The Islamist group, the Islamic Education and Research Academy (iERA) has publicly expressed anger at having two of its most prominent speakers banned from the University of London this week.
Abdur Raheem Green and Hamza Tzortzis were this week stopped from appearing at the University of London following warnings from the Metropolitan Police.
Green has been criticised in the past for claiming that “Islam is not compatible with democracy” and that a husband may use “physical force… a very light beating” against his wife. In 2006 he was recorded suggesting that the buildings attacked on 9/11 fell too quickly and that they may have been demolished, and that “one way or another, there is a lot of deception going on right now”.
Hamza Tzortzis has previously endorsed barbaric punishments such as beheading, has said that homosexuality should be a criminal act, and has said that Islam is incompatible with democracy. He is a former member of the Islamist group Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
But iERA was clearly not about to take the ban lying down. A robust and aggressive e-mail was distributed to its e-mail list this week, asking for people to “Give 60 seconds to defend Islam and Muslims!” The letter asks recipients to e-mail the university, and to call Paul Wilkinson, the Director of Property and Facilities Management at the University of London.
But the worrying message comes both at the bottom of that e-mail, and in the pro-forma letter drafted by iERA for its supporters to threaten the university with.
After, “Angry Muslims Unite!”, the group supplies a pre-written text to be submitted to the university, which “demands explanation as to why this decision was taken” and claims to represent the entire Muslim community in Britain. It states, “This whole matter is seen by the Muslim community as an Islamophobic and hostile attack on our values. If you do not reverse this decision, we will be vocally raising this issue in the Muslim community both here and abroad as to your stance against our community.” [Emphasis added]
Threats to raise the issue abroad have been interpreted by some as iERA using its foreign Islamist connections to intimidate the university and its staff. The matter is likely to be seen as concerning given that a basic look at the iERA website sees that its speakers are tied to the Islam Channel, which carried advertisements for DVDs of radical al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, and hosted the “Global Peace and Unity” event which has featured various Islamist speakers in the past, including Zakir Naik who approved of Osama Bin Laden’s terrorist tactics against the United States.