights. There is no right in a democracy not to be offended although the threats and bullying tactics of CAIR and MSA have forced the hand of Pace administrators and New York’s Police Department to do their sinister bidding.

— Phil Orenstein  | Jul. 29, 2007 | 5:54 PM