by Jules Gomes, Middle East Forum
Farah Ahmed Attacked British Schools for Condemning Child Marriage and Polygamy
The University of Cambridge is under fire for recruiting a Muslim scholar with past ties to an outlawed Islamist movement who trashed Western education as hostile to Islamic principles.
Farah Ahmed, who has denounced British schools for teaching that “polygamy or marriage under the age of 16” is “archaic and discriminatory to women,” was appointed Assistant Research Professor in the University of Cambridge’s Faculty of Education last year.
Ahmed presents her views on Western education in her chapter, “The Western Education System and the British National Curriculum,” in the book Education and Identity: The Dilemma of Muslims in the West, published by Istinarah Press, an Islamic publisher, in 2017.
On August 11, The Spectator revealed that Ahmed was a former supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a terrorist organization aspiring to establish a global Islamic Caliphate. U.K. officials banned the organization in 2024. Ahmed first wrote her essay as a Hizb ut-Tahrir pamphlet in 2002, warning that British Muslims need “to recognize that Western education is a threat to our beliefs and values.”
Three Scandals Take Toll on Prestigious University
The revelations about Ahmed are a public-relations catastrophe for Cambridge University’s Department of Education as it struggles to recover from the scandal surrounding Jason Arday, a professor of Sociology of Education who committed suicide amid multiple accusations of plagiarism and diversity, equality, and inclusion (DEI) favoritism. Arday was described as a “serial fantasist” for reportedly fabricating his life story and achievements.
Deborah Prentice, the university’s first American vice-chancellor, faces further backlash after an employment tribunal ruled she had “shut down” a whistleblower’s complaints in a bullying row at Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy.
“Farah Ahmed’s anti-Western views are not incidental and beg the question of how unserious the vetting process of some of the world’s most influential universities has become,” Nuriyah Khan, a Fellow of the Ideological Defense Institute, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
“Years of DEI and critical race theory have created a hierarchy of acceptable views where Western institutions may be condemned wholesale, whilst Islamist ideas are endlessly excused or contextualised,” observed Khan, an expert in Islamic law and legal pluralism.
“This comes not long after a debate scrutinizing Islam at the Oxford Union was postponed and nearly prevented from going ahead, while George Abaraonye, its former president-elect, publicly appeared to celebrate the murder of Charlie Kirk,” Khan added.