It was a sensational, grisly story, all right. Two days after terrorists attacked the U.S., Arizona State University student Ahmad Saad Nasim was assaulted on campus, beaten and kicked and pelted with eggs by men yelling "Die, Muslim, die." The incident got heavy local publicity, helping to scare several dozen foreign students into fleeing the campus. And that wasn't the end of it. A couple weeks later police found Nasim in a stall of a men's room, tied up with a bag over his head and "die" written on his forehead.

Hard to believe one guy could have so much bad luck in a two-week span, isn't it? Well, he didn't. Shortly after the second alleged incident, Nasim — under questioning from police, who were suspicious because (among other reasons) the stall was locked from the inside — admitted he faked the whole thing.

Now this should be a pretty clear-cut case. After all, Nasim committed crimes (filing false police reports), distracting police from helping people in real danger, to say nothing of terrifying his fellow Islamic students at a time when they were feeling pretty nervous already. Common sense says he ought to be punished.

But ASU is a typical campus, so sure enough, not everyone wants Nasim to take responsibility for his actions. The university refused to press charges on the grounds that he's emotionally disturbed. "There's nothing the university would gain" by pursuing a student who's "troubled," an ASU official said. Funny, I can think of something to be gained, and I'll bet you can too. Like letting twisted people who want to capitalize on the events of Sept. 11 know that their antics won't be brushed off as harmless pranks.

As it happens, Nasim won't get off scot-free; the district attorney's prosecuting him even without the university filing charges. But his offense is just a misdemeanor, punishable in Arizona by (at worst) six months in jail and a $2,500 fine. Even that light penalty, apparently, was too much for ASU's sensitive administration to risk imposing.

Nasim's enablers aren't limited to squishy, soft-on-crime officials, though. They also include folks driven by (what else?) enthusiasm for his politics.

After The Arizona Republic ran an anti-Nasim piece by columnist Michelle Malkin, it ran a letter from one Jane Williams, who said she knew Nasim, hailing him as "a brave soul with a kind heart" who deserved commendation because:

He didn't only stick up for Muslims, but for all sorts of groups. He was an advocate for women's equal treatment, defending the Women's Resource Center and Women's Studies. He even wrote a letter to the editor in the University of Arizona's [student newspaper] Wildcat saying that it was wrong for a certain cartoon to make fun of hermaphrodites.

Well, that's all very nice, but Jane, he lied, right? No, she insists: "He is a very good person. Furthermore, I believe he was attacked! I believe that he only said the attacks didn't happen out of fear."

Ah, so that's it.

All this may be a silly line of argument, but it's worth comment because it's actually fairly commonplace on the left. Jane's idea of a character reference for Nasim is to cite all the progressive causes he supports rather than presenting evidence that he'd never lie to advance one of them (or maybe just to get some attention). We're supposed to believe that no one who loves hermaphrodites can be a bad guy.

That's more or less how liberalism — especially the undistilled brand found on most campuses — sees the world. Life is a morality play in which the forces of evil (bigotry, homophobia, etc.) endlessly persecute the forces of good (tolerance, multiculturalism). Just belonging to one of the persecuted groups grants you a certain moral prestige in liberal eyes; experiencing any actual persecution elevates you above reproach. Conveniently, you don't have to actually do anything to earn this stature; you just have to have the right enemies. I've often thought this explains why some people see bigotry everywhere, even in the most innocent cases. It's their daily dose of moral self-affirmation; they suffer (they like to think) for their own righteousness.

Nasim seems to be have been nursing this kind of attitude for a long time. Malkin notes that two years ago, then head of a Muslim student group at the University of Arizona, Nasim complained when the FBI detained two Saudi Arabian students at an Ohio airport. One of the men had jiggled the cockpit door handle and asked suspicious questions during the flight, so most people would think that was a pretty minimal precaution (the students were questioned, then released). But not, naturally, Nasim, who griped about how "Arabics [sic] are always held suspicious [sic]."

In the real world folks like this quickly get a reputation as whiners. On campus, however, they're indulged and even encouraged. So you can see why Nasim did what he did. "Troubled" he doubtless is, but he's rational enough to understand liberalism's structure of incentives: It pays to be a victim — or more precisely, to be seen as a victim. You not only get attention and sympathy, you're at the center of liberalism's moral drama, taking your place on the honor roll of the martyrs.

Or at least so everyone around you would think. And to some people, that's all that counts.