The audience gathered in McCormick Auditorium on Monday night expected a speech about Islamic views on abortion, homosexuality and stem cell research. But Islamic scholar Amer Haleem had other problems in mind.

Among them were the motivations that had prompted the Muslim-cultural Students Association (McSA) to invite Haleem to discuss these topics at their major spring event.

“I understand that your motivation was relevance,” Haleem told the McSA members in the audience. “You want to appear pertinent, to discuss an issue that your colleagues on campus could relate to… But these topics selected you rather than the other way around.”

Since Islam’s stance on abortion, homosexuality and stem cell research is “rather straightforward,” Haleem said. “The real question you have to answer is ‘Who cares?’”

Haleem continued with an acerbic critique of the “mainstream American culture” that he said “cares only about calling into question our legitimacy as a faith community.” American society doesn’t care about the Muslim perspective on issues such as stem cells, Haleem said.

“The only cells America is interested in with regards to Muslims are the terrorist cells,” he said.

Haleem went on with a five-minute list of wrongs he said the federal government and American society committed against Muslims at home and in Iraq since Sept. 11.

But “9/11 was not the crisis,” Haleem said. “It simply catalyzed the crisis and ushered us… into a fight for the soul of America.”

Haleem, facing a restless audience, said he could not speak “like a neutral, as one who has not come to certain beliefs, certain convictions.”

He said that the issues McSA had wanted him to speak about were “irrelevant” in light of the broader crises facing America and the world. The solution, Haleem said, was for people to live up to the “Quranic objective of knowing each other, so that we can overcome an inborn human weakness, namely the inclination to hate others whom we do not know.”

Muslims should not be “presenting Islam as a legalistic, issue-by-issue contention,” Haleem said during the question-and-answer session that followed his speech. “We should be presenting the core message of Islam.”

Haleem’s standpoint drew mixed reactions from audience members, including McSA leaders.

“I was surprised but at the same time I was enlightened”, said Medill sophomore Hibah Yousuf, the co-president of McSA. “This speaker was someone we put a lot of trust into, and I think the McSA learned as much as the rest of the audience.”

Yousuf said she was disappointed Haleem did not address the topics of homosexuality, abortion and stem cell research because “they are ways people cast their vote and decide whom they are going to identify with or what kind of person they are going to be.”

Weinberg junior Nathan Zebrowski said he would also have liked Haleem to express his point of view on these questions.

“He did not communicate Muslim teaching,” Zebrowski said, “and I think it would be unfair to consider Islam in the light of what he said.”

However, Yousuf said that the unexpected speech had in some way achieved McSA’s objective, “which is to initiate dialogue between our group and the greater Northwestern community on some topics that are not really discussed because they are considered to be taboo.”

Yousuf hoped students would reflect on those sensitive questions and Haleem’s perspective during a follow-up meeting that McSA will host on Thursday, May 24.