By EDWARD B. COLBY

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

One week ago today, “Hardball” host Chris Matthews turned his gaze on Hilary L. Levey ’02 and demanded intently, “What’s your problem with this speech by this guy, whatever-his-name-is?”

“This guy” is Zayed M. Yasin ’02, who prior to the release of his Commencement oration’s title was a man with a slightly above-average campus profile. Now, with a speech relating the original meaning of “jihad” to the moral obligations of Harvard graduates, he’s all over the national media—and at today’s ceremonies he will arguably be the most-watched member of the Class of 2002.

On “Hardball,” as Hussein Ibish of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee tried to argue Yasin’s case—saying that the Harvard Commencement speaker aims only to reclaim the term “jihad” and give it spiritual meaning—Matthews keeps interrupting.

“I’ve heard ‘jihad’ used as ‘holy war’ my entire life,” he says bombastically, before calling Yasin, 22, “a kid known to have been a fundraiser for Hamas.” Over the previous eight days, Yasin’s speech—and sometimes Yasin himself—had become a target for many, with opposition mounting following the announcement of his address’s title, “American Jihad.” After an uproar on campus and in the national media, he returned to his original title, “Of Faith and Citizenship: My American Jihad,” the day before the “Hardball” episode, but that change was not yet widely known. The dominant public image of Yasin was hardly a positive one.

Earlier that same evening, as the sun set over the Charles, Yasin sat in his ninth-floor Leverett tower bedroom, barefoot, his extended legs resting on the end of a sofa. After a long day of interviews, he had settled in for one final unexpected visit. The jacket of his nice gray suit removed, he reclined in a black desk chair. Despite the intense controversy of the past week, he smiled and laughed often, even about the death threat he received via a Blue Mountain e-greeting card.

“I’m not taking it too seriously,” he says. “It was pretty silly.” In recent years, he says, he has mellowed. He says he hopes that he and his critics—led by Levey and Benjamin Z. Galper ’02—will be able to issue a joint statement of either agreement or “respectful disagreement.”

It’s a startling contrast, these two very different images of Zayed Yasin—one the very public focus of a media frenzy, the other intimate and conciliatory. In one, Yasin is provocative and easily disparaged, the “this guy” enemy. In the other, he appears humble, actively working toward compromise. His story is a telling example of how, post-Sept. 11, one word can start a firestorm—and why for one week of intense controversy and scrutiny, a stubborn Yasin would not let go of that word.

How It Began

The “American Jihad” controversy finds its roots in a seemingly innocuous Crimson story dated two weeks ago yesterday, one announcing that Yasin—one of three students named Commencement orators—would “challenge seniors to apply the concept of the jihad to their lives after graduation” in his speech.

“It’s a little intimidating, but I’m looking forward to it,” Yasin, a former president of the Harvard Islamic Society (HIS), said at the time.

But within days, Yasin found himself in the center of a controversy, replete with national media attention and a campus petition opposing his speech. The number of signatures swelled steadily.

He says he had hoped, through the use of the word, to prompt discussion of its meaning, but neither he nor the six-person University committee who selected him expected the kind of reaction that ensued.

Debates raged on House e-mail lists as students questioned the appropriateness of Yasin’s giving a speech on “jihad” in the aftermath of Sept. 11. Some said the committee could have chosen any number of less divisive or touchy speech topics, and others criticized Yasin’s character and creditability.