Student Rights versus Government Vigilance

"Campus security steps in when there is an issue of safety and work directly with Calgary police. To ensure the fastest action, we also encourage anyone with concerns regarding illegal or terrorist activity to contact Calgary police or the Canadian Security Intelligence Service directly. These agencies are in the best position to assess and act on any perceived risks to public safety."
University of Calgary statement

"I would have to go teach this class as a victim staring my aggressor in the face."
"Ultimately, the reason I left the University of Calgary is because my colleagues gave me no support."
Professor Aaron Hughes

Handout / Postmedia News   Aaron Hughes, a prolific author on religion who holds a PhD on Islamic studies, said he once found a message scrawled in Arabic across his classroom’s chalkboard endorsing Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

"It could be classroom, it could be a private room where a bunch of people misinform the other groups about Islam and teachings."
"They are brainwashing our youth and taking their steps toward terrorism, which is against Islam itself."
"[The government] should be vigilant about what's happening inside of Canada."
Riyaz Khawaja, Calgary Muslim leader

Dr. Hughes formerly taught at the University of Calgary, but chose to leave his tenured position when he became convinced that his academic colleagues and the university administration had made a deliberate decision to do nothing to respond to his concerns relating to University of Calgary students spreading radical Muslim views.

Although Dr. Hughes, who holds a doctorate in Islamic studies and has written extensively on religion, knew of a certainty who among his students was reponsible for scrawling an Arabic message endorsing Islamic Jihad and Hamas on his classroom's chalkboard, the university chose not to respond by removing the student from his class.

Dr. Hughes now feels his personal well-being is no longer compromised, while teaching instead at the University of Rochester. He spoke to the media after reading of reports of Calgarians leaving Canada to fight with extremist groups abroad. That kind of activity, he feels, fit right in with what he had experienced, and he muses about the influences on university campuses fuelling the situation.

He had witnessed a young Muslim student standing during a University of Calgary memorial service for the 9/11 terrorist attacks, proclaiming: "Islam will always stand up for those who are dispossessed". The same student was later seen by Dr. Hughes wearing a distinguishing Hamas headband. Clearly the lines have dimmed between free speech and hate speech.

In its defence, the University of Calgary states its student code of conduct together with a new office of diversity and protected disclosure have been designed to aid people believing they are being harassed or threatened. Dr. Hughes is less than convinced that the university is on the right track citing the hostile environment that prevailed in 2009 at the university before he felt compelled to leave.

Students, according to the conservative views he overheard in his Islamic studies classes, advanced a fundamentalist view of Islam. Speaking of scholars as heretics, and characterizing certain fields of study as non-Muslim. When he had asked his department to permit him to teach another subject, his request had been denied.

According to Riyaz Khawaja, a Muslim leader in Calgary and president of the Hussaini Association of Calgary, the message that Professor Hughes found on his blackboard backing Hamas is not reflective of the tenets of his religion. He has himself, he said, become troubled with reports of Calgarian youth fighting alongside extremists The result of a gross misinterpretation of his religion.

Last Saturday several hundred Calgary Muslims came out to protest opposing the Taliban, al-
Qaeda and ISIS, the protest organized by the Hussaini Association of Calgary. Another similar rally organized by local Iraqi community groups came out on Sunday for a similar purpose. On Saturday, about 200 people protested with signs opposing the Taliban, Al-Qaeda and ISIS.

"One day the terrorists will come to Calgary. We need to stand together now", said organizer Fatima Albarli.

CBC News