This Saturday, a ‘Call of Duty’ Dawah training course taught by Subboor Ahmed, a member of the Islamic Education and Research Academy (IERA), will take place at the group’s London offices.
Held in association with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS), this event was also promoted by London Metropolitan University Islamic Society.
It will be followed by a similar event without Ahmed at Brunel University next week.
Recent IERA courses have also been promoted outside of London, with training from Hamza Tzortzis at Manchester’s Salaam Masjid advertised by Lancaster University Islamic Society in November.
Tzortzis has previously declared of apostates: “if someone’s going to be fighting against the community, they should be killed”, while other IERA members have excused domestic violence and claimed Islam and democracy are incompatible.
Given these views, that the group has such easy access to students should be of concern – and video evidence recently uncovered by Student Rights demonstrates the effect such access can have.
This shows a discussion between Subbor Ahmed and Imran Ibn Mansur, aka ‘Dawah Man’, an IERA-associated instructor recently cancelled by several universities over his intolerant views.
Mansur has called homosexuality an “obscene, filthy shameless act”, and attacked “filthy Western culture”.
In the video he says that before he became involved with IERA he “had been watching Hamza’s videos”, and organised an IERA Dawah training event at university.
Mansur then claims he was inspired by Ahmed to join IERA, saying:
“I remember I saw you…on the steps of the stage, so I went up and I said “I don’t care what you’re going to say…I want to be part of the team, I want to be part of the Dawah. I want to volunteer””.
Ahmed, meanwhile, admits that the aim of the Dawah training is to recruit students, saying “I was looking for good volunteers”.
That this is the outcome of IERA training sessions should be taken into account by universities, particularly when they are organised and advertised by students.
While institutions have a legal duty to defend freedom of expression, they also have a duty of care to students – and must work to ensure that extremists cannot recruit on campus without challenge.