These three photos are from an event that happened over five months ago: the Anti-Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week rally on the U.C. Berkeley campus on October 25, 2007. Although I attended the event at the time, I never posted any pictures about it because it ended up being so small as to not merit a full-size zombietime report. But better late then never, so here’s a mini-report, long after the fact.

The name “Anti-Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” might be a bit disorienting: it was a counter-protest to an event staged earlier that same week called Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, organized by David Horowitz. “Anti-Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week” wasn’t promoting awareness of “Anti-Islamo-Fascism,” but was rather was declaring its opposition to the original “Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week.” AIFAW was put together by a coalition of Muslim and socialist campus groups, and entailed a variety of pro-Palestinian film screenings, Muslim lecturers, and so forth. The only outdoor event was the climactic rally on Sproul Plaza on October 25. This blurry photo was taken at the rally, and shows one of the scheduled speakers praying toward Mecca on the lawn in front of Sproul Hall.

The keynote speaker was radical rabbi Michael Lerner, a familiar (if controversial) figure in the Bay Area political scene. Here he is speaking to a crowd of students, many of whom were wearing hijabs.

Aside from various passersby, the women in the crowd generally fell into two categories: Muslim students wearing traditional Islamic dress, and “Radical Women” who held up signs saying (hard to see at the bottom left) “Defend a Woman’s Right to Control Her Body.”

Hmmmmm. I’ll let you ponder that.