27 Apr 2013 U.K. media is reporting that Baroness Warsi, the minister for faith and communities, has spoken at an event hosted by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) last month to attack what the organization calls the ‘demonisation’ of Muslim students by the media. According to the Daily Telegraph report:
FOSIS Logo
27 Apr 2013 Baroness Warsi, the minister for faith and communities, addressed an event staged by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) last month to attack the ‘demonisation’ of Muslim students by the media.
FOSIS has hosted numerous extremist and terrorist speakers at its annual conference and other events, including Azzam Tamimi, who supports suicide bombing, Haitham al-Haddad, who believes that music is a ‘prohibited and fake message of love and peace’, and Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda recruiter described as a key inspiration for three of the 9/11 hijackers and numerous later attacks.
Several convicted terrorists have been officers of university Islamic societies affiliated to FOSIS and have attended its events.
FOSIS has been condemned by Baroness Warsi’s colleagues, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, for its failure to ‘fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology’.
Mrs May ordered that the Civil Service withdraw from a graduate recruitment fair held by FOSIS and has refused to meet the organisation’s leaders.
Khobaib Hussain, one of the Birmingham men sentenced last week for his part in a terrorist plot, described by police as the ‘biggest since 7/7’, was a student at Wolverhampton University at the time of his arrest.
Before he was detained, members of the university’s Islamic society, which is affiliated to FOSIS, posted online comments stating that ‘nothing is more honourable than dying for the cause of Islam’ and that ‘America’s time will come’, though it is not known whether Hussain was a member of the society or was radicalised at the university.
The Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) is an umbrella grouping of most major university Islamic societies in the U.K. A 2008 report outlined its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and concluded that ISOC’s (campus Islamic societies) and FOSIS members are more likely to hold intolerant views. In August 2011, FOSIS issued a press release expressing its “disappointment” at the decision by the Irish government to ban Global Muslim Brotherhood leader Youssef Qaradawi from entering the country. In June 2010, FOSIS condemned the decision by the Home Office to ban Dr Zakir Naik from visiting the UK. Dr. Naik is a Muslim televangelist who has had a long history of extremist and anti-semitic statements.
