It is with regret that CagePrisoners announces the cancellation of the event “You think you know Guantanamo Bay?” which was scheduled for Thursday 18 April at Manchester Metropolitan Business School.CagePrisoners were not the organisers of the event but provided speakers. The evening was organised by local students, and featured Jahanghir Mohammed an adviser to CagePrisoners, and Omar Deghayes, a Board Member, as well as two local respected solicitors. It provided a unique opportunity for local students to get involved and hear about the important issues of justice, abuse of human rights and how to voice their concerns and work for change, in a responsible manner, as Cage has done for many years now.
Unfortunately, Manchester Metropolitan University pulled out of the event yesterday, and CagePrisoners was unable to assist the event organizers in securing another venue nearby. Yesterday, Manchester Metropolitan released a statement explaining that “an internal booking system had been used inappropriately to bypass University procedure”, such that a proper risk assessment for the event could not take place.
According to the University, “lacking the necessary information or preparation, the University was unable to support this event and it had to be cancelled". CagePrisoners was not involved in the process of booking the room and cannot comment on the procedures and any irregularities. We do however wonder why, given the event was booked and advertised some time ago, it took the University the day before the talk to flag up irregularities and cancel it.
This caused maximum disruption to the speakers and around 250 people who had planned to attend. It also gave organisers the shortest notice possible and virtually no chance to correct any procedural irregularities or move to an alternative venue. If the University or their advisers had concerns about the organisers or indeed Cage, these could have been raised earlier, and with us, allowing them to carry out a genuine risk assessment. Instead, it appears what they have done is relied on biased and inaccurate information provided by a fringe right-wing organisation which seems to have been given undue weight.
Even if we take Manchester Met’s explanation for the cancellation of the event at face value, it is useful to elucidate the broader political context of what is happening. It was seem that certain lobby groups wrote to Manchester Met prior to the event to inform them of the perceived problematic views of Mohammed and Deghayes.
Such organisations have extended efforts to label all our events as “extremist”, “intolerant”, “one-sided”, “hateful”, etc, often by recycling the same unsubstantiated links between CP staff and terrorist activity. The Institute of Race Relations recently outlined how the far right and neo-con groups are borrowing “research” from ‘anti-extremism groups’ (merely internet search of speeches and articles by speakers , chopped, taken out of context, and spun to provide evidence of hate and extremism). This kind of “anti-extremism” discourse is now commonplace to legitimize attacks on Muslim figures deemed “unsavoury”. This type of “research” and propaganda is similar to that used by Anders Brevik in his infamous anti Muslim hate manual. The information is then forwarded and used to harass and intimidate the venues and societies hosting Islamic events.
It is extremely sad that intelligent individuals at Universities, have become so suspicious of Muslims that they seem unable to see beyond these crude racist and anti –Islamic tactics. CagePrisoners is accustomed to managing the pressure placed on venues who host our events, as are all Muslim organizations and charities. We simply have to plan on the assumption that these venues may pull out, due to pressure from the far-right, or some on the “left”, or even the police or MI5 (e.g. MI5 visits to the venue to “remind” venues of the dangers associated with hosting a CP event). Similarly, Islamic societies are regularly forced to cancel events if the invited sheikhs or speakers are deemed “too extreme” or in this case “unsavoury” and their views counter to “British values”.
This kind of thought policing is a quotidian experience in the lives of British Muslims. It is also part and parcel of the £60 million Prevent strategy, which forms the core of the British government’s effort to quell “Islamic radicalism”. From the far-right to the far-left, many organizations have adopted the logic that guides British anti-terrorism efforts, namely the notion that there are “good” Muslims and “bad” Muslims, and that it is our right and obligation to monitor Muslim communities and distinguish between the two. Just last week, we learned that a new Prevent coordinator will be appointed for the Greater Manchester area. How shameful that so few voices have sought to defend the Muslim students’ rights by condemning the expanded presence of Prevent Officers on university campuses. CagePrisoners soundly rejects the assumption that treating Muslims as second-class citizens, and denying them their right to speak at public mainstream venues, silencing their views, is the only way to prevent terrorism.
When Muslims are spied on by their professors and student unions, and told they must tow a particular political and ideological line or speak in a manner that others require of them, or face the consequences, the message is that they do not deserve the same democratic liberties as others. And if Muslims know from an early age that they do not have an equal say in the democratic process, they have no rational reason to engage in it. The message they will take into their adulthood is that their University discriminated against them and denied them their right to free speech. Excluding Muslim voices from mainstream venues ensures they will only be heard at Muslim venues to Muslim audiences. That would be a sad state of affairs for British democracy and its commitment to a diverse society.
CagePrisoners.com
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