Academia siding with the enemy? I just don't see it happening.

/sarcasm off

In my experience universities tended to think that undergraduates should think for themselves.

But I do agree more needs to be done to expose what is really beneath apparently innocuous groups.

If I remember correctly Stalinism was able to enrol 'bright' young men at Cambridge. (Possibly elsewhere, but that is because of my failing memory).

Suggestion from an NUS friend of mine was to look out for societies like "Muslim Media Forum". They tend to be Hizb-Ut-Tahrir front organisations. Then again, HUT might not even be the real issue.

Some years ago I jokingly formulated a "law of advertising" that essentially states that advertisers will take a product's weakest attribute and make a selling feature of it.

For example, a slow hack of a car will be advertised as "fastest in its class"; and the "class" will be narrowly defined to exclude virtually everything else. The corollary being, of course, that anything advertised as a strong point is, in fact, its worst point.

The same caveat applies to the hidden agendas of university societies and many other "front" groups or parties. Beware of anything with "PEACE", "JUSTICE", "FREEDOM", "MODERATE" or "NON ALIGNED" in the society's name or manifesto.

When I was an undergrad the Christian Union put great efforts into recruiting students. I see no reason why militant Islamic Organisations were and are not trying the same...

http://www.opinionjournal.com/diary/?id=110008051

All the easier to record potential threats and monitor them, I'd say.
Let them recruit the fools publically, I'd bet there's more than one representative of London there taking notes of people and comparing them to school records.

not only are radical Islamists trying to recruit at UK universities, the universities are doing little to combat it

What's the big deal? It's just like joining a trade union in the 1970s. /Guy Herbert

"In my experience universities tended to think that undergraduates should think for themselves."
I hope that you are being sarcastic.

Stevan G is right. You always know that the Democratic Rebublic of Somewhere is not.

Like joining a trades union in the 70s?

No; but it is like joining the Marxist student groups in the 1960s, 70s or 80s. Not exactly harmless, but not the end of civilization, nor a sign that an individual student is doing more than looking for a gesture of commitment.

This is nothing new. Al Muhajiroun were infiltrating Bradford University in the Nineties. I know. I was there.

No; but it is like joining the Marxist student groups in the 1960s, 70s or 80s. Not exactly harmless, but not the end of civilization

Indeed, but that also sometimes got you 'looked at' by the security services (occasionally even for the right reasons). I would hope joining an Islamist group would do likewise.

The analogy is more of those who became communists in the 1930s,it will be intersting to se what happens with this goverments affirmative action a few years hence when the equivalent of the Cambridge Five come to light.

Ron Brick is absolutely correct. The only difference between the 1930s Cambridge Five's contemporaries and today is that today's Cambridge Five will want to kill all the professors and raze the universities.

On the other hand, that's exactly what the Commies did -- kill the "intelligentsia" -- so maybe they are identical.

Shouldn't you right-libertarian folks be in favour of people becoming religious lunatics if they so wish? No government interference with thought and all that?

I am all in favour of letting people be religious lunatics... it is the fact groups may be fascilitating people to turn themselves into suicide bombers I have a problem with.

So at that point you're in favour of a strong state intervention?

So at that point you're in favour of a strong state intervention?

Just to make sure I understand your question: are you asking if I favour strong state action* if an organisation dedicated to the violence backed imposition of Sharia on a global scale (and in the context of living in London where Muslim extremists have blown themselves up on trains and buses in order to murder a random selection of British people little more than a year ago) starts trying to recruit people in the UK? Is that indeed what you are asking?

*= as a classical liberal, naturally I regard defending me against threats to my life as one of the few legitimate roles of the state.

Just another way in which radical Islam uses the inherent double standards of PC to advance their cause, with the acacemics and student unions at best being 'useful idiots' or at worst co-conspirators in the destruction of Western society.

The major difference is that the latter will allow you your life in exchange for the enslavement of your mind, while the former demands total submission of your life to its rules on pain of death.

Basically Perry, I'm trying to work out at what point you stop not being in favour of a strong state - is it that you're against government spending unless it's on the military, police and secret services?

I'm assuming there's something that I'm missing, but it seems to me that's what your stance boils down to?

is it that you're against government spending unless it's on the military, police and secret services?

Indeed. That sums my position up pretty well... perhaps add a CDC function as well.