Baroness Warsi, the minister for faith and communities, addressed an event staged by the Federation of Student Islamic Societies (FOSIS) last month to attack the "demonisation" of Muslim students by the media.
FOSIS has hosted numerous extremist and terrorist speakers at its annual conference and other events, including Azzam Tamimi, who supports suicide bombing, Haitham al-Haddad, who believes that music is a "prohibited and fake message of love and peace", and Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaeda recruiter described as a key inspiration for three of the 9/11 hijackers and numerous later attacks.
Several convicted terrorists have been officers of university Islamic societies affiliated to FOSIS and have attended its events.
FOSIS has been condemned by Baroness Warsi's colleagues, Theresa May, the Home Secretary, and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, for its failure to "fully challenge terrorist and extremist ideology".
Mrs May ordered that the Civil Service withdraw from a graduate recruitment fair held by FOSIS and has refused to meet the organisation's leaders...
...Khobaib Hussain, one of the Birmingham men sentenced last week for his part in a terrorist plot, described by police as the "biggest since 7/7", was a student at Wolverhampton University at the time of his arrest.
Before he was detained, members of the university's Islamic society, which is affiliated to FOSIS, posted online comments stating that "nothing is more honourable than dying for the cause of Islam" and that "America's time will come", though it is not known whether Hussain was a member of the society or was radicalised at the university...
...On March 24, the day before the meeting with Baroness Warsi, FOSIS organised an event at Imperial College for sixth-formers with Hamza Tzortzis, an extremist who has called for the killing of apostates and rejected freedom of speech.
The organisation he runs, iERA, was banned from University College London last month after it attempted to enforce gender segregation. Separate telephone numbers for registration were given for men and women at the Imperial College event, suggesting that it, too, had forced segregation...
...FOSIS's president, Omar Ali, aims to control all Muslim students in British universities. In a blogpost at the time of his appointment, he says the organisation should "turn the cogs" of university Islamic societies, which should in "turn the larger cog of Muslim students on their campuses".
Baroness Warsi was joined at the event by Nicola Dandridge, the head of Universities UK, which represents all British universities.
She too claimed that extremism was no greater a problem in universities than anywhere else and praised FOSIS for its work on "community cohesion".
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