It is just over a year since Roshanara Choudhry, 21, a student of English at King’s College London, almost succeeded in assassinating the MP Stephen Timms. Given a life sentence, she said that she did not recognise the jurisdiction of English courts. A year earlier, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a student at University College London between 2005 and 2008, was arrested for attempting to blow up an American passenger jet with 289 people on board. Just a couple of months ago, we learnt that the “Stockholm bomber” of December 2010, Taimur al-Abdaly, was a graduate of Luton University. The other day we were told that two students linked to the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir were elected to Westminster University’s student union, following similar elections at City University.
In short, this isn’t about a lack of evidence; it’s about a lack of courage in confronting reality. There is a consensus within British universities that makes many lecturers all too willing accomplices to radicalisation: dons’ own political preferences, combined with a desperate wish to retain their cushy jobs, mean they are quick to produce research that substantiates the theory that radicalisation doesn’t exis
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