Re: Why is Cambridge platforming Islamic creationism?

Julian <[email protected]> wrote:
> An academic project hosted by Cambridge University platforms 
> creationism, the belief that the world was created by God in seven days. 
> It promotes an academic paper demanding that schoolchildren be taught to 
> “actively resist” the science of evolution.
> 
> At Charles Darwin’s old university, where a college is named after him, 
> Darwin’s discovery is now described by one Cambridge researcher as an 
> example of “potential challenges posed by Eurocentric monoculture.”
> 
> It is the latest sign of fundamental problems at Cambridge’s education 
> faculty, the same department which hired Jason Arday.
> 
> The project which platforms the creationist claims, the Islamic Educator 
> Learning Community (IELC), is led by Cambridge’s assistant research 
> professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the since 
> banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ahmed’s extraordinary CV, and her 
> long record of grossly bigoted, extremist and separatist views, were 
> revealed by a 2002 pamphlet exposed by The Spectator on Tuesday.
> 
> IELC is “hosted by” and “partners with” a university body called the 
> Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, Camtree. Camtree is a project of 
> Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a governing 
> fellow. Ahmed is also an “affiliate” of Camtree.
> 
> IELC publishes on its website, with a Camtree address, a paper on 
> “Islamic scientific critical consciousness” which asks: “Does the common 
> modern biological assumption that humans have common ancestry with other 
> life forms conflict with [Islamic] religious beliefs about God creating 
> Adam and Eve?”
> 
> The author of this paper, Usama Javed Mirza, was at the time a 
> researcher at Cambridge University’s faculty of education and at Ahmed’s 
> IELC. He still is, according to his LinkedIn entry.
> 
> The paper says that “countering colonial hegemony in science education 
> for Muslims” could include “identifying gaps in fossil records to make 
> the case that the evidence of humans descending from apes is inconclusive.”
> 
> It adds that “fitna” (trial or temptation) “may occur, for example, when 
> a Muslim student in the science classroom begins to believe that humans 
> emerged on Earth without any role played by the Creator.”
> 
> It says that fitna “boil[s] down to two beliefs being inculcated in 
> students that are problematic from an Islamic standpoint,” namely that 
> “the meaning of existence is socially constructed as an evolutionary 
> response. There is no afterlife or soul; and the universe exists by 
> chance, and runs according to mindless laws of physics…. To counter 
> these hegemonic ideas, it is not enough just to intellectually dispel 
> them. Rather… it is necessary to also instil within students a capacity 
> to actively resist the influence of this monoculture.”
> 
> On Tuesday, in the wake of the Jason Arday scandal, The Spectator 
> revealed that Ahmed had been given the prestigious assistant 
> professorship. We noted that in a 2002 pamphlet, republished in 2017, 
> she attacked ‘western education’ as a ‘threat’ to Muslims, condemned 
> democracy and integration, and criticised British schools for teaching 
> that child marriage is wrong. Like the paper’s author, Mirza, Ahmed has 
> also said that modern science is a problem, because in the “teaching of 
> evolution, Muslim children will be exposed to ideas that contradict 
> Islam.” She said in 2010 that she was no longer a member of Hizb 
> ut-Tahrir and did not agree with “all” its views.
> 
> After that story created a storm, the education faculty took decisive 
> action. It removed the names of all its staff from its website, 
> presumably to stop anyone who doesn’t know about web archive tools 
> checking to see if they’ve hired any more wrong’uns (spoiler alert: they 
> have.)
> 
> Other action has been less forthcoming. The faculty clearly hopes to 
> ride this one out, issuing a statement that it is “committed to academic 
> freedom and freedom of speech within the law.” Well, we must reluctantly 
> agree that Ahmed – benefiting from the democracy she condemns – should 
> have the freedom to say that English is “one of the most damaging 
> subjects” a school can teach, or (while teaching at Cambridge) write 
> that Muslim students shouldn’t have to worry about “gaining literacy and 
> numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.”
> 
> But that’s quite different from believing that Cambridge University 
> should fund her to promote her ideas to the future leaders of the country.
> 
> Still more indisputable is that a university subject, even one as 
> debased as Education at Cambridge, should not promote baseless, 
> anti-scientific twaddle in the name of academic research.
> 
> But it does.
> 
> 
> Andrew Gilligan
> 

I seem to be living in a perpetual “I don’t believe this is happening!” or
“this just can’t be true” mode.  
Alas…