Islamists in our universities

As many as 48 British universities are apparently home to functioning Islamist groups. Among these are Oxford, Cambridge, and colleges of the University of London.

This is, of course, no surprise. Professor Anthony Glees, who has revealed these figures, has attracted controversy in the past for speaking out about Islamists on campus. Our universities, with their liberal-left academics and vocal left-wing student groups suppressing right-wing dissent, provide a perfect base of operations. Some even give employment to Islamists - Oxford, for example, employs Tariq Ramadan, who has been banned from France and America for his pro-terrorist attitudes.

But this does once again demonstrate the fallacy of the liberal argument that Islamic "extremism" is caused by poverty or by "social exclusion". Muslim students attending our finest universities are unlikely to be particularly poor, nor are they excluded from society. Yet they are turning to Islamism in increasing numbers. Could that be, perhaps, because the problem is with Islam?

I also wonder, given that Cambridge University is ranked among those institutions being culturally enriched by the presence of terrorist sympathisers, whether any of these people have been involved in whipping up the hysteria that has surrounded the Cambridge Motoons case?