So this happened. The Irish Independent reports:
Maryam Namazie was due to give a talk to the Society for International Affairs on Monday on ‘Apostasy and the rise of Islam’ but decided to withdraw from the event after college security imposed “certain conditions”.
“I’ve just been informed… that college security (why security?) has claimed that the event would show the college is ‘one-sided’ and would be ‘antagonising’ to Muslim students,” she wrote on her blog.
…
“I was told that two conditions were required for the event to go ahead; one, that it only be open to students of the college, and two, that there would be a moderator to chair the talk”.
Speaking to Independent.ie, Ms Namazie said she decided against speaking because “such conditions had not been placed on other speakers.”
Last month preacher Sheikh Kamal El Mekki was invited to Trinity College in an event co-hosted by the TCD Muslim Student Association (MSA) and the Irish branch of the AlMaghrib Institute.
His visit to the university was controversial because, in the past, the scholar has explained why apostates should get the death penalty and why the punishment of stoning exists for adultery.
And yet no conditions were imposed on his talk, but they were imposed on Maryam’s. Why’s that then? She doesn’t call for anyone’s death. She doesn’t “explain” why people should be killed for having sex or leaving Islam, or for anything else.
“It is unsettling because these people are given free access to a campus, while those who oppose violence and speak out against the violation of rights of non-Muslims and Muslims alike have restrictions placed on them,” said Ms Namazie, who was invited to speak in part because of Mr El Mekki’s lecture.
“No conditions were placed on his talk, nor was there threats to cancel his event over concerns that his position on death for apostates would ‘antagonise’ ex-Muslim and Muslim students who do not support apostasy laws.”
“If you criticise the Islamist movement, which is a far right political movement, you are seen as attacking ordinary Muslims – and this is not the case. Muslims are not a homogenous group. If you criticise the English Defence League, you’re not attacking the English.”
Maryam is working with other societies at TCD to get an (unconditional) invitation to speak there.
But…Islamists want to kill Jews. That makes them ‘progressive’ in University culture.
Ahhhh .. but there is a profound and telling difference between the two side presented. Muslim extremists kill people; those who question them do not. It is clear who is going to be accommodated.
Also, she’s got two X chromosomes, so she poses a greater threat….
Did you seriously expect a rational decision from a college with ‘Trinity’ in its name?
Someone commented that in the very conservative, semi-theocracy Ireland of a couple of decades back the Universities were one place where liberal/progressive ideas were discussed. Now that Ireland has become less in thrall to the Roman Catholic Church, its liberal institutions have been exploited by another theocracy – an alien one, which because it doesn’t come dressed in a mitre or habit, is not recognised for what it is.