Tom Slater Tom Slater

Blasphemy has become a risky business at British universities

You might have thought that of all the things that could get you in trouble on a university campus today, blasphemy would not be one of them. That the days of unbelievers being banished and having their works burned by college dons were long behind us. That the old blasphemies had at least been replaced by new, secular blasphemies about race and gender. Not so, it seems. As one law academic has found out, criticising or even just discussing religious practice is still a risky business at British universities – only the God that campus authorities fear seems to have changed. 

Universities should not be giving in to such intolerance

Steven Greer was a human-rights law professor at the University of Bristol until he retired last year. But his many years of service weren’t rewarded with a gentle exit. In 2020, he was the subject of a formal complaint by the Bristol University Islamic Society. His alleged crimes included an ‘Islamophobic’ teaching slide about Charlie Hebdo, a ‘bigoted and divisive’ lecture on the treatment of women and non-Muslims under Sharia law, and laughing – Heaven forfend – at a passage from the Koran during a seminar. He was formally exonerated by an independent, KC-led investigation, but still had to endure defamatory petitions, online abuse and, he claims, a cowardly lack of support from his own university.  

In interviews this week, Greer has blasted Bristol management. He accuses them of kowtowing to the Islamic Society and quietly removing parts of a course that had helped sparked the students’ righteous fury. The university denies this, saying changes to the course were made ‘quite independent[ly] of the complaint raised’ – noting the complaint was not upheld. But the limp statement issued by Bristol after Greer was ‘exonerated’ back in 2021 hardly gave the impression of an institution making a principled stance for freedom of expression. It nodded to the Islamic Society’s ‘concerns and the importance of airing differing views constructively’ – even though ‘airing differing views constructively’ was clearly not what this group of students were interested in.

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