Student Rights has obtained a video showing a speaker at the Manchester University “Global Aspirations of Women Society” endorsing the execution of gay people:
Student Colin Cortbus attended a meeting at the Students’ Union last Wednesday 13th Februaryorganised by the Global Aspirations of Women society. He asked the chairperson of the meeting if “in the Islamic society in which you strive for” they would “feel comfortable, personally and morally, to kill a gay man?”
“Absolutely” came the response. The speakers added later that homosexuality was an “atrocity, because it goes against what God says”.
Cortbus also asked whether, in the Islamic state that they were advocating, they would feel confident in killing him if he “did something as completely innocent as kiss another man outside the Students’ Union?”
In response, the chair of the meeting said to the small group, “Yeah, absolutely”, adding “But it’s the fact that you can’t just see it as it is. People have this issue that the punishment, penal code, everything is so completely inhumane, but who even says that these things are inhumane?”
Cortbus made the case for a pluralistic Islam, stating that many Muslims would not execute homosexuals and was told “A lot of people would“.
It looks to me – at a very very first glance – that the Global Aspirations of Women Society – is a Hizb ut Tahrir front. It has the ‘look and feel’ of one.
Hizb ut Tahrir is subject to a “no platform” policy by the NUS.
Khadijah Afzal, of the Global Aspirations of Women Society has put up the following response on the society’s Facebook page:
We would like to begin by expressing my concerns regarding the under hand tactics employed by yourself as a means to get a scoop for your newspaper. You would think after the Levenson enquiry regarding the lack of ethics surrounding the journalistic world you would have decided to approach this matter with integrity. Especially since having approached the society and asking whether we would be willing to do an interview which we approved of, you still slyly chose to record the workshop we were holding without our permission or the permission of anyone else that was present.
Secondly, you failed to put our discussion into perspective for the aims of ‘ global aspirations of women’s society endeavours to discuss the plight of women here at home and globally and looks to political alternatives to end oppression, subjugation and the dishonour of women and hence includes Islam as in the debate along with secular/ liberal systems as an alternative. When we look at the discontent in which people are living … (cont. p 94)
Utter filth.
Manchester Students’ Union has announced that they have “initiated an investigation into the story in the Mancunion, both in terms of the student society meeting described and the way in which the information was obtained”:
Cat Gray, the MUSU’s wellbeing officer said: “We are deeply concerned with the covert filming of a student event within the Union. We are also deeply concerned by the suggestion that comments of a homophobic nature have been made.”
It would be something of a mistake for the Students Union to do anything other than applaud Mr Cortbus and Students Rights for bringing the vicious and extreme nature of this organisation to the attention of the public.
