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Radicalized at a British university?

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The alleged attempt by a Nigerian man to blow up a US airliner on Christmas Day sent a shock through the security system. Prosecutors say Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (pictured) tried to detonate a bomb sewn into his underwear. Ever since, American authorities have been trying to fix the intelligence gaps that allowed him to board the plane in the first place. Abdulmutallab’s former university in London is launching its own review into whether he became radicalized there. The World’s religion editor Jane Little reports. Download MP3

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MARCO WERMAN:  I’m Marco Werman and this is The World.  U.S. Intelligence officials have delivered this warning, Al-Qaeda may attempt an attack on the United States in the next three to six months. That testimony before Congress comes about a month after a Nigerian man allegedly tried to blow up a U.S. airliner.  Ever since then, authorities have been trying to fix the intelligence gaps that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board the plane in the first place.  Meanwhile, Abdulmutallab’s former university in London is launching its own review.  The World’s Religion Editor, Jane Little, reports.

JANE LITTLE: Lunchtime at University College London and its cafeteria is packed with students of many ethnicities and nationalities. You need top grades to study here. Last year U.C.L. was fourth in a prestigious university ranking behind Harvard, Cambridge, and Yale.  Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab studied engineering and business finance here from 2005 to 2008.  During that time, he served as president of its Islamic Society. Now, an independent enquiry is looking into whether his radicalization began here.

MALCOLM GRANT: The whole process by which a young man is converted from being a mild mannered and devout Muslim into a potential mass murderer is I think of profound importance and a great worry to anybody.

LITTLE: Malcolm Grant is the president of U.C.L. He  says the investigation will look at the whole of Abdulmutallab’s time at the university.  It will also consider whether academics should keep a tighter rein on students and whom they invite  to speak on campus. But, Grant adds, that raises some difficult questions.

GRANT: Should we be forever monitoring and trying to oversee and indeed as some have suggested, spy upon our students?  Should we attempt to do as we have been doing already, which is to maintain a freedom of speech on campus, to expose all speech to challenge and not to move in to suppress it?

LITTLE: Those concerns don’t impress one of the U.K.’s top security experts. Anthony Glees heads the Buckingham University Center for Security and Intelligence Studies.

ANTHONY GLEES: Individual tutors have got to engage with their students as individuals, and if they detect signs of political extremism they have to challenge them.  Academics cannot turn a deaf ear to the political attitudes of their students.

LITTLE: In 2005, the year of the July 7th London bombings, Glees published a report, “When Students Turn to Terror: Terrorist and Extremist Activity on British Campuses.”  In it he warned that universities had become recruiting grounds for Islamic extremism.  At the time, he was widely accused of exaggeration.  Now, he claims he’s been vindicated with several former students in Britain implicated in terror offences.

GLEES: Universities have been seen as safe sites for recruitment by Al-Qaeda and Al-Qaeda associates. These people who want to destroy our way of life have noticed that students are rarely observed in the modern university.

LITTLE: One Muslim scholar, who warned of the dangers of student radicalization, suggested that universities should not have a separate space for Muslim prayers where the extremists can take over.  In fact, U.C.L. doesn’t have one.  But it does have an active Islamic Society.

LOTIFA BEGUM: Here we’re raising awareness for Islam and we’re going to have a few events next week.  It would be really fantastic if you came along.   Thank you.

LITTLE: Lotifa Begum is a politics student here.  She wants to explain to non-Muslim students what real Islam is about, which she says is not violent extremism. The annual Islamic Awareness Week has taken on extra resonance in the wake of all the media attention she and fellow Muslim students have been getting. It’s unwelcome attention and most are reluctant to talk, wary of reporters who they say portray them as potential terrorists.  Begum is tired of it.

BEGUM: We as a society are carrying on with our activities as usual because we have no affiliation with any such kind of behavior.

LITTLE: Another member of the Islamic Society, Asif Hussein, is in his final year studying law, and like Lotifa he says he’s never met an extremist on campus.

ASIF HUSSEIN: Most people at U.C.L. are quite driven in their field of academic study. It’s really difficult to get into U.C.L., and so people don’t want to waste their time here either just lounging around doing nothing or inciting extremism, whatever. They’re here to get a degree, to get a job and further their careers.

LITTLE: So you have never met an Abdulmutallab type figure?

HUSSEIN: I never have, no, no.

GLEES: I would say that if they deny ever having come across a radical, they have lost all sight of the meaning of the word radical. I would put it the other way that you’re very unlikely to come across a student at an Islamic Society who isn’t a radical.

LITTLE: Anthony Glees’ assertions will likely upset more than a few Muslim students in the U.K.,  whether or not there is any credence to his claims. Meanwhile, the former U.C.L. student, Abdulmutallab, now awaiting trial in the U.S., has ensured that the students and their academic institutions are under scrutiny as never before.  For the World, this is Jane Little in London.

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