Let’s not die for timid and misguided political correctness
The fact that the latest suspected terrorist threat involves students should come as no surprise. It is the predictable result of three things: an insatiably violent Islamist ideology; the politically-correct refusal of our political class to admit reality; and the comprehensive neglectfulness of our university authorities. This country has already produced a number of students who have gone on to become jihadist murderers. If this situation is not to get even worse, it is time not just to start asking questions, but to demand answers.
Greedy for the extra cash they bring, our universities desperately seek overseas students and often ask no questions when some of them fail to appear for classes. Following the introduction of tougher visa rules in the United States, the number of visas issued to students from Pakistan since 2001 has more than doubled in the UK. The problems that this brings with it are now being displayed.
In 2007, at Portsmouth University alone, 379 students from Pakistan were unaccounted for. Immigration minister Phil Woolas recently admitted that the student visa system is "the major loophole in Britain’s border controls". It is a loophole that risks becoming a death-trap. Yet those like me who have repeatedly warned about the consequences of our appalling immigration policy and flawed border security policies, and the fact that our universities have become centres of Islamic radicalisation, have been ignored – even as we have been, sadly, vindicated.
Last summer. the Centre for Social Cohesion (CSC), in conjunction with the polling company YouGov, released a survey of Muslim student opinion in the UK. Forty per cent of Muslim students polled supported the introduction of sharia into British law for Muslims; a third supported the introduction of a worldwide caliphate instituted in accordance with sharia; and a third believed that killing in the name of their religion could be justified. This is the sea in which Muslim students who go on to carry out acts of terror are able to swim. But instead of engaging with the problem, Bill Rammell, the Minister for Higher Education, attacked the poll for finding out these things and declared that the problem of radicalism on campus was in fact "serious, but not widespread". It is just one example of a government that cannot make the moral distinction between firefighter and fire.
In its recently published counter-terrorism strategy, "Contest 2", the Government congratulated itself on its "key achievement" of promoting the UK as "a centre of excellence for Islamic studies outside the Muslim world". Yet – as the CSC again warned, two weeks ago, in a publication on the sources of foreign funding to UK universities – such courses are at huge risk of being sponsored by exactly the type of people who have caused the problem.
The Iranian government recently revealed that it was in talks with British Islamic studies departments – the same ones that the Government has described as a vital component of its counter-terrorism policy – in order to "train and educate experts on Islam". So now the Iranian regime, the world’s largest sponsor of Islamic terror, is funding the very institutions the UK Government says are part of the means of stopping that terror.
Meanwhile, there is a situation on campus which not only radicalises British students, but says to Pakistani and other foreign students that the most backward ideas of their own societies – in relation to women, non-Muslims, homosexuals and others – are entirely acceptable in Britain.
And so figures like the Hamas spokesman Azzam Tamimi repeatedly appear on UK campuses. Last month, after weeks of effort, we finally managed to prevent Hizbollah spokesman Ibrahim el-Moussawi from entering the UK to lecture at the School of Oriental and African Studies. He was only eventually barred when I threatened the Home Secretary with the issuing of an international arrest warrant if Moussawi were to enter the country.
Last month, Bilal Philips, barred from entering Australia because of security concerns, was scheduled as guest of honour at the Queen Mary University Islamic Society’s (ISOC) annual dinner. The annual dinner of City University’s ISOC last week had advertised guest speakers including Anwar al-Awlaki, the alleged spiritual leader of three of the 9/11 hijackers.
During the Gaza conflict, Islamic and far-Left student societies up and down the country held "sit-ins" to protest against Israel’s defensive action. During a tense period some universities – including Cambridge – stood up to the protesters. Others – including Oxford – caved in and gave into the demands of the "occupying" students. Such small acts of appeasement on behalf of university authorities give the radicals the idea that right is on their side and that, given time, everyone will see this.
Muslim students who don’t care about foreign conflicts are made to feel un-Islamic unless they endlessly whip themselves up into a fury against Israel and America. At the time that the Gaza demonstrations were going on up and down the country, I was due to fulfil a longstanding commitment to chair a discussion at the London School of Economics. Shortly before the event, I was contacted by the university and told not to come to campus because there was a threat of violence if I did.
Just as, internationally, the Islamists give us the offer "say my religion is peaceful or I will kill you", so domestically we are told "say there’s no radicalism or we’ll be radical".
Like the Government, the Conservative Party refuses to identify – let alone deal with – the problem. Our politicians are stuck in what some think is complacency but which is in reality simple cowardice. David Cameron and shadow security spokeswoman Dame Pauline Neville-Jones try to make the Tories appear tough by saying a Conservative government would ban the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. But Tony Blair said exactly the same thing in 2005. Our politicians are keener to position themselves than to take vital decisions.
The Government knows that three quarters of all terror plots being investigated in Britain originate in Pakistan. With such a colossal Pakistani community in the UK it is unsurprisingly tough working out who poses a problem and who is part of the non-extremist mainstream. They could make a start by working out who is actually here.
In February, it transpired that the Foreign Office is spending £400,000 on television adverts to be aired in Pakistan, explaining that Britain is not "anti-Islamic". Even by the standards of this Government, that strikes one as ignoble as well as ineffectual. This country should look like a less attractive proposition than it currently does, not a more attractive one.
As it is, any aspiring jihadi would not only currently find it easy to come to Britain, they would find in our universities the ideal place to take cover and, indeed, inspiration. It is why you are more likely to become a terrorist in this country if you have been to university.
There are many messages that we should be giving out. But one in particular should go straight away to our political class: political correctness may be something that they are willing to fight for, but it is not something that most of us are willing to die for.
Originally published in The Telegraph
Douglas Murray is director of the Centre for Social Cohesion
