State-funded terror stalks UK campuses

ANY mention of state-funded terrorism tends to evoke images of evil Saudis pouring money into madrassas in Indonesia and Pakistan to train terrorists and sending shiploads of pamphlets on do-it-yourself jihad to mosques in the West. Or a few mad mullahs in Iran and Syria arming Hezbollah terrorists with lethal weapons to strike Israelis. It's all so passe. The phrase needs updating after the arrests of 24 terrorist suspects last week in Britain. As it turns out, the West is doing its bit to fund terrorists bent on destroying the West.

Waheed Zaman, 22, a biochemistry student and president of the Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University, was one of those arrested when British authorities foiled an alleged attempt to blow up planes over the Atlantic.

As London's Daily Telegraph reports, buildings on university land set aside as a prayer room and library contained a stash of handy materials for those interested in plotting mass murder. There were pamphlets preaching jihad, instructions on how to deal with security services and cassette tapes produced by al-Muhajiroun, the terrorist body once headed by Omar Bakri Mohammed, now living in exile in Lebanon.

Security sources suggested that several of those arrested are suspected of having links with universities. And when you think about it, setting up jihad school on campus makes perfect sense. It's just the latest manifestation of the tolerant West inadvertently funding its own destruction.

Welcomed by British authorities with promises of tolerance, asylum and welfare cheques, chaps such as Bakri Mohammed openly preached the West's destruction. When sleepy British authorities finally woke up, these Islamo-fascists were duly turfed out of mosques. Then the jihad leaders went on recruitment drives in the sprawling markets of east London, using loudspeakers to preach their hate: "Now is the time for jihad." Told to move on, they have discovered that universities are the ideal place to recruit more potential killers.

Universities are filled with "tolerance at any price" folk. Special prayer rooms are set aside by well-meaning vice-chancellors to demonstrate their university's commitment to tolerance and diversity. And the same rooms are apparently being snapped up by jihadists as safe havens for terrorist recruitment. They don't even need to put "Infidels Keep Out" signs on the prayer room door. Keeping infidels out is part of the unstated tolerance deal.

And these guys know how to play the game. Last October, an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times found that Hizb ut-Tahrir, an Islamic organisation that should have been banned as a terrorist group long ago, was trying to recruit university students at freshers fairs at Luton University, London University and London Metropolitan University. With stalls carrying the perfect banner, Stop Islamophobia, they were welcomed into the bosom of tolerance-loving academe.

The Sunday Times went undercover after a report by Brunel University professor Anthony Glees found that "extremist and-or terror groups" had been detected at more than 20 universities across Britain. And you'll notice that those arrested for alleged terrorism offences are not specialising in fine arts. Zaman's chosen field was biochemistry, a nice fit if building bombs is your chosen profession, as the British authorities are alleging.

When authorities arrested seven members of another alleged terrorist cell a few years ago for planning to blow up British pubs, nightclubs and trains, one member was 20-year-old computer science student Nabeel Hussain from Brunel University. More useful skills. Hussain is charged with conspiring to set off bombs and possessing 600kg of ammonium nitrate fertiliser. Perhaps jihadist recruiters are selling a package deal: study in London and spend summer camp in Pakistan learning how to make bombs and fire weapons.

During the trial of Hussain and his friends back in March, London's Old Bailey court heard that another member told his American accomplice Mohammed Babar: "I don't understand why all the UK brothers come to Pakistan and want to go to Afghanistan when they could easily do jihad operations in England."

Why indeed. As Glees, a director of Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies pointed out, Hizb ut-Tahrir's "lethal cocktail" - using a front organisation with a politically correct and misleading name - allowed it to "capitalis(e) on the advantages that exist in a free society".

Right on cue, the university honchos in Britain's free society condemned the Glees report. When British authorities confronted Brunel University about fears that the university may have become home for terrorists, there was the usual guff from academic staff that monitoring emails and checking university records was a terrible invasion of privacy rights.

And therein lies the problem. Treating privacy rights as intellectual abstractions means setting up state-funded prayer rooms for jihadists to carry out their plans in private. But rights are not abstract things. They frequently clash. A right to privacy is a lovely thing. But so is the right to live safely: going to a pub, jumping on a train, boarding a plane without a bomb exploding. Wistful, academic notions of untouchable, absolute rights also make a mockery of the fact that certain rights are meaningful only when you pal them up with responsibilities. Being responsible enough not to abuse the right to privacy by plotting jihad behind a prayer room door is a fairly basic part of the social contract.

Unfortunately, the same moral confusion exists in Australia. A report has warned our universities that Islamist extremists may be setting up shop on some campuses. Australian Vice-Chancellors Committee chief executive John Mullarvey said the report was unhelpful and racist. After the London bombings, even some on the Left suggested that tolerating the intolerant was a mistake. Now we're doing it all again. This is state-sanctioned euthanasia where, instead of morphine, tolerance is society's chosen drug. And, not to put too fine a point on it, too much of the stuff may end up killing more of us.

janeta@bigpond.net.au