Post date: 21-Jan-2011 03:49:32
There are questions being asked at universities throughout the UK about the need for students to form Ahlul Bayt Societies (ABSOCS) when most universities already support Islamic Student Societies (ISSOCS). The root of the problem is that without sufficient oversight and firm compliance to their constitutions all student societies are liable to be controlled by small self perpetuating groups of like minded people. Whenever a student society not only fails to represent minority activities but also begins to deliberately obstruct them an alternative representative body will develop and that is what is happening at universities in the UK.
With no clear supervision of ISSOCS they are open to all manner of abuses that infringe the rights of the students whose rights they were set up to protect. Books they disagree with are removed, defaced or destroyed. Requests for room hires are ignored or rejected and abusive discriminatory statements are made and sometimes supported by university staff. The Open University Students Association was forced close its online Islamic Conference because of abusive arguments between followers of different branches of Sunni thought. However in a Religious Studies forum the moderator, appointed by the university, seemed unaware that for one Muslim to call another a non-believer is as offensive as using four-letter words, such as liar, in the House of Commons.
However it is not simply a Muslim 'problem'. Similar activities by left wing groups in the Sixties and Seventies are well documented and even the Allotment Associations which my father belonged to were not free from cliques and caucusses abusing their positions. What is needed is for University governments to ensure that Student Associations fulfill their constitutional requirements or lose the financial and material support which they are provided with to serve all their members. If groups serving on student association committees want to use student associations to promote sectarian agendas let them fund themselves as they have forced ABSOCS and other alternative student organisations to do!