Lecturer Suspended for Defending Innocent Muslim Students

Rod Thornton, an expert in counter-insurgency at Nottingham University, was suspended on Wednesday for criticising the University's treatment of a Muslim student and Muslim employee. He has accused the university of passing "erroneous evidence" to police and attempting to discredit a student.

Readers may recall these two Muslims were Rizwan Sabir, a masters student, and Hicham Yezza, an ex-student and then an employee at the University, who in 2008 were arrested for possessing an Al Qaida manual.

University officials called in the police after a colleague noticed the document on Yezza's computer. Yezza and his friend, Rizwaan Sabir, were held for six days, despite Sabir's tutors giving statements within two days that the document was directly relevant to his research, not to mention that it was freely available at the University's library, as well as on a US Government website.

They were released without charge, however the consequences are still lasting.

Thornton, who is also a former soldier, wrote his paper for the British International Studies Association (Bisa), in which he hoped to explore the issues of how young Muslims can become so easily tarred with the brush of terrorism; but Bisa has now taken the paper off their website.

In the paper, Thornton wrote:

Despite being made aware of the mistakes it had made, the university not only refused to apologise to the two arrested men, but it also began to resort to defensive measures that attempted to discredit the names both of the two accused and of innocent university employees.

 

Untruth piled on untruth until a point was reached where the Home Office itself farcically came to advertise the case as 'a major Islamist plot' ... Many lessons can be learned from what happened at the University of Nottingham.

 

This incident is an indication of the way in which, in the United Kingdom of today, young Muslim men can become so easily tarred with the brush of being 'terrorists'.

He says the university's administration notified police, but had never given any indication they they had carried out "even the simplest of internet checks or ... [sought] either advice or guidance from elsewhere."

In his paper, Thornton describes how the concerns he was raising led him to get disciplinary action against himself, how he tried to get the Vice-Chancellor to investigate some of the issues he was raising, however, was told by him that he was making "un warranted allegations? and there began yet more "investigations? into Thornton's behaviour. Now he has been suspended.

This case severely questions the amount of academic freedom at universities and freedom of speech, which seem to be slowly eroding; but more worryingly, for a lecturer to be suspended for trying to get two Muslim students justice, also alludes that this kind of discriminatory treatment of Muslims is acceptable.

It is now up to Muslim students to help this man, after he has put his job on the line for justice. Join the discussion on MPACUK Facebook.