The blindness of academe

Arash

Just referring to your previous piece I would like to thank you for bringing up and looking at a very important issue: the popular uprising of the Iranian people.

Montazeri was brave enough to object to what Khomeini was doing murdering tens of thousands of political prisoners who supported the PMOI in 1988 in a matter of 3 or 4 weeks, for which he was ousted as heir to Khomeini and this was in fact the most important and righteous decision he had made.

Another very important thing he has done was that before his death he gave a religious fatwa and annulled the supreme leadership of Khamenei.

However what is important to truly understand is that after 30 years of suppression by the ruling mullahs, there is no need to fear to be jumping from the frying pan into the fire. I say this with full understanding and knowledge of the political situation in Iran.

No government in the history of Iran has been so brutal and murdering than this regime, no government in the history of Iran has been so supported by the western government and appeased than the current ruling mullahs even the US puppet of the Shah.

So anybody that would have the courage and stamina to stand up against Ali Khamenei and Ahmadinejad and topple this regime would be praised by millions of Iranians. That is why the Iranian opposition leader Mrs Maryam Rajavi praised Moussavi's action to stand up against the supreme leader, and warned against any threat to his life and his family calling it in such case Khamenai is directly responsible for it goes further to ask UN to have a team of observers stationed in Iran.

However having said that after 7 months of absolute violence against an unarmed people protesting vigorously for regime change, I can reassure you that no government would be able to stand up against the will of well trained, politicked millions of Iranians who have toppled the worst enemy of God on Earth and human beings.

As far as the main organised opposition is concerned, it is no hidden secret what they have been saying for 30 year has come true. The Iranian people are now in practice following the pattern that they experience and gave 120,000 sacrifices to topple this regime. And today people are saying exactly the same thing "Death to Khamenei", "Death to Dictator", and "Khamenie is a murder his rule is annulled".

So let us see what happens there are just one way ahead of the Iranian brutal regime. If they give up and open up their iron fist they will be washed away like the fallen leaves in Autumn on the ground against the wind, and if they try to crush by opening using live ammunition and firing on the crowd, then the will be accelerating their down fall. The rift at the top is very real and the trend of demonstrations is getting more and more radical, so those who have stood up for 30 years and gave so much sacrifices just for the freedom of expression and all civil liberties will make sure there will not be a fair facing the people, this is what is called the third option.

One last thing the realities is the third option is the only viable solution to handle the danger of Iranian regime's nuclear project to obtain an Atomic Bomb, is the only solution to stop meddling of this regime in the Middle East, and the only solution that would be in the interest of the civilized world too.

Derek

These people and men like Anjem Choudary of Islam4UK are the children of the Labour Party - and the Labour Party should be forced to acknowledge their parentage.

Augustus

Academics have traditionally tended towards the left, and today, for a variety of perverse reasons, the left has allied itself with radical Islam, choosing to ignore the brutality, the oppression of women, the stifling of dissent, and all the other repellant aspects of countries ruled by Islamic law. Why Lenin's 'useful
idiots', people living in liberal democracies who gave material support to a totalitarian ideology and worked passionately to destroy the freedom and prosperity they enjoyed, was always a fascinating question. And now a generation of useful idiots has re-emerged in the chorus of appeasement and sentimental idealism, embracing, often quite voluntarily, another freedom-hating ideology; radical Islam. This growing trend in Europe especially, of self-Muslimification by leftist politicians, judiciary, and academics, and the resulting and increasing Islamification of
Western society can only lead to
disaster. Either the free world
goes forward and safeguards its claim to a civil society and human rights, or it indeed will be plunged into a new dark age. The age of Eurabia. The age of Islamic supremicism.

Noa Zrk

For a tolerant and open society, which the UK is for Islamic jihadists and radicals, trying to prevent terrorist acts is like sifting fine sand.

Truthtriumphs

"The greatest misconception of the West is that their culture and democracy is indestructible, and that the forces of terror and evil are not all that significant, but the bottom line is that many Muslims have their eyes set to Islamize America and the West, and will not let go even after 9/11".
Nonie Darwish, an Arab who grew up in the Middle East. 27/12/04.

Our government, so-called, is allowing the free and unfettered immigration of people whose aim is to kill us, and using taxpayers' money to facilitate this process.
Truly the politics of the madhouse.

Michael

There are too many apologists for Islamic fundamentalism. But the "striking coincidence" of a Palestinian secular nationalist terrorist (Samar Alami was a member of the Marxist-inspired PFLP) going to UCL in the 1980s and an Islamist Nigerian with links to Yemeni Al-Qaeda going more than twenty years later is pretty thin gruel even by her standards. Awlaki sounds like a nasty extremist who should be repudiated by any right-thinking person.

Margaret Muller Johansson

Welcome to Londonistan

Olaf Rye

Melanie,

Your article is quite timely not only because of recent political events, but the release of a new book in the US on the blindness and self-serving attitudes of academe. Here is the link:

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MzczMzhmNjZhNzRiMWI3ZjMyOWZjMGViZDc4ODY2NjA=

Worried

The majority of young people I meet (in University towns or on the campuses) are frighteningly socialist and anti-Israel. The whole ecosystem (if that is the right word) of the culture is friendly to these people. They are deceptively friendly when you meet them, but who knows what they say at their Mosques or other private gathering places.

Derek Pasquill

Not just the academy - but also large swathes of the Establishment which has convinced itself, for reasons that are not entirely clear, but may include traditional antisemitism, that radical and reform Islam (code for the Muslim Brotherhood) is the ticket.

A one-way ticket to mayhem, catastrophe and hell.

Pip

Good to see you back Melanie. HNY to you and yours.

I remember stumbling upon the below article from from Peter Tatchell a few weeks ago. Feeling shocked and angry, I just had to make a complaint to persons at UCL and their Acting Vice Chancellor, Professor Julius Weinberg.

article:

by Peter Tatchell
Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Whilst the EU political elites struggle with the concept and processes of integration, at domestic level our communities are far from integrated. Politician and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell writes of a situation where political extremism not only creates tensions between communities, but also leads to domestic abuse within families. His words are shocking, but in the context of recently disturbing events in a number of EU states such as France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, they place the lofty aspirations of the EU into an altogether different context. The following article not only demonstrates the dangers that face a society that fails to grasp the importance of integration, but also highlights the absurdity of unchecked "political correctness".

University College London is planning to host an extremist Islamist preacher, Abu Usamah, who openly endorses the murder of gay people, and of Muslims who give up their faith. He also encourages the beating of little girls who refuse to wear the hijab. This university would never allow a lecture by a white supremacist who used racist abuse and advocated the murder of black people, and rightly so. Why then do we see these double standards?

Abu Usamah has been invited to address the Islamic Society at University College London on Monday, 30th November. Previously, on 4th November, City University had given him a similar platform. The Vice Chancellor of City University London, Julius Weinberg, should surely consider his position: he has previously ignored student’s complaints after the Islamic Society organised an on-campus meeting addressed by Abu Usamah.

It is alarming that the student’s union has defended the hosting of this hate preacher, and that the Vice Chancellor has not responded to protests from some students. This actually violates the equal opportunities policies of the university and the student’s union.

Abu Usamah was recorded for Channel Four’s television documentary, Undercover Mosque, as saying: “Do you practice homosexuality with men? Take that homosexual man.... and throw him off the mountain.... If I was to turn around and I was to call homosexuals perverted, dirty filthy dogs that should be murdered, that’s my freedom of speech isn’t it?”

On Muslims who leave the faith he said: “Kill him in the Islamic state...If the Imam wants to crucify him, he should crucify him. The person is put up on the wood and he’s left there to bleed to death for three days.”

Abu Usamah was also filmed by Channel Four deriding women as “deficient”, inferior to men, and religiously and intellectually “incomplete”. He advocates violence against little girls who refuse to wear the hijab: “She should start hijab from the age of seven, by the age of ten it becomes an obligation on us to force her to wear hijab and if she doesn’t wear hijab, we hit her.” Another speaker given a platform at the same City University event on 4 November, Murtaza Khan, was also caught on the Undercover Mosque documentary calling Jews and Christians “enemies” and non-Muslims “filthy”.

We may talk of, and strive for, "integration" at European level. Perhaps we need also to get our own houses in order.

Peter Tatchell is an Australian born British politician and human rights campaigner. In 1983 he stood for the Labour Party in the Bermondsey by-election, where he lost to Liberal Democrat Simon Hughes following what has been widely criticised as a "homophobic" campaign by Hughes.

He is co-founder of the gay rights lobbying group 'Outrage!' and he attracted international attention in 1999 and 2001 for his valiant attempts to place Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe under citizen's arrest on charges of torture and human rights abuses.

He joined the Green Party in 2004, and was named Campaigner of the Year in The Observer Ethical Awards 2009.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Maybe I sound simplistic, but I believe that many Western so-called "intellectuals" favour Marxism because it gave them a foot up in the old-boy network, the media, universities and arts being mainly controlled by them. They accept all the primitive cruelty of fundamentalist islam as a form of snobbery. In their hearts, these intellectuals think of Noble Savages, Lo, Natural Man, and do not expect them to have the ethos, morality nor humanity of Western Civilisation. It makes them feel superior (perhaps knowing how feeble their intellectualism really is)and thus they excuse behaviour which would be completely unacceptable in civilized societies. Lawrence of Arabia was a typical confused character who actually lusted after the cruelty of his islamic allies and captors. The psychological picture of the enamoured Englishman can be seen in kidnap victim
who returned embracing the ideals and objects of his enslavers several years ago. Sane people must stand up against this destruction of our very civilisation before it is too late.

just Louise

To think that UCL was founded as a pantheon of liberalism in an intolerant age by that great Jew, Sir I. L. Goldsmid! What default crimes these blinkered lily-livered academics of our dangerous times are committing in liberalism's name!!!
Let's hope Call Me Dave gets tough on these Islamofascists, and blunts their demographic weaponry by stopping the outrageous tolerance of their polygamous marriages (wives and kids at taxpayers' expense!).
Pip, I find it extremely strange that this atrocious Labour government, especially its strident feminist members like Harriet Harman, don't demand action against the outspoken misogyny of some of these clerics. It's despicable that universities give such repugnant views an airing.

Rachael

In the modern world, it’s always the intelligensia that prove most destructive. It’s because the modern intelligensia are so stupid that the Frankfurt School and the cultural Marxists went for them. And look how they’ve fallen for it – hook line and sinker.

Here’s a fascinating extract from Fowler’s Modern English Usage, Second Edition, By H W Fowler, Revised by Sir Ernest Gowers, Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1968 edition.

Thank God Fowler and Gowers are dead, because if they thought the intelligensia had caused chaos with what they’re talking about, what on earth would they make of what the intelligensia have done since?

The last paragraph could have a new meaning now that neither of them could have envisaged when this was originally published – especially in relation to our wretched universities. They must be turning in their graves:

‘Mahomet, Mohammedan, etc. A middle-aged lady, on being asked whom she understood by the Prophet of Allah, hesitated, suspecting some snare, but being adjured to reply said quite plainly that he was Mahomet and further that his followers were Mahometans – thus fulfilling expectations. The popular forms are Mahomet(an); the prevailing printed forms are Mohammed(an).

‘The worst of letting the learned gentry bully us out of our traditional Mahometan and Mahomet (who ever heard of Mohammed and the mountain?) is this: no sooner have we tried to be good and learnt to say, or at least write, Mohammed than they are fired with zeal to get us a step or two further on the path of truth, which at present seems likely to end in Muhammed with a dot under the h; see DIDACTICISM.

‘The literary, as distinguished from the learned, surely do good service when they side with tradition and the people against science and the dons.

‘Muhammed [dot under the h] should be left to the pedants, Mohammed to historians and the like, while ordinary mortals should go on saying, and writing in newspapers and novels and poems and such general reader’s matter, what their fathers said before them.

‘The fact is that we owe no thanks to those who discover, and cannot keep silence on the discovery, that Mahomet is further than Mohammed, and Mohammed further than Muhammed, from what his own people called him.

‘The Romans had a hero whom they spoke of as Aeneas, we call him that too, but for the French he has become Enee; are the French any worse off than we on that account?

‘It is a matter of like indifference in itself whether the English for the Prophet’s name is Mahomet or Mohammed – in itself, yes; but whereas the words Aeneas and Enee have the Channel between them to keep the peace, Mahomet and Mohammed are for ever at loggerheads; we want one name for the one man; and the one should have been that around which the ancient associations cling.

‘It is too late to recover unity; the learned, and their too docile disciples, have destroyed that, and given us nothing worth having in exchange.’

Dixon

In relation to the broader topic being aired here I would recommend "Intellectuals" by Paul Johnson ( Orion books ). A compendium of biographies of key examples of the caste. Shocking. Most of them were very disfunctional and destructive to everyone they came into contact with. Karl Marx actually possessed a domestic slave. Shelley literally destroyed peoples lives. Russel was both a liar and a fool who thought he could deny having said things that were a matter of record.

Read it and get the sordid details for yourself.

Fabio P.Barbieri

Just Louise, read the articles of Nick Cohen - especially a recent one called "The Price of Patriotism". It turns out that some Labour women have in fact been willing to remember that extreme Islam is bad for women and other living things? What happened to them? One by one, Brown destroyed them. The careers of Ruth Kelly, Hazel Blears and Jacqui Smith were all carefully destroyed by this notoriously vindictive man. The singling out of Hazel Blears, in particular, was shocking: she was practically fed to the dogs over the expenses scandal (while Labour promoted the corrupt John Bercow to the Speakership and protected all their own other than her) by name, by her own leader. If one thing was clear, it was that Brown wanted her politically dead. And guess what? As soon as she and Jacqui Smith had been executed, their posts were filled by Islam-lovers and Brotherhood boosters, beginning with the ignoble John Denham. It is quite obvious that the boost for Islam comes from the top. Now the Harperson may be many things, but one thing she has proved again and again is that she understands party infighting better than most. And do you imagine that she would ever expose herself to Burden Grown's vindictive anger, as Blears naively did, only because a few thousand dark-skinned women are tortured or murdered by their families on grounds of religion? Such things do not trouble the nation's leading feminist. The important thing is that she believes she is on her way to being Labour's first woman leader, and she will let nothing stand in her way.

Noah Aaron Bashi

The British academia=Mental

just Louise

Thanks for that information, Fabio - it's chilling! I really think a national death wish has gripped Westmister. I fear, like Sir Edward Grey in 1914, we'll have to say "The lights are going off all across Europe. They won't be going on again in my lifetime".

Rob

So Osama Saeed and the SNP considered Awlaki a moderate in 2006 and now reckon he's changed. And in some strange way you consider that a nasty 2009 essay contradicts that? Read my lips: 2009 is later than 2006. Some time between the two, Awlaki became radicalised, or a nutcase, or whatever.

And considering the number of students that pass through UCL, and indeed its engineering faculty, it would be surprising if diligent digging by the Spectator staff couldn't throw up at least one other person before Abdulmutallab with a dodgy reputation. That you have to go back 15 years to find one rather weakens your argument that the place is packed to the gunwales with Islamist radicals, dopes it not? Anyway, the cases aren't that similar: it would seem that Samar Alami made a bomb that went off. Perhaps she paid more attention in her lessons:

"At atmospheric pressure, PETN is difficult to ignite. It burns relatively slowly." (From the Wikipedia entry for PETN).

steve

The commenters on this piece are correct. If one wants to find a hotbed of left wingers and cultural marxists, one need look no further than university engineering faculties.

Daibhidh MacAdhaimh

The insidious, unsustainable theory of 'social construct' that dominates the 'social science'content taught in our universities warps the minds of young, impressionable students. This socially corrosive theory has played its part in providing the fertile seed-bed for Islamic extremism to take root in the UK and the West. It relentlessly challenges, negates then deconstructs Western values, depicting them as oppressive and imperialist. In doing so it also strips the West of virtue and its nation identities, viewing the former as nothing more than a middle-class tool of repression and the latter as 'fictions'. Equipped with this crass distortion of our cultural foundations and heritage it is hardly surprising that students by and large adopt a leftist outlook characterised by hatred of all things Western while similtaenously displaying a mystifying - idiotic - solidarity (once reserved for the national and international 'massess') for a hostile and alien religiousity that offers everything that is anathema to leftist ideology (what's left of the socially re-constructed version). Tragic.

Veritas kwagh-u-mimi

Nigerians are good, How did he break a whole US Airport security at a festive time when maximum security is supposed to be provided? Such a brain should be recruited for positive use! Maybe he can help'em cover da loopholes.

Hali ALwani

I just want to point out something, many of the posters here are saying right things but some of you need to understand the muslim students don't learn how to hate western culture only from schools, streets, or the place they worship but from their homes most of the parents of this kids teach them at home not to like the infidel culture and most of the parents are anti west after they are in the country 2 to 3 months I don't why? I know this because I am muslim and when I visit some muslim families sometimes the only thing they pass their conversation time is how they don't like the non muslims culture how they dislike people who have dogs in their flats even one of my friends parent believe dogs should sleep outside the house not inside and they hate the weather, grey sky unfriendly people, women smoking cigarettes in the street, I am sure homosexuality too but we never talk about that subject, people who kiss in the streets like young people kissing girlfriend or boyfriend type, people who have children who is not married, even my friends grandmother find out this in the first time that her neighbors who have kids are not married she can't believe it, they think western culture in the modern time is uncivilized unattractive and too much freedom and they don't want their kids to copy that, sometimes some of my muslim friends like the Jewish people better I think they mean the Orthodox Jewish they will say Jewish people are cleaner better they go pray and they don't eat pork, in my opinion the British government and the people who allow the immigrants to their country are kind of responsible of this because they didn't explain to the immigrant families about the western culture, the way I see it the government say Britain is a free country you could all come here but you don't have to change, the muslim kids are confuse their parents tell them one thing, their lefty professors teach them another thing and it is easy this kids to turn a fanatic anytime specially if they are living in the big cities because there are hell a lot of fanatic islamists out there who want to teach the youth hate and negative things and that is when the problem starts it is easy to brain wash young people and this is what is happening to the students in the British universities and other youth people around, I am not happy the way things are and I hope the new government to interfere it in the future so things change for better

A. MacAulay

The misconception in "islamic" or non-European cultures that the secret to "our" success is to be found in our ability to make things is very widespread. (Not uncommon amongst our elites either.) After all they see an astonishing array of consumables, sheer endless invention and all accompanied by a kaleidoscopic medial avalanche. None of which they can produce at home on their own. We are where the money, Kalashnikovs and porno's come from.

But instead of coming here to learn about our culture and philosophy, that which enables us to be so creative, they are blinded by their own materialism and concentrate on engineering in one form or another.

It is all more or less a waste of time and resources for them anyway because once at home and armed with a degree, they become "mohendus" and within their feudal hierarchy too elevated and important to ever do anything so degrading as work.

Better obviously then only to allow students from islamic countries to study, say English Literatur. I believe Jane Austen could save the world from the Jihadis.

Riccardo

A while ago, maybe 40-50 years ago, it was held that academia, journalism and politics were where you would expect to find free and original thought. What has happened since then? For now the opposite is the case. Leaving aside the apologising for violent Islamists, and the ingrained Marxism in many university departments, it's becoming clearer all the time that the trio of academia, journalism and politics are the last places these days you would look for original ideas and a non-establishment view.

Even in Natural Sciences, those producing papers contrary to the established views are rubbished, not published and have their funding withdrawn. I'm sorry to bring it up again, but look at global warming. You'll get a more open and informed debate in the office or the pub than you'll see in the newspaper, or, perish the thought, the House of Commons. Where would we be without the Internet?

Another example. Certain observations of the red shift of quasars indicate that our concept of a Big Bang is in error. The guy who made these observations has been predictably ostracised, presumably because it means the life's work of umpteen other cosmologists goes up in smoke. Foolishness amongst journos and politicos we can live with, but this kind of thing in the universities has dire implications for human progress.

A. MacAulay

Hali ALwani, thank you for your candid contribution. It must also be clear to you that the muslim immigrants you describe must have known more or less what Britain was like before they left their homeland. I mean it's no secret that Britain the island is situated on the North Atlantic side of Europe and the skies are quite frequently grey. It can't be so surprising that the British, who live within a secure (so long as we are prepared to protect it)democratic country governed with laws that apply equally to all (mostly?)enjoy great personal freedoms. It may not be quite so clear, but it is undoubtedly so, that without our liberties, Britain would be just as poor as the countries these muslims are trying to leave.

So, people emigrate to Britain, not because they love the British but because they want the chance to get on in life, for purely materialistc reasons.
Nothing wrong in that, but to then despise the people who make it possible is neither clever, honourable or honest.

Or what?

hadrian

When the academics airily assert they do not like interfering in their affiliated societies' right to freedom of expression, just how uneven handed can they get?!
Christian Societies are hounded for insisting they are actually run by..er, Christians- can you imagine such an injustice?!..
And I am in no doubt that were extreme fascist groups invited to address their students with nuggets of wisdom there'd be howls of protest.
So- how come mad Islamics inciting to all sorts of fanaticism and blind hatred, and using Israel as the smokescreen- how come, I say, they get away with it? It is perfect madness. If this is the wisdom of houses of learning one does not need to wish a curse on all their houses- for they already are cursed!

Hali Alwani

I don't know if it is Honorable or honest, you have to understand immigrants come from different parts of the world some of them from cities some of them from villages some of them from educated back ground and some not but the British don't see it that way they put together in a one basket, you may think our immigrants left poverty behind no there still alot of them who are poor and they like it that way, I know people who are living very nice housing state they are living for example nice Georgian flat but the interior they have their Bedouin tent they sleep inside the tent they like it that way, my family come to Britain because they want freedom and better life for their children we never take state benefit we rented our flat we started from nothing to something, but the new immigrants specially the ones who been coming last 12 years or so are little different some of them don't see what kind of good life they have life is easy for them and plenty of time to discuss about the western culture and how it is different their lovely culture and they just end up passing that attitude to their kids which I think it is not good idea

Leslie Edwards

The article by Ruth Dudley Edwards in Sunday Telegraph (3/1/10) examines radicalisation of Muslims in British Universities, rather better than this article.

A. MacAulay

Hali Alwani, of course we speak generally, and lets take it as given that the majority of immigrants are perfectly prepared to accept the cultural compromises and the weather if it means that their children can live in a safer and economically viable future. This is clever, honourable and honest and these people are an enrichment to the nation they have emigrated to. Within the liberties that each may enjoy is decorating their home as they wish. It's a free country. (still)

We are talking about the minority who are determined to destroy their hosts and with them that future of prosperity which the majority of immigrants are working and making sacrifices for. These destroyers are aided and abetted by a large portion of the political and medial class of Britain and if for reasons that are mysterious to immigrants then the more so for, I dare say, a majority of British people.

It would be very encouraging if immigrants from the majority would speak out against the destabilising and destructive minority and their supporters.