by Andrew Gilligan, Spectator
Image: Wikimedia Creative Commons
Students of Cambridge University’s gradual self-destruction will recall our disclosure last month that it has appointed as assistant professor a woman called Farah Ahmed, a former senior activist in the racist, separatist and now banned terrorist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.
In a 2002 Hizb pamphlet, published before the group was proscribed in 2024, Ahmed co-authored an article which said Muslims should study engineering and computers ‘to produce advanced weaponry for Jihad in order that the deen [Islam] may dominate over all other deens.’ In another chapter written on her own, she attacked ‘western education’ as a ‘threat’ to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticised British schools for teaching pupils that child marriage is wrong. All this naturally made her perfect for a senior post in Cambridge’s education faculty, whose other stars included Jason Arday.
Now we have the first detailed response to all this from the glittering fortress of academic rigour that is Cambridge’s Faculty of Education. Rupert Wegerif, professor of education in the same faculty, has been tweeting that he’s ‘disappointed by how readily people join in a witch hunt without apparently thinking or checking. [Ahmed’s Hizb pamphlet] was written nearly 25 years ago… should a 24-year-old text simply be presented as proof of what someone believes today?… Why not read Ahmed’s later work?’
Well, Rupert, as part of my research into assistant professor Ahmed I did, of course, read her later work. Have you?