This is a guest post from Student Rights
Last week Student Rights wrote how threats from far-right extremists had led to the cancellation of a conference examining Islamophobia at Birkbeck College.
With the conference details publicised by Casuals United, and a Facebook page telling far-right activists to “get ready for war”, the university felt it couldn’t guarantee security at the event.
However, in a very revealing take, the extremist prisoner support group CAGE has since used the issue to attack the government – and in doing so has exposed itself.
In an article on its website, CAGE and director Asim Qureshi utterly fail to mention the far-right threats, instead claiming Birkbeck was infiltrated by counter-terrorism officers in order to shut down the event.
The presence of a counter-extremism officer advising the university on the far-right threat is disingenuously twisted to imply the officer was concerned about preventing the conference.
This is followed by talk of a “social engineering programme to legitimise the government sponsored version of Islam”, as well as rhetoric asking if Islamophobia is a forbidden topic for Muslims to discuss.
The breathtaking dishonesty on display in the article should go a long way to debunking CAGE’s claims to be a human rights organisation concerned about the excesses of the War on Terror.
Instead, it all too clearly demonstrates the group’s true agenda – to spread resentment against the government within the Muslim community wherever possible regardless of the facts.
How else could the article’s failure to mention the threats be explained; particularly when CAGE has previously attacked the government for failing to address far-right extremism?
In July 2011 the same Asim Qureshi who ignores last week’s threats to Birkbeck argued that:
“Extremism/radicalisation are not monopolised by Muslims…but the PREVENT review has whitewashed right wing extremism and now…needs to be reconstructed with proper consultation to address violent and non-violent right wing ‘extremism’”.
Ignoring the evidence of far-right extremism to attack those attempting to challenge it is beyond contemptible, particularly when this is done to spread further hatred and grievance.
While it is a blow to free speech to see events cancelled due to threats then, hopefully this episode will have at least one useful purpose – further exposing CAGE and its aims.
