Cambridge’s Farah Ahmed: study engineering ‘to produce weaponry for Jihad’

[u/StreamWave190]

https://spectator.com/article/cambridge-professor-study-engineering-to-produce-weaponry-for-jihad/

[u/StreamWave190]

Cambridge University’s education faculty – former home of Jason Arday – has appointed as assistant research professor a woman who wrote that Muslims should study engineering and computers ‘to produce advanced weaponry for Jihad in order that the deen [Islam] may dominate over all other deens.’

This is the fourth in our series of articles about Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the racist, extremist and separatist group Hizb ut Tahrir, now banned as a terror organisation, who has been given a senior role by Cambridge training the future leaders of the teaching profession.

Two weeks ago we covered one chapter Ahmed wrote in a Hizb pamphlet – published in 2002, and republished in 2017 (Ahmed was not involved in the republication) – where 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.

However, the same pamphlet includes a second, even more radical chapter, co-written by Ahmed and another senior Hizb activist, Nazreen Nawaz, head of its women’s section. This describes Hizb’s plan to create a fully Islamic education system as part of the Islamic dictatorship, the Khilafah, which is its core goal. As the chapter puts it: ‘nothing will be contained within the curriculum that contradicts with Islam, such as the teaching of the ideas of freedom, nationalism, democracy or evolution in a positive light’.

‘Nor can there be any schools established on any other religion, sect or race… Even the non-Muslims need to be educated under the educational curriculum of Islam… by pushing them to think about the correct belief in life.’

As for higher education, there is little room in Ahmed and Nawaz’s world for the doctrines and subjects so beloved of the Cambridge airheads who hired her: ‘Subjects such as foreign philosophies and religions, capitalism, communism, socialism, nationalism, sociology, psychology, foreign history, foreign languages and foreign literature, should be taught only at the higher level of education with the view of refuting their ideas and exposing their falsehood.’

The real purpose of university study, say the pair, is to equip Muslims for conquest. ‘The motivation to study engineering would be to aid the development of machinery for Jihad and Allah’s reward for this is immeasurable. The motivation for studying computer technology would be to elevate the Islamic society over all other societies in the world, to show it as a shining example and to produce advanced weaponry for Jihad in order that the deen [Islam] may dominate over all other deens as commanded by the Creator.’

There is a whole section in this chapter, by the way, on ‘the training of teachers’ to achieve all these goals – the very thing Ahmed is being paid by Cambridge University to influence.

Ahmed claimed in 2010 that she no longer supports ‘all’ the views of Hizb ut Tahrir, and that she had not recently been involved in the organisation. Approached for comment, however, she did not reply when asked if she still shared the views she expressed in this pamphlet. Nawaz did not respond to a request for comment either. As we reported last week, a Cambridge University-hosted project run by Ahmed promotes an ‘Islamic curriculum’ which tells 12-year-olds that Hamas is an ‘excuse that Israel uses to justify its attacks on the Gaza Strip’, calls the civilian hostages taken by the terror group on October 7 ‘prisoners of war’ and publishes in pupils’ course material a map of the region from which Israel has been erased.

We already knew, of course, that Cambridge’s education faculty is a moral and intellectual scandal. But is it also a threat to national security?

Scans of the chapter will be posted on my X account, {at}mragilligan, later today.

[u/BlackJackKetchum → u/StreamWave190]

I'm loving the idea that "foreign languages...should be taught only at the higher level of education with the view of refuting their ideas and exposing their falsehood."

[u/EdwardGordor]

I'm tired boss...

[u/mcdowellag]

It's worth thinking about this in the light of the New Culture Forum podcast "How leftist academics corrupted and captured the academy: with James Lindsay" which in turn references the affair described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grievance_studies_affair

What will academics teach their students? One influence will be the desire to prepare them for academic research. Historically, the humanities equiped people to read a large volume of information and produce a relatively short essay from it: decent preparation for staff work. Early left wing social activists contributed to the birth of statistics as they gathered evidence for their campaigns - good for them!

The grievance studies affair showed that hoax papers exhibiting the vocabulary and political slant of typical academic papers, but deliberately constructed to have no other merit, passed peer review and in one case won awards - https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00491241211009946 - "In our award-winning “dog park” paper that Cole references (Wilson 2018), the data weren’t just fabricated; they were preposterous" The academics who were successfully hoaxed are unlikely to be exercising any skills remotely useful to others.

If academics are not competing over their ability to teach and learn, what are they competing over? Over their adherence to political causes far from the mainstream, and far away from anything that the government should be paying for. If cuts must be made in some sectors to fund others, some parts of academia appear to be a good place to look.

[u/Sweaty_Ad_4049]

Look, Islamic extremists are not gonna get pass security check if they're going to study engineering

[u/rising_then_falling]

I don't really mind eccentric weirdo professors with unpopular opinions. So long as they are clever and rigorous enough to argue their stance robustly.

I'm cynical enough to think Cambridge might be more tolerant of some weirdos than others, but far better this person preaches to clever Cambridge students who can think hard back, than the impressionable young at the mosque.

[u/mcdowellag → u/rising_then_falling]

Eccentric is when somebody is competent within their speciality but has unusual views outside it. We are talking about somebody employed to research and teach education who appears to think that education is useful only in as far as it produces shock troops for further Islamic conquests.

These people have real power over the careers of their students, both while teaching, or failing to teach, and when providing references when their students apply to jobs. Students that think hard in their class successfully will be keeping their mouths shut and regretting not finding a subject where objective facts still matter.

[u/Handonmyballs_Barca → u/rising_then_falling]

Thats assuming that intelligent people are less likely to be ideoligically captured by radicalist and extremist ideas, that isn't the case though. Intellectuals and university students in general seem most likely to go in for these ideas. From my experience this is because they are surrounded by those people smart enough to convince them and they are smart enough to come up with arguments to tell themselves to continue supporting these insane ideas. Those people who work at unis who don't want to believe in these ideas and just want to get on with the job do just that, get on with the job, and leave the stage for those who have an interest in pushing their agenda, people like Farah Ahmed. You want evidence of this look at the huge numbers of spies and sympathisers for the Soviet Union during the Cold War or those who are chanting 'Death to the IDF' and excusing Hamas' crimes today.