Acton H. Gorton, the editor of the University of Illinois student-run newspaper, The Daily Illini, was fired in March after he chose to publish the cartoons without first consulting the rest of the editorial staff.
In February, College Republicans at the University of California, Irvine, displayed the cartoons at a campus forum on Islamic extremism. The event provoked strong protests from Muslim students who denounced the cartoons as racist.
Saleh Ibrahim, an Egyptian student working on his doctorate in computer engineering at the University of Connecticut, says he is “worried about the consequences of the ongoing war [and] that some Americans still think of it as a war between good and evil, the evil being Islam.”
Ibrahim says he generally feels safe in his community, although once “a number of guys in the street yelled at me, mentioning the infamous [Osama] bin Laden.”
Ibrahim says he decided to study in the United States in part to help educate Americans about Islam and Muslims.
“I felt that the presence of Muslim students in the United States can help bridge the two cultures and lay the groundwork for a better understanding of the religion of truth.”
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