Many Americans I know are dismayed by the British academic boycott of Israel. What, they wonder, lies behind the rise of such attitudes on British campuses? The truth is, however, we do not know the half of it. A case that has just ended at the Old Bailey criminal court in London—a case that has gone largely unreported—throws light on this dark corner of university life.
This morning, the BBC’s flagship radio news program, Today, reported on the case. It involves a schoolboy and four Muslim students at Bradford University who have been convicted of “possessing articles for terrorism"—in other words, downloading jihadist material from the Internet. The only reason this particular group came to light was that a 17-year-old member, who had run away from home, told his parents about the group’s activities. The parents decided to tell the police, who arrested the other group members.
It is, to say the least, unusual in Britain to interview a convicted felon about his crime before he has even been sentenced. Nobody explained why the authorities had permitted an exception in this case, but the Today program gave its prime breakfast time slot at 8:10 a.m. to one of the students, in order that he might explain why the jury had been wrong to convict him. The student was handled very gently by the interviewer, a Muslim woman, who seemed to assume that he was just a kid who had gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd. The interviewer did not challenge the student’s claim that he had not actually seen or read the violent material, including terrorism manuals, found on his computer. Unfortunately for the BBC, the young man did not quite follow its script: he insisted that he still believed he had a duty to fight those who “invaded Muslim lands.”
Today then brought in David Livingstone, who had been an expert witness in the trial, and who works for Chatham House—yes, the place where the famous “Chatham House rules” for conferences was invented. Chatham House is also the more sinister source of the Arabist “Chatham House version” of Middle East history, which was dissected many years ago by the great scholar Elie Kedourie, but which is still as influential as ever in the western academy.
It took Professor Anthony Glees to introduce some sanity into the proceedings. Professor Glees is the only person who has taken the Islamist radicalization of the British campus with the seriousness that it deserves. In a series of reports, Glees has forced the government and the media to take some notice of the threat that such radicalization poses.
Regarding the case involving the Bradford University students, Glees thanked the jury for its courage, and welcomed the deterrent effect that the guilty verdict might have. Glees also praised the parents who went to the police, thereby setting an example for other members of the Muslim community, who rarely inform on family or neighbors whom they suspect of terrorist involvement.
Glees also, however, revealed the extent of complacency among the authorities. The Minister for Higher Education, Bill Rammell, has often dismissed Professor Glees’s warnings about Islamist activism on campus. Now, Rammell is sufficiently worried about it to have proposed what Glees described as “modest” guidelines to make academics and administrators more aware of the danger of infiltration by Islamists, some of whom come from abroad specifically to target British universities. According to Glees, the guidelines were rejected unanimously by the academic unions and by Universities U.K., which represents administrators. As things stand, the administrators have no idea how widespread the phenomenon of Islamism on campus is: students are not asked about their views or affiliations before being accepted.
Ultimately, the five Bradford students are unlikely to be unique. It is possible, in fact, that we are witnessing a prelude to a generational radicalization such that we have not witnessed since the 1960’s—and perhaps not even then. Left-wing terrorism of the Baader-Meinhof or Red Brigade variety never enjoyed the popular base that Islamism can now boast, nor did it have the Internet as a tool of propaganda and organization. American universities are still dominated by the coat-and-tie radicals of the 1960’s. How long before the headscarf radicals of the Oughts dominate British campuses?
