Humza Yahya
Overview
In May 2019, Yahya was listed on the UMD website as the treasurer of the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at UMD.
As of August 2019, Yahya’s LinkedIn page said he was an Accounts Associate at the - Student Organization Resource Center at UMD, College Park, since August 2017.
Yahya’s LinkedIn page also said he was studying Accounting and Management Information Systems and Services at UMD from “2015 - 2019.”
Promoting BDS
On April 25, 2019, Yahya was featured [02:35:19] in a video posted on Facebook by the UMD Student Government Association (SGA), urging the SGA to pass a BDS bill. The bill was launched by Divest UMD.Divest UMD is a campaign that calls on UMD to divest from companies that do business with Israel.
In the video, Yahya said [02:35:46]: “I’m not gonna say this bill does not focus on Israel, it does. That's what the writing says.
Yahya added [02:36:11]: “Try to tone out the religious debate in this room and focus on the fact that we are asking for transparency and divestment from financial aspects only.”
On April 25, 2019, Divest UMD announced on Facebook that following a UMD student government vote, the BDS bill failed to pass with “a vote of 9 for, 25 against, and 2 abstentions.”
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
MSA
The MSA was established by members of the Muslim Brotherhood in January 1963 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, with the goal of "spreading Islam as students in North America." A 2004 FBI investigation uncovered an internal Muslim Brotherhood document in which a brotherhood leader identified the MSA as "one of our organizations."
The MSA reportedly has “nearly 600 chapters” located in the United States and Canada, and is “the most visible and influential Islamic student organization in North America,” boasting conferences, special events, publications, websites and other activities.
The organization includes a number of previous chapter presidents with explicit links to terrorist groups. Included are al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki (Colorado State University), Somali al-Shabaab militant leader Omar Shafik Hammami (University of South Alabama) and Pakistani Taliban recruiter Ramy Zamzam of the MSA's Washington, D.C. council.
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook:www.facebook.com/100009337822453Twitter: https://twitter.com/humza_yaya_42
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/humza-yahya-1040a4137/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/humza_yahya/
