Fact check: Did imam tell Columbia students to ‘take out’ a Jewish professor?
Fact check: Did imam tell Columbia students to ‘take out’ a Jewish professor?
Pro-Israel publications make incendiary claims regarding Islamic activist
Headlines and articles in various far-right and pro-Zionist online publications are claiming that an imam well-known in pro-Palestinian circles spoke at Columbia University recently and called on students to “take out” a Jewish professor there.
The articles are based mostly on a series of tweets that Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Aug. 24. In one of his tweets, Davidai asked: “Are you OK with a pro-terror student organization inviting a Hamas-supporting imam that's telling students to ‘take out’ one of your Jewish professors?”
Along with the tweets, he posted a video of what he said was an excerpt of an on-campus presentation by Tom Facchine. Facchine is an imam and the research director of Imam and Society at the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research in Irvine, Texas.
Although the authenticity of the video clip has not been verified, the person in the low-quality video appears to be the same person as appears on the Yaqeen Institute’s website.
The headlines: Here is a sampling of headlines that have appeared in recent days pertaining to Facchine:
The College Fix: Imam tells Columbia students to ‘take out’ Jewish professor
VIN News: WATCH: Imam Tells Columbia Students to ‘Take Out’ Renowned Jewish Professor
Legal Insurrection: Imam to Columbia Students: ‘Take Out’ Jewish Professor, Make Him ‘an Example’
Ynet News: Pro-Hamas imam calls to 'take out' Israeli professor at Columbia University
Daily Truth Report: Imam Instructs Columbia Students to “Take Out” Jewish Professor
Truth verdict: ❌ Although it is technically accurate that Facchine used the phrase “take out” in reference to Davidai, the context of his remarks makes clear that he was not advocating that the professor, nor anyone else, be taken out in the sense of being assassinated, which is the impression that the headlines clearly give.
Comment: Numerous dictionaries give “murder” or “assassinate” as a slang meaning of “take out” when used as a phrasal verb. It isn’t the only meaning, of course; it can also be used to mean “remove” in a wide variety of contexts. But headlines such as these, especially in publications that frequently contain incendiary articles, would almost be certainly interpreted by readers to have a meaning that refers to violence.
That said, neither was Facchine suggesting a benign approach to Davidai and other professors whom Facchine sees as being anti-Palestinian. He called for taking unspecified actions that might lead to Davidai and others like him to “shut up” or otherwise become ineffectual.
Specifically, the relevant sentence he uses tells students that “if you're able to take out somebody like that and make an example that might shut up a hundred more.” While it is understandable why the target of Faccine’s remarks found the presentation to be disturbing, Faccine here doesn’t advocate murder or even physical harm, and thus the headlines are misleading.