British campuses have an Islamism problem

But university leaders think it is Islamophobic to talk about it.

Britain has not yet woken up to the magnitude of Islamic radicalisation in our universities.

A 2019 document published by four major UK universities (Durham, Coventry, Lancaster and SOAS), titled Islam and Muslims on UK University Campuses: Perceptions and Challenges, talks for 70 pages about how Muslims are unfairly subject to Islamophobia on campus. It even suggests that discussing the problem of Islamic radicalisation on campus is a contributor to this Islamophobia.

The document states: ‘Among students, belief that radicalisation is a problem across universities… is strongly associated with negative views of Muslims.’ It continues: ‘[It] must therefore be asked whether government policy on counterterrorism is helping to maintain negative stereotypes of Muslims and to encourage Islamophobia.’ So expressing concern about the ideology promoted by groups like al-Qaeda and ISIS is a problem because it makes Muslim students feel isolated? The document doesn’t once acknowledge that radicalisation is a major issue; only that Islamophobia is.

But the scale of the problem is undeniable. Research over the years by the Henry Jackson Society has uncovered hundreds of examples of Islamic extremists being invited to speak on campuses across the UK.

There was Azzam al-Tamimi, who spoke at SOAS as a guest speaker on 9 February 2010. At the event, Al-Tamimi expressed support for terrorism in Israel, stating: ‘If fighting for your homeland is terrorism, I take pride in being a terrorist. The Koran tells me if I die for my homeland, I’m a martyr.’

Then there is Ismail Patel, invited to give a speech at SOAS in February 2009. Patel has praised Hamas, recognised in the UK as a terrorist organisation, referring to it as ‘one of the noblest resistance movements I’ve come across’. This is the same Hamas whose explicitly stated mission is the murder of Jews, the obliteration of Israel, and the replacement of Israel’s government with a Taliban-like theocracy. At Goldsmiths in March 2009, Shakeel Begg spoke at the annual dinner. In 2006, The Times reported that Begg encouraged students at Kingston University who ‘wanted to make jihad’ to go ‘to Palestine… take some money… and fight the Zionists’. He was invited anyway.

Media outlets rightly condemned Westminster University for failing to root out Jihadi John (a former student) after videos surfaced of him beheading hostages in 2015. But they failed to heed the warning signs.

Between 2012 and 2014, the Henry Jackson Society identified 82 different extremist speakers who were granted permission to speak at various UK universities. The speakers came from societies such as IERA (the Islamic Education and Research Academy) and MPACUK (the Muslim Public Affairs Committee).

IERA has been banned from UCL for attempting to segregate students by gender. Two members from the group’s Portsmouth sector have reportedly been killed fighting for Islamic State. The group has admitted that the aim of its Dawah training on-campus is to recruit students. According to the Henry Jackson Society, speakers from IERA have appeared at scores of events on British campuses.

Then there is the Muslim Research and Development Foundation (MRDF). Its founder, Haitham Al-Haddad, has spoken at numerous university events, and was reported to have expressed homophobic ideas, referring to ‘the scourge that is homosexuality’. He has also stated that ‘a man should not be questioned as to why he hit his wife’, and has suggested the death penalty for apostates. Alomgir Ali of MRDF has claimed that ‘for a woman, a home is a natural form of a hijab’.

We should allow radical thinkers to speak, in the name of freedom of speech. But equally, we should demand our right to criticise and to speak back, without it being seen as hate speech or prejudice against Muslims. Universities are a place for critical thinking, and if this is forgotten, the cost will be great.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/01/18/british-campuses-have-an-islamism-problem/

Higher Education Needs to Share the Blame for National Disunity

The horrible assault on the U.S. Capitol culminated a couple of years of nasty acts of rioting and destruction fraying the fabric of the American Republic; previously, it was the senseless rioting, looting of businesses, and even the murder of individuals by police that shocked America. Where is E Pluribus Unum—Out of many, one? Why cannot Americans of different viewpoints, ethnic heritages, and the like get along with one another in a civil way?

How did it all come about? I believe that the universities are complicit, along with a broken system of “lower education,” in allowing this to happen. Universities have been sometimes enthusiastic accomplices in bringing about the fraying of the American fabric.

National unity comes from having a common identity, and that identity was created out of our past. American exceptionalism is real. The story of how a small number of migrants came to America in the 17th century and created what ultimately became the most affluent and powerful nation in the world is indeed one about which Americans should be proud. We should spend a lot of time teaching our youth about it (I am in my 55th year of teaching about the economic history of the United States). At the university level, that means requiring students to have some intimate familiarity with their past, typically by required courses in U.S. history, but also through courses in related subjects: learning about the nature of our government and its European origins, especially those leading to the values of the Enlightenment becoming inculcated into founders like Thomas Jefferson, etc.

As the National Association of Scholars (on whose board I serve), the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, and other groups remind us, required college courses enhancing our understanding of our evolution as a great nation have largely disappeared. We increasingly show a disdain for the past. We implicitly assume that the current generation is the fount of most wisdom, and that our Founders were a bunch of slave-owning (and therefore morally suspect) plutocrats out to maintain and enhance their own standing rather than promote the ideals contained in such foundational documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and others.

Much recent anger culminating in the awful behavior exhibited at the U.S. Capitol arises from a feeling by many mostly modestly educated Americans that they are being looked down upon by college-educated cultural elites. While the outward face on the current dominant zeitgeist are personalities in the media, politics, and popular entertainment, they are aided and abetted by universities that arrogantly believe they are the fount of all that is wise and good—and demand high remuneration for their academic toils.

Originally, colleges were to teach virtue, including supporting religious truths found in the Ten Commandments and other religious foundational documents like the Christian Bible. Stealing, murdering, cheating on your spouse—these things were morally reprehensible, and in my youth many students attended “Chapel” at least once a week. At the time of the American Revolution, one-fourth of American college students were studying for the ministry.

Now universities celebrate hedonism, winking at rampant student sex, drug, and alcohol use. Implicitly, they tell their students “Pay our very high fees, and we will give you a piece of paper likely to land you a decent job.” The message is indeed somewhat more elaborate: for example, “additionally, we will let you drink, have sex, and give you collegiate ball-throwing contests maintaining your school spirit so you will contribute financially to us after you graduate.” The falsity of this, the sleaziness of it, contributes to the revolts of those on the “outs,” manifested in ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter, the Proud Boys, and the rise of Donald Trump. The decline in the quality of higher education as it has become an affluent ward of the state has sadly contributed to tattering the American ideal. The fact that surveys of college students show that large portions do not even know such foundational facts about the American experience as which half-century the Civil War occurred shows that the very glue is dissolving that bounds us together as Americans more than as Caucasians, Blacks, Presbyterians, Jews, Muslims, Gays, Democrats, Republicans, Men, or Women.

What to do? I will leave to others to propose short-run solutions in the body politic. But what should universities do now? I do think they need to return to the basics—partly by shedding many nonessential activities which absorb too much of their time, budgets, and attention, such as hiring umpteen racial bean counters (“diversity coordinators”) and expending vast amounts on ball-throwing contests. (Ironically, COVID-19 might help here, as university budgets are under attack). But the bigger problem regards instruction. Sure, we need to have students that are mathematically and scientifically literate, and it would be nice too if they learned about other cultures and languages. But they need, beginning in elementary school but reaching an apogee in college, a knowledge and appreciation of our American past and its European origins arising out of the Enlightenment, of what makes our nation special and a force for global good. They need to know, for example, why the Gettysburg Address was written and its majesty, why competitive markets and democratic processes based on the rule of law generally allocate resources and serve human welfare better than collectivist solutions, why the Ten Commandments are relevant and virtuous, and so forth.

Colleges today are failing in this task. The public is beginning to sense the vapidity of much of the collegiate experience. Enrollments are down nine consecutive years. Now is the time for an academic Renaissance. Will the leaders of our colleges continue to be beguiled and seduced by the Political Money Changers in the Temple called Washington? Or, will they return to teaching and promoting wisdom and beauty that arose over the centuries that led to the greatest nation ever created on the planet Earth?

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13386&omhide=true

The Downsides to Biden’s Plan for Free College Tuition

On December 24, reports Fox Business News, Joe Biden tweeted, “ ...under the Biden-Harris plan, community colleges will be free—and public colleges and universities will be tuition-free for families earning less than $125,000 a year.”

There is, however, hope in the near future. Campaigns for the 2022 election will begin in about a year. If Biden and the Democrats become too radically left, they could lose both the House and Senate and cause much of their damage to be reversed—except for two things: a packed Supreme Court and two new states with four Democratic senators.

Thousands of students, of course, will welcome free tuition, as will colleges and universities that have fallen on hard economic times in losing vast revenues to COVID-19 attendance disruptions.

But all is not sweetness and light in these government charities: downsides need to be acknowledged.

One, Biden’s proposal is anti-intellectual and will expand academic indolence. As Jackson Toby, professor emeritus at Rutgers University, observed: “Since marginal students know while they are still in high school that they will be able to be admitted and get financial aid at some college, they lack incentive to try to learn as much as they could in high school.” Free tuition will preclude incentives to study hard. With no skin in the game, why should they bother to study hard in high school?

It is well known that many, if not most, students entering college do not meet state college–readiness standards. I know this to be true, having been a community college adjunct professor for six years and a trustee for another six years. Free tuition encourages this lack of preparation and also serves as a magnet drawing more college applicants.

Two, history reveals that government control inevitably in greater or lesser degree, sooner or later accompanies government money. Expect under Biden’s program some degree of federal control with federal money—especially requirements that colleges seek and require greater political conformity of students, faculty, and curricular courses. We are now in an age of identity politics and diversity—though that diversity is from the skin out, not from the head in. Colleges are inundated with liberal, progressive professors. Try finding a professor who does not adhere to this singular conformity.

Owing to government strings attached to government money, Biden’s new Department of Education and Department of Justice could mandate to colleges who to hire, what courses to teach, and what politics to require.

Three, history also reveals that federal money to colleges enables a financial largesse that drives up college costs. Colleges will argue that Uncle Sam can pay for increases in tuition and related college costs. More money to students means that colleges will raise tuition in commensurate measure because the money’s there for the taking.

Four, free federal money for tuition has to come from somebody—taxpayers. Governments don’t make money; they collect it and redistribute it. Why should a guy who works at Walmart have to financially help another guy get free tuition? The greatest fallacy is this: It’s not “free tuition”: someone else pays for it.

And it’s a lot of so-called free money that others must pay: tuition at community colleges runs around $3,000 a year. Tuition at public state schools, which Biden’s proposal includes for families making under $125,000 year, runs around $8,000 to $12,000 a year.

Acts do not live in a vacuum; they have consequences. Free tuition is not free; it is confiscated from others.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13383&omhide=true

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My other blogs: Main ones below

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://awesternheart.blogspot.com.au/ (THE PSYCHOLOGIST)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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