Exciting goings on at a Students’ Union affiliated society workshop at the University of Manchester: a speaker said that homosexuals would be executed in an ideal Islamic state. Whee! What a lot I missed out on by going to university so many decades ago.
1st year Middle Eastern studies student Colin Cortbus attended a public meeting at the Students’ Union last Wednesday 13th February organised by Global Aspirations and asked the chairperson of the meeting whether “in the Islamic society in which you strive for,” they would “feel comfortable, personally and morally, to kill a gay man.”
She responded, “Absolutely,” and added later that homosexuality was an “atrocity, because it goes against what God says.”
Mr Cortbus sent an undercover recording of the talk to The Mancunion the following day.
Wonderful, isn’t it. It’s an atrocity, because God says so. We know this how? It says so, in the book. How do we know that’s true? It says so. In the book. And on that firm basis, gay men should be killed. Absolutely.
The society lists its purpose on the Manchester Students’ Union website as “to highlight the universal aspirations of women and create discussions on campus as to what these are and what can be done about it. “
They further claim to “create an environment in which students can come together and discuss concerns.”
Though their page on the Students’ Union website makes no reference to Islamic beliefs, their Facebook page – which has 91 likes – describes them as: “A UoM society set up to discuss the aspirations of women, whether these can be achieved under the current system and showing Islam as an alternative.”
So it’s stealth Islamism? Lure them in with waffled about universal aspirations and then hypnotize them into Islamism? Cool plan.
A statement from Students’ Union Wellbeing Officer Cat Gray, read: “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. The Union operates a safe space policy where students should not be subject to any form of intimidation or discrimination. We encourage students who wish to report incidents which have made them feel unsafe to contact any member of the Exec Team.”
Oh shut up. Shut up with your deeply concerned and your safe space policy and your any form of intimidation. You have to pick one. You can’t just deeply concern everything and then go back to sleep; you have to pick one.
H/t Geoff
Religion of peace strikes again. 1:0
A-fucking-men.
Absolutely pig-disgusting! And the response by the student union is unbelievably homophobic. What was that about blaming the very people complaining for the harassment they receive?
Yeah I’m going there: Some of the people who run student orgs are too young and inexperienced to handle these situations. You can’t just mouth a policy and think you’ve solved the problem.
Universities are between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, they’re supposed to be places where ideas get discussed and challenged openly, with the goal that students get taught to *think*. On the other hand, given the importance of higher education, they’re not supposed to be discriminatory or hostile places for particular groups. Those two goals are in tension.
So: in a university setting, you can either say that your god hates fags, or you can say that the previous speaker’s religion is a load of barbaric bullshit, or you can say both and let the two parties fight it out (verbally!) in the open, or forbid the saying of either on the grounds that it’s going to get ugly, and we can’t have that. But you can’t both have a “safe space” and deal honestly with bigotry.
(Personally, I’m in favour of the “say everything & fight it out” option, but I’m not in the direct line of fire).
Wow, what is with the giggling over cutting people into pieces? Talk about the banality of evil.
I hope Geoff will let us know what ensues… That is wholly appalling, and a great fuss needs to made about it, and a stand taken against this easy Islamist hate, not only on right-minded blogs like this.
Can people please stop pretending that Hate Speech is Freeze Peach?
Somebody who advocated for crimes isn’t protected (and AFAIK the UK doesn’t have the US holy cow Freeze Peach anyway) by free speech.
There’s a conflict between two goods: The right of the islamist to advocate for murdering gays and the right of the gay person to live and to live without fear for their life.
How you decide the issue shows who you are.
The instruments of freedom were not made for those who want to take it away