Jihad amid the dreaming spires

7 July 2007

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Alex Lewis investigates claims that the Islamists are recruiting at Oxford University and talks to the exiled Omar Bakri who happily confirms his fears.

I first encountered Professor Glees on a wet afternoon in March as we sat in the offices of the Oxford Student, one of the university’s two student newspapers, and prayed for a front page. The first edition of term was approaching and it is a matter of honour (not to mention tradition) that we scoop our older and sterner rival Cherwell. We wanted something bigger than the usual raft of Union politics and charity marathons.

Then we read of a speech Professor Glees was due to make on the threat of Islamic extremism among British students, and decided to investigate. Glees, it turned out, was the author of a controversial 2005 report, ‘When Students turn to Terror’, and it was his conviction that prior to the 7 July bombings up to 48 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial and LSE, had been infiltrated by the now-banned extremist group al-Muhajiroun, which sought the creation of a global Islamic caliphate by violent means.

‘We must accept this problem of student recruitment is widespread and underestimated. Unless clear and decisive action against campus extremism is taken, the security situation in the UK can only deteriorate,’ said Glees.

Jihadists in Oxford University? It was certainly the splash we’d been looking for. The problem was, we simply weren’t convinced that it was true. Glees’ work had been criticised by university vice-chancellors for relying too heavily on ‘anecdotal evidence’. Certainly in my time at Oxford I had never encountered extremism — and nor had any of the Muslim students we spoke to. ‘The predominant force in the university has been hyper-conservatism with very boring sermons,’ said one. ‘I’ve not had a whiff of al-Muhajiroun.’

With so much claim and counter-claim, we did what Glees hadn’t — and spoke directly to the extremists. The figure of 48 universities had come from an interview given in December last year by Omar Bakri, exiled leader of al-Muhajiroun, to the Arabic-language newspaper Asharq alwsat. We tracked down a number for his house in Tripoli, Lebanon, where he fled in 2005 after learning that he could face charges of solicitation to murder.