I remember hearing President George Bush of the United States, in a presidential speech saying that Islam was a religion of peace. I believed him. I think he believed the same thing. I remember, somewhat ignorantly, asserting the Islam was a peaceful religion. I could not see how a religion could promote anything other than peace. It made no sense.
How wrong I was. I met five Bin Laden supporters in that time. I remember being in an Afghan chicken shop on Holloway Road, not far from the main university entrance, with a middle eastern girl I had a crush on at the time.
The subject came on to 9/11. I was in for one for the first big shocks of my life. She said America had it coming; they deserved it. I thought you was joking at first. The shop went very quite. Everyone listened to our conversation. Of course I rebutted, I said how can you say it's ok to kill 3,000 innocent people? She would not move. She shrugged her shoulders. Maintained they deserved it. I nearly choked.
Welcome to London Metropolitan University. Things continued to go down hill from here. Shortly after 9/11 British and American forces pounded the Bin Laden hideouts in Afghanistan, and to bring down the Taliban. I remember coming out of my university to these noisy dread-locked white girls, screaming, through their megaphones "No war on Afghanistan!".
They were, I came to learn, members of the communist "Socalist Workers Party". They were whipping up the tensions there and then. Nobody challenged them. Except me of course. Most seemed to take a leaflet and nod in agreement.
Day after day I would be bombarded with Islamic literature, every lunch time the Islamic society would convene to "discuss Islamophobia". Having some discussions with people of the Islamic society it became apparent they supported Bin Laden. They hated America. I felt sick.
What struck me was the the others, I mean the lecturers, the staff, other students didn't seem to have a care in the world.
Fast-forward to 2007. We, Londoners, had our own terror attacks. Had we learnt?
Have the authorities awoken from the slumber? Only just, only recently. I could have told the authorities in 2001, 2002, that the University had Islamic extremists, everywhere it seemed. but nobody would have listened. Of course in retrospect, I should have, regardless.
So imagine my fury when I pick up The London Paper to read that academics at the university will be opposing government measures to crack down on extremists on campus.
Funny, then, that this is the university who has repeatedly been in the press due to it's students being involved in extremism. Not just fringe students, but the fucking President of the Islamic Society.
The Department for Education and Skills have warned staff to report suspicious behaviour by students on university campuses, amid fears they are being infiltrated by radical preachers and fanatics. But the University and College Union has branded the move a "witch hunt" that is demonising Muslims, and it will ask it's 120,000 members to refuse to comply with the government request.
University students at centre of terror plots
Waheed Zaman, 22, a bio-chemistry student and the president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of 24 people arrested last week. Material found at two portable buildings used by the society includes documents advocating jihad and a pamphlet on how to deal with approaches from the security services.On searching for this story elsewhere, I came across an article from Hot Air on this very news item.
But of course. Jihad is the vanguard of radical dissent; to report it would be positively McCarthyist, even though the defense always offered for American communists, in stark contrast to the mujahedeen, is that they sought peaceful change through traditional political channels.
And to think, some people believe there’s a leftist/Islamist alliance.
To think eh?
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