Metro UK on yet another incident of gender segregation connected with a university:

An Islamic society at a top university has come under fire after segregating men and women at a gala dinner by using a large screen running through the middle of the group.

The Muslim society at the London School of Economics sat guests on either male-only or female-only tables at the dinner on Sunday night with a 7ft screen between the two groups.

In case the women all got pregnant from seeing the men.

They also had to use different phone lines to order tickets. Because…what? I have no idea. It can’t be something Mo said, since there were no damn phones then.

he sold out event, organised by the society which claims to have hundreds of members, was held at Grand Connaught Rooms, in Holborn.

It was greeted with a mixed reaction with some Muslims saying they felt ‘intimidated’, while the head of LSE’s student union, who attended the meal, telling the MailOnline she ‘had no problem’.

Nona Buckley-Irvine, the head of LSE’s SU,  said the atmosphere was ‘comfortable and relaxed’.

Not very thoughtful then, is she. She should have a problem. I hope she would have a problem if Muslims were segregated from everyone else.

‘I had a lovely time at the dinner and barely noticed the separation between men and women,’ she told MailOnline.

No doubt the patrons at whites-only lunch counters said the same thing 50-odd years ago. It’s easy to barely notice bad things done to other people.

She added: ‘Where groups would like to organise themselves in a way that fits with their religious, cultural and personal beliefs, both genders consent, and there is no issue I have no problem.

‘It is not for me to decide what is right or wrong with our Islamic society and they are one of the most inclusive societies I have ever worked with.’

Sigh. Yes it is. I know it’s awkward, but yes it is.

Pictures posted online by the society after the event only showed the men’s side with one guest taking a light hearted approach to the segregation.

Ew!!! Her face is actually blurred out! That’s what they do in Saudi Arabia! London is not in Saudi Arabia. Fucking hell.

Halima at Tales of Courage is disgusted.

The latest entry into the tragic chronology of gender segregation at British universities is the unsettling incident at London School of Economics (LSE). The LSESU Islamic Society decided to hold a segregated event (with cleverly personalised invites to “brothers” and “sisters”) for their members and unsurprisingly some LSESU officers happily joined in this sordid affair. The General Secretary of the LSESU Nona Buckley-Irvine was very pleased about the event and declared that as a feminist she saw no problem with this gender segregation. I mean, I guess if brown Muslim women want to have their rights reduced, why should she care? As a privileged white feminist she clearly has no concern in this matter – for her it was a simply colourful cultural exchange where cute Muslims sit separately in case some lustful event takes place between the opposite genders. Inequality against brown women is not a concern.

Inequality tourism without even leaving London; how exotic.

She was an Islamist herself when she was a teenager.

When I was a young impressionable 15 year old, my exposure to the world of universities was through my HT sister who took me to ISOC & HT events held at university lecture halls. Obviously they were gender segregated as well. Mostly the “sisters” would sit at the back, and if you’re lucky, on the left side. I found it odd, but also I thought something like “oh wow look they are accommodating us and my, my, one day the glorious Khilafah will be here and we can be like this everywhere!” It was fascinating for me to see the marriage of young aspirational Muslim students being all political and engaging on this platform in an “Islamic” way. But I also remember it made me feel uncomfortable in that why was being a woman so lustful? I felt ashamed of my body and thought this was God’s way of reminding me of my potential fitnah.

And that’s one compelling reason the whole idea is so hideously wrong.

At home I was intent on making this go as Islamically as possible too. Never mind it was undermining my rights – but hey we do what God askes of us slaves. At my sister’s wedding that year I created a big fuss at home over gender segregation at her wedding. My sister and I went to lengths to hire a hall which would accommodate our gender segregation aims. On the wedding day we managed to upset most of our uncles (with whom we had grown up with and known since childhood) because we didn’t let them enter into the “sisters” area to see the bride. Our uncles (non-mahram kind) were cultural Muslims and found our new fundamentalism astonishing and disrespectful. They were so upset they decided to boycott the wedding!

Well done them! But she just thought they were rude, at the time.

Now though? She’s fought free.

Thankfully I grew up and wanted full equality as a woman. Today, I stand firmly against gender segregation because it is discriminatory. While I once participated in it and enforced it, my personal journey has led me to now reject it. I was a child when I did such things. When I left Islam, this was one of the associated beliefs that I also happily let go of. The UCL debate between Laurence Krauss and Hamza Tzortzis was the first time since I left Islam that I gone to a debate at a university and I was faced with enforced gender segregated seating. That day my feelings were so mixed. Here I was 12 years later and I didn’t want to sit in the “sisters” area. I didn’t want to be discriminated against for being a female. I wanted to sit with my partner and friends. The events of that day will be etched in my mind forever. I remember I wanted to get up and move to the men’s area, in Rosa Park’s style, but I felt crippled and afraid. I was afraid of the stigma attached to this act. At that point it was so vividly clear to me that all those years ago when I went to HT talks at universities perhaps there were woman there like me today, who didn’t want to be discriminated but felt ashamed to speak up against it on the day.

Times have now changed and I will speak up. I will speak up against it at home, in public and most definitely to the non-Muslim women and men at British universities who make it their business to support gender segregation. To them I say: You are not part of this community, you have no understanding, so please mind your business. Either help us reform our communities and spaces or refrain from making it worse. It is not islamophobic to criticise human rights violations promoted by the Islamist ideology. It is not an attack on Muslims. You either help us or quit being part of the problem.

Help or get out of the road.