Student union blocks speech by ‘inflammatory’ anti-sharia activist
A human rights campaigner has been barred from speaking at Warwick University after organisers were told she was “highly inflammatory and could incite hatred”.
Maryam Namazie, an Iranian-born campaigner against religious laws, had been invited to speak to the Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists Society next month. But the student union blocked the event, telling the society that Namazie’s appearance could violate its external speaker policy.
“We have a duty of care to conduct a risk assessment for each speaker who wishes to come to campus. There a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus.”
The student union’s policy says external speakers are “not permitted to encourage, glorify or promote any acts of terrorism” or “spread hatred and intolerance in the community” and “must seek to avoid insulting other faiths or groups”.
Namazie said she hoped to go ahead with the event if Warwick changed its mind. “The student union seems to lack an understanding of the difference between criticising religion, an idea or a far-right political movement on the one hand and attacking and inciting hate against people on the other,” she wrote on her blog. “Inciting hatred is what the Islamists do; I and my organisation challenge them and defend the rights of ex-Muslims, Muslims and others to dissent.”
Namazie, who has written for the Guardian, is the spokesperson for One Law for All, a group that campaigns against sharia and religious laws, and a member of the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and the Worker-Communist party of Iran.
In 2005 she won the National Secularist Society’s prize for secularist of the year, presented by the Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee.
Some thought-provoking articles that reflect on how the left/liberal agenda has undermined society and commonsense leaving people unable to cope with the real world and which silences free speech and honest debate…
Declining Student Resilience: A Serious Problem for Colleges
Students are increasingly seeking help for, and apparently having emotional crises over, problems of everyday life. Recent examples mentioned included a student who felt traumatized because her roommate had called her a “bitch” and two students who had sought counseling because they had seen a mouse in their off-campus apartment. The latter two also called the police, who kindly arrived and set a mousetrap for them.
Faculty at the meetings noted that students’ emotional fragility has become a serious problem when in comes to grading. Some said they had grown afraid to give low grades for poor performance, because of the subsequent emotional crises they would have to deal with in their offices.
Obama: P.C. Culture on Campus Leads to “Coddled” Students
President Barack Obama on Monday waded into the debate on political correctness saturating American colleges, forcefully rejecting the idea of tailoring curriculum or cutting funding based on the sensitivities of students.
During a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa, Obama described liberal college students—the kind of students who ban speakers from campus due to their political beliefs, at least—as “coddled.”
“I’ve heard of some college campuses where they don’t want to have a guest speaker who is too conservative. Or they don’t want to read a book if it has language that is offensive to African Americans, or somehow sends a demeaning signal towards women,” he said, according to The Hill.
“I’ve got to tell you, I don’t agree with that either. I don’t agree that you, when you become students at colleges, have to be coddled and protected from different points of views.”
The culture of political correctness itself has generated a massive reaction, from liberal journalists, comedians, and researchers.
The Coddling of the American Mind
In the name of emotional well-being, college students are increasingly demanding protection from words and ideas they don’t like. Here’s why that’s disastrous for education—and mental health.
Something strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress.
Political correctness is killing freedom of speech
Ladies, gentlemen, people of indeterminate gender.
There are two reasons you should be freaked out by political correctness.
The first is that it prevents people from saying what they want to say, from expressing what they believe to be true. And it is fundamentally illiberal to stop people from expressing their beliefs and their ideas.
And the second is that it prevents the rest of us from hearing those ideas and deciding for ourselves if they are good or bad. It infantilises all of us through denying us the right to weigh things up, to argue over them, to be the arbiters of what is right and what is wrong.
Instead it gives that role to a dictatorship of do-gooders, who decide on our behalf what words and thoughts are fit for public consumption.
Political correctness: How censorship defeats itself
On its own terms, political correctness is self-defeating. It drives away potential supporters, and substitutes linguistic change for social change. It replaces the desire to reform society with the desire to reform manners, and fails to understand that practised hypocrites and seasoned manipulators can meet the demand to observe correct form with ease. Indeed, they will welcome political correctness because it gives them new opportunities to intimidate and control…..Spastic too was once a euphemism that became an insult. In 1994, the Spastics’ Society changed its name to ‘Scope’ because children were ‘shouting you big spastic’ at each other in the playground. No good did the substitution do. As current dictionaries of slang report ‘scopey’ is now ‘a byword for spaz’.
Unfortunately Alan you’ve only got part of the Students Union correct, but you’ve totally misread their beliefs, which have nothing at all to do with Political Correctness.
In Manchester the S.U. allowed a Muslim women’s conference to support the murder of Gay people, and when a Gay guy sneaked a recording device into the meeting and let the cat out of the bag, it wasn’t the Muslim women who they went for, it was the Gay man for making an unauthorised recording !
At the S.U. conference both Gays & Jews were banned – yes I know they dressed it up in fancy words like ‘Zionist’, but that’s only because a direct ban on Jews would have been a criminal offence.
The Students Union is in reality a Fascist organisation which only supports its favourite brown eyed boys. It is prepared to ride rough shod over every other group to that end and if someone belongs to a group the Muslims hate (and there are a lot) then woe betide you. This is a group which refused to condemn ISIS on the grounds that some Muslims might be offended!
“Political correctness (adjectivally, politically correct, commonly abbreviated to PC) is an ordinarily pejorative term used to criticize language, actions, or policies seen as being excessively calculated not to offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society.”
The Fascist Left have for a long time hidden their evil & devise policies behind words which have a benign meaning, but by the definition above, the S.U. cannot be P.C. The are in reality, wholly Islamophillic, with policies which would not be out of place in a Muslim country, and we all know how Politically Correct Muslims are !
Fascist left? not surprised, no doubt supported from a distance by operations such as ‘Common Puprose’. Aided and abetted by the duplicitous mainstream media who are conducting a relentless psychological assault on the people of Europe.
Spot on Thoughtful.
This is not “PC” gone mad-but a deliberate systemic effort by the Gramscians to remove any thoughts or opinions from their “risk assessees” that might
a) Take us out of the EU…so no “hate platforms” for the likes of Farage and UKIP-and if you wish to recreate the pretext for Kristallnachts, try and put a UKIP poster up in a student area.
b) Prevent the rise of the Brownshirts-neither Red or Green anymore, when you can blend them into the New Fascist Order-note Warwick saying that this lady could incite hatred, because of what HAS ALREADY BEEN SAID about her…in other words, another silent acquiescence before Islams Taliban that snoop around the NUS when not actually on permanent secondment to them.
Corbyn, Lucas and Ramadan are in cahoots, albiet phones in and without any need to actually REASON anything out…Russell Brand and Raoul Moat are our futures on campus at the moment.
Except-funnily enough-for the orgies of consumption, sexual violence, porn and drugs , litter and fast food binges with condoms on the side-all THIS is going on for the next few weeks in any uni/poly/college you care to visit for the next few weeks as the “Fresh meat” of Jack Whitehalls ravings get a fat cheque and absolutely no help.love or guidance until NHS Counselling get their stash of hush money to “ameliorate and pacify”.
Then we`ll be back to banning Robin Thicke…but putting ” Straight Outta Compton” anti-women rants on full blast instead.
Thatcher should have nobbled the universities when Oxford refused her an honorary degree…since then, they`ve been the playgrounds of the Left and the Communitarians-who now are warming the seats and slippers of IS.
Student unions.
A major source of stupidity in action.
Take a group of young people, still wet behind the ears, tell them they have outstanding intellectual gifts.
They use these gifts to show how immature they are, and how they know better than anyone else.
Many left-wingers, prominent today, were student activists, like Peter Pan they never grew up.
Activists for “putting the world right” and other banal mantras.
Few, later to be leading, Conservatives, indulge in this.
Remember the deaths Tiananmen Square in 1989?
I do, I thought it was great, many of those killed were students.
Students killed by the successors of the murderous Mao and Co.
Mao and Co, another bunch of students, who knew better than anyone else.
That turned out well.
“must seek to avoid insulting other faiths or groups”.
Except, of course, anyone they disagree with.
Another group we can classify as “Enemies of the West”.
Meanwhile at the University of East Anglia the Students Union has banned Sombreros.
For being racist.
Silly me, I thought UK universities had a group of experienced adults who made policy decisions.
Time to cut the funding.
Does anyone know how to discover what these “Student Union” “Leaders” are supposed to be studying?
My guess is plenty of Sociology and little Science.
Reckon UEA are on a sticky wicket here.
For it was they who gave us the famed-Climategate Fraud scam of 2009-when they bent, fiddled and fixed all data to create a mythical massive hockey stick to beat on real scientists who knew they were cooking the books…but the likes of Monbiot, Juniper and-of course Harrabin/Shuckman at the BBC-fell for the UEA crapola.
My point-sombreros clearly will be needed for the global warming we`re living in-I myself self-identified as a victim of solar aggression when I got a red neck on Southwold Pier in the gales and flooding early last month.
And did Yvette Cooper offer to rub goosegrease Factor 50 on my bingo wings?…not on your nelly, blathered on about letting Syrian migrants into her house to cook until they took over…all wind and sails as ever, she`s as bad as Sturgeon !
So-will be telling any student heading for UEA to pick up a keffiyah from Health and Safety NHS drop-out centres by way of compo-no sombrero?…lawsuit mate, my necks a bit pink-and not from washing it either!
When I said sticky wicket-I meant a bone-dry one.
All books cooked were done with sustainable polar bear oil
Solar Aggression not to be confused with that scary big moon that blinded me on the way to the lardy shop earlier…who do I sue?…
Clearly as much a part of the New Labour dream of society manipulation and resulting establishment destruction as the open door immigration policy. Looked at dispassionately (if only that were possible!) the absurd promotion of degrees-for-all with such delights as courses in hairdressing, nursing and the Beetles, is now beginning to bite. ‘Things can only get worse’ to paraphrase my Lord Kinnock.
Quite right. Why wouldn’t the Left want every child to spend several years being indoctrinated by the university system it has infiltrated and conquered?
We can see how ‘well’ the programme has worked every day on the BBC, where the brainwashed continue the process over the airwaves.
Namazie, a Communist, became an enemy of the “people”, I.E. the hard left in Britain, when she made this speech, attacking the UAF et-al, for supporting the radical Islamists…..I mean, how dare she Comrades, how dare she?
Dazed and Confused – thank you for posting that oh-so-clear statement by the brave young lady.
Her bans been overturned…
http://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/ex-muslim-speakers-warwick-university-10145068
Would they have done this if she had not been extreme-left?
I would not be at all surprised if there isn’t a demonstration against her evil views. Free speech only applies to the left, don’tcha know
Wow.
Someone presented with a prize by that goddess of the left Polly Toynbee not allowed to speak at a university.
Has the goddess commented on this yet in that bastion of the illiberal she writes for, or been speed dialled by the Today programme for comment?
Isn’t this just a reflection of ‘society’ as promoted by the BBC?
The list of topics that can’t be mentioned, let alone debated, gets ever longer.
The absurdity of this was demonstrated on Friday’s PM programme, where listeners get to comment on items during the week. There had been a mutual sob-in of women discussing ’empty nest syndrome’, (children leaving home to go to university etc.). Nothing very controversial there one might think. Most comments were supportive ‘me too’ stuff.
TRIGGER WARNING
The following might cause raised blood pressure amongst the sensitive.
‘how insensitive of you to discuss this topic! Our child would have been of the age to go to university but was killed a few months ago.’
As Charlie Brown says, “Good grief!”
In my days as a student, the people who put themselves up as presidents of the students union were generally useless at anything else. Nothing changes.
Thanks for posting that clip D and C. Very brave woman.