Wall Street Journal Editorial: Suspect Puts U.K. Schools in Focus

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB126221066885110853.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

Accused airline bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s affiliation with University College London is reviving concerns in Britain that its universities and colleges-even the elite-can breed Islamic radicalism.

In several of the terrorist plots linked to London since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the U.S., the suspects have been university students or graduates. In many cases, the schools involved are among Britain’s most prestigious, including UCL, King’s College London and the London School of Economics, all of which receive taxpayer funding.

Despite questions raised by government officials in the U.K. about whether Mr. Abdulmutallab, the son of a prominent banker in Nigeria, was radicalized in London, testimonials from students and other acquaintances there have failed to confirm that he became a terrorist while in the country.

According to Shiraz Maher, a former member of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir who now campaigns against Islamic extremism, some attackers with links to London were active in their schools’ Islamic societies. Mr. Maher was a student at Cambridge University and was friends with two men who later carried out an attack at Glasgow Airport. He testified at trial against one of the men.

Following the foiled plot to blow up trans-Atlantic jetliners using liquid explosives in 2006-a plan hatched by a group that included at least two men who studied at the U.K.’s University of Portsmouth-the government published guidelines on battling Islamic extremism on college campuses.

Then in January 2008, the government launched a program to provide guidance to higher-education institutions called “Promoting Good Campus Relations, Fostering Shared Values and Preventing Violent Extremism in Universities and Higher Education Colleges.”

A spokesman for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said the government continues to work with universities and colleges to help manage and identify the risks posed by violent extremism.

“Overall, our assessment is that there is a serious but not widespread risk of radicalization leading to violent extremism and there is no evidence of systematic radicalization in universities,” the spokesman said.

According to the Centre for Social Cohesion, a London think tank that works to combat extremism, university campuses continue to be a hub for potential terrorists.

“A lot of people who commit terrorist acts here are university graduates,” said Hannah Stuart, a researcher at the CSC who co-authored a widely circulated study in 2008 entitled “Islam on Campus.” In a poll done as part of the study, 28% of Muslim students queried said it is justifiable to kill in the name of religion, but only if that religion is under attack. Only 1% of non-Muslim students had a similar response.

The concern about the colleges as a breeding ground for extremist views has persisted despite repeated government efforts to use outreach and intelligence operations to address the problem.

In a number of cases, including as recently as this year, Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Islamic preacher linked to the shooter in the recent attack on the Ft. Hood military compound in Texas, spoke or was invited to speak to groups at London universities, according to the CSC. U.S. officials have said they believe Mr. Awlaki had contact with Mr. Abdulmutallab.

Radicalization on campus is in part blamed for a recent rise in anti-Semitic incidents at British universities. In 2008, the Community Security Trust, a British Jewish organization, recorded 67 anti-Semitic incidents, including three physical attacks, in which the victims were students, student bodies or academics. There is no record of how many such attacks are attributable to Islamic extremists.

Anti-extremists like Mr. Maher say the U.K. government has been too timid to stamp out radical activity, in part for fear of being branded Islamophobic.

In one of the first instances of a British suicide bomber, in 2003, two King’s College London students attacked a bar in Tel Aviv, Israel. Ahmed Omar Sheikh, a former LSE student, was convicted in a Pakistani court of murdering Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.

Wall Street Journal Editorial: Suspect Puts U.K. Schools in Focus

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