Must seek to avoid insulting other faiths
This stinks. Maryam reports:
I was invited to speak at Warwick University by the Warwick Atheists, Secularists and Humanists’ Society on 28 October 2015. The University Student Union has declined the request for me to speak saying the following:
This is because after researching both her and her organisation, a number of flags have been raised. We have a duty of care to conduct a risk assessment for each speaker who wishes to come to campus.
There a number of articles written both by the speaker and by others about the speaker that indicate that she is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus. This is in contravention of our external speaker policy:
The President (or equivalent) of the group organising any event is responsible for the activities that take place within their events. All speakers will be made aware of their responsibility to abide by the law, the University and the Union’s various policies, including that they:
- must not incite hatred, violence or call for the breaking of the law
- are not permitted to encourage, glorify or promote any acts of terrorism including individuals, groups or organisations that support such acts
- must not spread hatred and intolerance in the community and thus aid in disrupting social and community harmony
- must seek to avoid insulting other faiths or groups, within a framework of positive debate and challenge
You see that last one? Must seek to avoid insulting other faiths – so Warwick University might as well be Saudi Arabia then, which imprisons and tortured people for “insulting” its chosen religion by writing about secularism.
This is a university.
It’s outrageous.
Are they forgetting that most faiths hold as an article of… ummmm… faith, that all other faiths are wrong and their existence an insult to the ‘one, true faith’? (Sorry)
Funny, isn’t it, that the one thing that can unite religions that have been at war with one another for centuries, is the thought that they must at all costs shut up the people who claim, with justification, that they are all wrong.
@ ^ tiggerthewing : Yup. “Funny” is one word for it anyhow – I can think of some other words too.
Tiggerthewing,
I think it’s a safe guess that if speakers somehow “insulted” the other two abrahamic faiths, or kuffars in general, those speakers would still be judged halal.
Yes, I can see the last one. I see also the first one about inciting hatred. I see that in their opinion Maryam Namazie “is highly inflammatory, and could incite hatred on campus”.
Show me a speaker on a controversial, emotionally engaging topic who couldn’t – I mean, really couldn’t – “incite hatred on campus”. (Take “inciting hatred” in a broad sense – keep in mind that this is not about calling for pogroms; it’s rather about … hmm … being extremely annoying to a group of students.) In return, I will show you the most boring speaker on earth. Hint: in both cases this will be probably one and the same person.
Universities are turning into their own parodies.
The primary vocation of a university is to challenge accepted notions and to stir the pot to see what’s in it.
When a university abdicates that role, it’s no longer a university…it’s a daycare.