The Muslim News

London, (IRNA):

Britain's university lecturers and academics are threatening to revolt against the government's controversial plans for a 'witch hunt' against Muslim students.

The University and College Union (UCU), the largest trade union and professional association for higher education staff, is asking its 120,000 members to refuse to spy on Muslims at its inaugural congress in Bournemouth, southern England on Wednesday.

"Congress resolves to oppose the ethnic profiling of students and staff for the purposes of immigration control or security purposes," says a motion to the conference.

It said it would "challenge incursions of the security and immigration services onto university and college campuses" and defend the right of its members to refuse to cooperate with attempts to "transform education into an extension of the security services." The move comes after government issued new guidelines last November for universities to log suspicious behaviour by Muslim students, claiming that "violent extremism in the name of Islam is a real, credible and sustained threat to the UK."

In April, it was reported that British authorities were also planning to introduce new security measures at universities to vet all non-EU postgraduates applying to study a range of potentially sensitive subjects.

"Congress is outraged at the continuing and escalating deionization of Muslim and other minority communities," the UCU motion said.

"This campaign of vilification is apparent in both media and government pronouncements and threatens to impinge on the proper business of education," it warned.

Academics from the union's London Metropolitan University branch suggested that the recent rise in racism and xenophobia was linked with the "apparent promotion by Government policies."

"Islamophobia and the attempts at increased surveillance on Muslim communities are not only encouraging racist and xenophobic tendencies in Britain but are also leading to measures that threaten civil liberties," they said.

Another motion resolved that all academic and academic-relation staff must be free to criticize and publish without fear for their jobs.

The UCU's inaugural congress comes after the amalgamation of the Association of University Teachers and the University and College Lecturer's Union last year.

The new union has previously described the government's measures to target Muslims as similar to the discredited McCarthyism witch-hunt of communists in America during the 1940s.

Universities UK (UUK), made up of the executive heads of all British university institutions and many colleges, has also warned the government against singling out Muslims, while the National Union of Students have expressed fears of a backlash.

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