"Islamic extremists 'infiltrate Oxbridge'," by Roya Nikkhah for the Sunday Telegraph:
Leading universities including Oxford and Cambridge have been targeted by Islamic extremists who remain widely active on campuses, a prominent academic is warning.
The claim calls into question the Government's attempted crackdown on Islamic extremism in universities and casts doubt on claims by Bill Rammell, the Higher Education Minister, that the problem is not widespread.
Prof Glees will warn the Association of University Chief Security Officers (Aucso) next month that the disbanded extremist group, al-Muhajiroun, claims to have infiltrated "the main campuses such as Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College".
His speech on "radicalism in universities" also states that at its peak before the July 7 bombings in 2005, al-Muhajiroun had a presence at "more than 48 universities and faculties", and that Omar Bakri Mohammed, the group's founder, claims it is "still operational" in several campuses.
Prof Glees, the director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, said: "We must accept this problem is widespread and underestimated. Unless clear and decisive action against campus extremism is taken, the security situation in the UK can only deteriorate."
Following a report from Prof Glees showing that 31 universities and colleges had hard-line Islamic groups within their campuses, the Department for Education and Skills last year issued guidelines on dealing with any extremism.
Student Islamic societies have faced growing scrutiny after it emerged that one of 12 men charged in connection with the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University. Last year, Aucso launched a "counter-terrorism" group to tackle the spread of Islamic fundamentalism on campuses.
Prof Glees called on the Government to provide extra investment in campus security and urged university officials to interview undergraduates to ensure that they were bona fide students.
A spokesman for Oxford University said: "We always take any extremism seriously and work closely with the police on any form of extremism that might affect our students or staff." A Cambridge University spokesman said he was not aware of any current extremist activity but that the university "remained vigilant". The Government's controversial guidance asked university staff to "monitor" student Islamic societies and report any "Asian-looking" students they suspected of extremism to the security services. Student groups attacked the move as "bearing on the side of McCarthyism".
Other critics suggest that the guidelines are widely ignored. Chris Pope, an associate fellow of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, said: "My understanding is that this problem is ongoing and expanding in some campuses."
A spokesman for Universities UK, the umbrella group for British vice-chancellors, said: "In the rare event of such problems, universities work very closely with the police and other authorities."
In a recent report from a London-based Arabic newspaper, Anjem Choudary, the former head of al-Muhajiroun in Britain, who joined the group as a student at the University of Surrey, confirmed that while the movement officially disbanded in 2005, "the students of Omar Bakri continue to preach on campuses".
Last year, Dhiren Barot, said to be al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's "UK general", was jailed for 40 years for planning terrorist attacks. Barot, 34, faked his identity in order to study at Brunel University.
The London School of Ecomonics and Imperial College were unable to comment.
Mr Rammell said: "Our assessment has not changed. Violent extremism in the name of Islam is a real, credible and sustained threat to the UK and there is evidence of a serious, but not widespread risk of violent extremism in the name of Islam on our university campuses."
Hmm. Define "widespread."
I've come to the sad realization that Britain will not wake up to the ungodly spread of islam until the crescent is raised above St. Paul's Cathedral.
The Sunday Times is doing a good job in alerting the country to the menace we face.
I have found this web site run by Sikhs in the UK, it deals with the problems and british universities.
http://sikh4life.co.uk/
I am sure you all remember the "forced/coerced conversions story a short while ago.
This site has been set up as a response to this.
DesiDude have you visited
http://www.sikhnet.com/news
It really just refuses to face the issue of islam, the discussion forum is heavily censored and criticism of islam is not allowed.
It is sad that the left/liberals have sided with the islamists.Not only is it total moral cowardice it is because they beleive they have an "ally" against the "establishment" the USA, the UK, the west.
As somebody of Indian origin, born in the UK I just can't understand this self loathing, it is bizarre.
WE the anti islamists need to contact the Indian community via Sikh, Hindu,Buddhist/Jain temples form an alliance with them.
I have met Sikhs/Hindus who just will not countanance any criticism of islam.
What? No mention of SOAS? (The School of Oriental and African Studies, part of the University of London)??
Jihadis were active there, and no doubt still are, at least 15 years ago. Not surprising really given their focus as a liberal arts institution in London.
'the disbanded extremist group, al-Muhajiroun, claims to have infiltrated "the main campuses such as Cambridge, Oxford, the London School of Economics and Imperial College".'
How can a "disbanded" organization make a claim?
Apostate Islam, thanks for recommending Sikhs4 life.
"A spokesman for Oxford University said: "We always take any extremism seriously and work closely with the police on any form of extremism that might affect our students or staff.""
What the hell is this supposed to mean? Is the desire to rationally discuss islam at Cambridge one of these forms of 'extremism'? Gosh, I wonder if the desire to forcefully subvert the British Crown, Lords, and Commons to a kaliph would even qualify?
Claims of Oxbridge infiltration bring to mind a much earlier infiltration, by Kim Philby, son of yet another sand-mad English Arabist and explorer well in with the Establishment, Harry St John Bridger Philby.
Philby snr was a close friend and adviser to Ibn Saud, was fluent in Arabic and well-trusted for a time by the British goverment. He converted to Islam in 1930.
His son, Kim, named after Kipling's young fictional hero was, like his father, also strongly attracted to a totalitarian ideology, in this case Communism, while still retaining close links with Cambridge and London's Gentlemen's Clubs.
It was through Kim (and his Soviet handlers) that the infiltration occurred, based on friendships formed in the early 30s at Cambridge, recruiting the likes of Maclean, Burgess and Blunt at Cambridge and doing long-term irreparable damage to British and American interests during the Cold War with the Soviets.
"[St John Philby's] life-long love affair with Arabia was the mainspring of a deep personal rebellion against the British government which would almost lead to his internment as a Nazi sympathizer after he had spoken out against Winston Churchill, proclaiming that Hitler was a peacemaker, in a wartime parliamntary election. Eventually it led him to renounce Christianity in favour of Islam, taking the name Abdullah and marrying as his second wife a Saudi slave-girl. St John Philby had never concealed from his son his contempt for the British ruling class or his wilful betrayal of its mannered principles when he felt called on by a higher personal destiny. The paradox of the father's divided loyalties was, as his NKVD file attests, inherited by his son, who by the age of twenty had already determined to follow the family tradition of duplicity."
Newly married and short of cash, Kim "..decided to use his Cambridge degree and Triniy connections to get into the Government bureaucracy. In common with many of his contemporaries, he sat for the Civil Service examination."
Born in the Punjab in 1912 "...[Kim's] childhood was spent in awe of a famous father who was more often than not absent exploring the Empty Quarter of Arabia. His father's obsession with the alien attractions with Islam was to be matched by his own infatuation with Communism, which was the culmination of a political rebellion forged during his education at his father's old school and almer mater, Westminster, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
"Kim Philby was not driven, as were so many of his generation, by poverty and social deprivation to embrace Communism. He hailed from a background of privilege and was schooled in the establishment of Britain's ruling class, and it stamped him for life. Though he adopted an alien political philosophy, like his father who kept up his membership of London clubs, young Philby never foreswore his institutional comforts."
Conflicting identities, divided loyalties and deep disenchantment, the ability to remain successfully under cover for decades...
(quotes from "Deadly Illusion" on Stalin's spy Alexander Orlov, one of Philby's handlers 1993)
From listening to radio 4 news I think I can deduce why universities are not stopping extreme islam:
It is because they are busy banning Christian groups from campus for not being inclusive (or something like that). I got the impression that to join the christian society you had to actually sign to say you believed something but that the meetings were open to everyone.
I understood believing something to be wrong and causing offense....
Apostate Islam
I went to the Sikhnet site you cited, and then drilled down to the article about the Muslim denial (yes, one expects them to confirm that they are targeting Hindu and Sikh women to make into their own tilths).
From that article:
I'm guessing that the good doctor hasn't heard of 9:5, 2:190-193, and a myriad number of verses that explicitly call on Mohammedans to do exactly that. Not to mention the idiocy of the logic - since the Quran forbids it, Mohammedans can't possibly be doing it.Hindus and Sikhs who refuse to countenance any criticism of Islam deserve all the opprobrium they get from all who fail (or refuse) to draw the distinctions between Muslims and them. For in this case, the ignorant ones would happen to be right.
It goes without saying that cases of moderate, non-radicalised Muslim students reporting on-campus activities by banned groups to the Kaffir college authorities will be conspicuous by their absence.
Alex is right and if anything underrates the danger of Muslim infiltration at SOAS. I was there at roughly the same time - 15 or so years ago - and saw it at first hand. The problem is twofold. First, SOAS is the designated source of expertise and understanding - as its name says - in "Oriental and African" matters. Although in my view Oxford's much smaller Oriental Institute has a higher scholarly level, nonetheless when a British journalist or politician wants an expert opinion on Tibet, Kampuchea or Mali, s/he goes to a SOAS scholar first. Second, SOAS has long been the superfortress of relativism in Britain. I hated the place because of the complete refusal to recognize any kind of absolute values whatsoever. To give an instance: talk to a Japanese person who knows anything about music, and he will say as a matter of course that European classical music is a much higher intellectual achievement than Japanese traditional music. Talk to a SOAS ethnomusician with thirty years of research behind him, and he will tell you that it all depends from how you consider it. That is all he has learned in thirty years of "scholarship". And of course everyone on this site will realize that such a spineless attitude is just custom made for Islam to impose itself.
Oxford, on the other hand, is being bought. Oxford has always been an institution where money was of overwhelming importance, and Muslim money has been hard at work; discarding the Oriental Institute - whose scholars, perhaps, were too rooted in old ideas of scholarship and clarity - it has simply been endowing new institutes, chairs and colleges all over the place. The results, I am afraid, are not yet in, but some are fairly easily visible.
I've heard that life for Jewish students is getting very difficult on UK campuses. Many have been threatened and intimidated.
Londongirl
"life for Jewish students is getting very difficult on UK campuses. Many have been threatened and intimidated"
This has been going on for at least 20 years
Labour didn't mind because the anti jewish intimidation and violence was excused by the anti Israel cause. This fitted right in with their self rightous "anti racism".
The problem is that they then started attacking/intimidating the Indian students, the Hindu's and Sikhs
http://sikh4life.co.uk/
so the "anti racism" cause is a bit confused.
What with Mahatma Gandhi being Indian.
Now the situation with Darfur has further confused the self rightous socialist/labour/liberals.
I would not be exaggerating if I said that 95 % of the Indian people I have met feel that the situation will get worse unless a government comes to power that will introduce punitive and intimadatory national security policies.
The conservatives should stop trying to impersonate labour and become more principled and right wing, this countries national survival is at risk.
To hear white western liberals harp on about human rights and racism is quite sickening.
My mum is a traditional Indian housewife and her views are, for a British citizen to commit a terrorist act is like "murdering your own mother".
At some time a future government will have to pass legislation to strip terrorists, sympathisers etc of citizenship (including members of their families.
Deportation of entire families.
Seizure of assets
Closure of mosques
Issuing banning orders
Rejection of the EC Human rights convention.
The worst is yet to come.
Every single act of good will from anyone is seen (quite rightly) as a victory for islam.
The right (BNP et al) will increase in popularity
violence will escalate, think of all those soldiers returning from the lands of the beasts iraq, afghanistan etc, with their knowledge of and access to weapons, they could form hit squads along with the BNP.