Iranian human rights activist Maryam Namazie was harassed by members of the Goldsmiths University Islamic Society on Monday night, while speaking to the university’s Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society. Namazie, whose talk was about ‘Apostasy, blasphemy and free expression in the age of Isis’, has been branded an ‘Islamophobe’ by members of the Islamic Society for her criticism of political Islam and aspects of Islamic theology.
Footage of the talk has been posted on YouTube, and makes for depressing viewing: a group of young men in the front row aggressively interrupt Namazie throughout, shouting ‘Safe Space!’ and one of them eventually unplugs the projector when a cartoon of the Prophet Muhammed is displayed.
At one point in the video the protestors laugh when Namazie mentions the death-threats made against British-Bangladeshi secular bloggers by Islamic extremists, and later shout ‘Stop intimidating me, you’re intimidating me, you’re intimidating me, I feel intimidated.’
Ironically, Goldsmiths Feminist Society have issued a statement announcing that they ‘stand in solidarity’ with the Islamic Society over the protests: it’s a strange world in which a feminist organisation feels such affinity with a group of men who shout-down a woman discussing her ideas.
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