Hans Rustad Mens NRK og norske medier er ivrig opptatt med å legge skylden for Muammar Gaddafis langvarige styre på vestlig dobbeltmoral, er det liten oppmerksomhet rundt at araberlandene kjøper seg innflytelse ved vestlige læresteder.
Det var pinlig at London School of Economics (LSE) viste seg å ha mottatt 1,5 millioner pund. Rektor Howard Davies trakk seg.
Men LSE er bare en i en rekke av britiske universiteter som har mottatt store beløp fra muslimske land. Hensikten er åpenbart å kjøpe seg innflytelse.
Det er snakk om hundrevis av millioner kroner, milliarder faktisk. Stephen Pollard har en sak i Telegraph som er sjokkerende for de fleste.
Yet, on the most conservative estimate, other British universities have received hundreds of millions of pounds from Saudi and other Islamic sources – in the guise of philanthropic donations, but with the real intention of changing the intellectual climate of the United Kingdom.
Between 1995 and 2008, eight universities – Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London, the LSE, Exeter, Dundee and City – accepted more than £233.5 million from Muslim rulers and those closely connected to them.
Much of the money has gone to Islamic study centres: the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies received £75 million from a dozen Middle Eastern rulers, including the late King Fahd of Saudi Arabia; one of the current king’s nephews, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, gave £8 million each to Cambridge and Edinburgh. Then there was the LSE’s own Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, which got £9 million from the United Arab Emirates; this week, a majority of the centre’s board was revealed to be pushing for a boycott of Israel.
Under den kalde krigen ville slik kjøp av innflytelse blitt avvist som et forsøk på psykologisk krigføring, på undergraving av samfunnets viktigste institusjoner. Idag gjør muslimske land det samme, og mediene dekker det knapt, og politikerne ignorerer det. Tusenvis av mennesker må være utsatt for islamiseringen av universitetetene. Hvorfor protesterer de ikke? Hvordan kan lærerne leve med en slik intellektuell korrumpering?
I Norge er Fritt Ord og Utenriksdepartementets støtte til evenement som Saladin-dagene skåret over samme lest: Den ideologiske påvirkning er ensidig og massiv. Den er antivestlig og anti-israelsk.
Man later som om det er forståelse og sameksistens det handler om. De samme ord ble faktisk brukt under den kalde krigen – sameksistens, i dag er det dialog. Men når sovjeterne brukte det var det på deres premisser, for å undergrave vestlige samfunn. Noe av det samme skjer i dag, og land som Saudi-Arabia har over lang tid fulgt en påvirkningskurs: med finansiering av moskeer og universiteter.
While figures since 2008 have yet to be collated, the scale of funding has only increased: such donations are now the largest source of external funding for universities by quite a long way. The donors claim that they want only to promote understanding of Islam – a fine goal for any university.
But the man who gathered the earlier figures, Prof Anthony Glees, argues that their real agenda is rather different: to push an extreme ideology and act as a form of propaganda for the Wahhabist strain of Islam within universities. They push, he says, “the wrong sort of education by the wrong sort of people, funded by the wrong sorts of donor”.
This is not simply scare-mongering. The management committees of the Islamic Studies centres at Cambridge and Edinburgh contained appointees hand-picked by Prince Alwaleed. Other universities have altered their study areas in line with their donors’ demands. And it works.
A study of five years of politics lectures at the Middle Eastern Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford, found that 70 per cent were “implacably hostile” to the West and Israel. A friend of mine, a former Oxford academic, felt that his time was largely spent battling a cadre of academics overwhelmingly hostile to the West, in an ambience in which students – from both Britain and abroad – were presented a world-view that was almost exclusively anti-Western.
Det sier seg selv at dette både undergraver den intellektuelle integriteten til universitetene, og i videre forstand, undergraver Vestens interesser.
Det finnes ingen registrering av bidragene, og ingen forskning på virkningen på det akademiske arbeidet. Opplagte temaer blir ikke forsket på.
This is all so easily done because there is no requirement for serious scrutiny of either the source of funding or its impact on research. As a report from the Centre for Social Cohesion puts it, our universities “are now effectively up for sale to the highest bidder”. If the LSE’s actions have a saving grace, is that they could help to expose the wider scandal surrounding the behaviour of UK universities.
Universiteter skal forvalte samfunnets intellektuelle kapital. Hvordan skal de kunne gjøre det hvis institusjonene lar seg kjøpe av islamske regimer? De krever noe igjen for sine penger.
Libya and the LSE: Large Arab gifts to universities lead to ‘hostile’ teaching
The LSE is not the only university that has reason to feel ashamed, writes Stephen Pollard.
