UCL in the heart of the salubrious Bloomsbury was founded by the 18th century thinker Jeremy Bentham as a beacon of academic and religious tolerance. Yet surely even for an institution whose genesis is found in the principle of freedom of conscience and expression there comes a point where the question must be asked whether a fundamentalist approach to this matter will not ultimately bring about its own demise and the demise of freedom and tolerance itself? How much intolerance can be tolerated before this noble goal has canceled itself out? How much freedom of expression can you allow to those who agitate against freedom of expression before one day you find those very same voices silencing yourself? Enter Malcolm Grant, Provost of UCL.Grant is a man for whom there seem to be no limits on what can be said. Such is his die hard devotion to freedom of speech that if assassins were outside his office plotting how to kill him it doesn't take a huge leap of the imagination to picture Grant asking them if they'd like to sit down and have something to drink while they discuss.
For although UCL's Provost has washed his hands of all responsibility of that minor Umar Farouk Abdulmatalab affair (the former president of UCL's Islamic society who attempted to blowup himself and a passenger jet over the skies of Detroit one Christmas day) the fact is UCL has been playing host to some of the most serious pro-Jihad Islamists that modern Britain has to offer. And as has now become all too apparent; when it comes to Islamic radicals the British are starting to look like connoisseurs.
And while Abdulmatalab may be the most high profile of UCL's Jihadi alumni he is far from the only young Muslim to have been radicalised in the walls of this hallowed institution. As a report released earlier this year by the Centre of Social Cohesion revealed in recent years UCL's Islamic society has invited an entourage of some of the most extreme and bigoted clerics they could get to come and preach to Muslim students on campus.
This is a phenomenon that UCL's authorities have shown themselves to be utterly complicit in. Later this month UCL will be playing host to the National Ramadan Conference, which judging by those invited to speak will be nowhere near as a prestigious event as its title might imply. However if raving anti-Semitism, Homophobia and anti-Westernism is your thing then this conference will be one not to be missed.
There's Jalal Ibn Saeed to look forward to who has described Jews as selfishly only caring about themselves while enslaving non-Jews who they believe to be damned, or there's Zahir Mahmoud who has declared his support for Hamas and martyrdom while courageously voicing his opposition to the British army and the western notion of free speech. But of course the jewel in the crown of this line up of hate has to be Uthman Lateef who is affiliated with the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir which the Government is currently looking into having made illegal. Lateef has also preached hatred against Homosexuals and championed the Muslim conquest of Europe. Yet probably the most exciting thing Lateef is ever known to have said in public is his prediction that the Devil will come from the Jews of Isfahan, accompanied by 70,000 of them by all accounts.
These are the kind of views that Malcolm Grant believes should be given a platform at his University.
And while Grant harbours delusions of being a warrior for free speech genuine warriors of Islamic holy war will be coming to recruit at UCL; something that both Boris Johnson and the British Army have been prevented from doing in the resent past. Meanwhile the prospects of an institution happy welcoming those who wish to destroy the values that it stands upon seem about as rosey as a civilization that does the same.
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