The University of Manchester Palestine society (Action Palestine) today condemned the “Islam on Campus” report carried out by the Centre for Social Cohesion.

On page 21 the report says:
“Islamic societies often work in conjunction with other university societies generally. For example, at the University of Manchester, the ISOC works closely with the Palestinian Society, often co-hosting events and sharing email subscription lists.”

The University of Manchester Palestine society seeks to cooperate with all like-minded students and students’ groups over the last year and have co-hosted several events with several students’ groups and university departments, the University of Manchester Islamic Society is not one of them. We have never shared mailing lists with the Islamic Society nor any other group for that matter. We are also careful to only publicise our own events and actions organised by our own society. We don’t send out emails on our mailing list from other groups.

Having said this, we have a good relationship with many of our fellow students’ groups in the University of Manchester including the Islamic Society. We look forward to working with as many fellow students groups in the University of Manchester and beyond, when ever the opportunity arises for joint campaigns and events.

We are not in a position to provide a statement about the full content of the report but we have clearly shown that is has included inaccurate information. Also the language of the report appears to seek to attack Muslim students and provoke anger and suspicion towards Muslims on campus. Therefore we commend NUS and Wes Streeting (NUS president 08-09) for taking a clear position against the report, We also support the FOSIS statement against the report.

University of Manchester Palestine Society Committee

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CSC “Islam on campus” (PDF) (HTML)

FOSIS statement on the CSC report

The Israeli army assassinated a Palestinians student from An-Najah University and early on the morning of 24 / 06 / 2008.

I am currently staying five minutes away from where this atrocity took place – in the Al-Sal’ous neighborhood in the Al-Makhfiyeh area of western Nablus.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the Israeli offensive forces were carrying out one of its many illegal incursions into the city of Nablus where upon they ruthlessly killed, in cold blood 2 Palestinians, one of whom was 24-year-old Iyad Khanfar, a final-year student at An-Najah. We had the opportunity of visiting the apartment soon after and it was laced with blood, broken glass and bullets. The apartment had been
ransacked and torn apart by explosions used to instill life threatening fear in these innocent palestinians. Several matching reports say that one, a student, was filled
with 16 bullets to the chest whilst in bed.

The university is (was) on general strike with all classes cancelled and the local volunteers on my program were shocked as was I.

This is by now means an isolated incident and is common practice for the apartheid forces. We pray for their families.

T.C