Islington denounces attacks on Muslim students

Anti-Islamophobia poster from Holland | Photo: Leonard Chien

Citizens of north London and representatives of the National Student Union fear that an attack on Muslims students outside the City University campus could represent the beginning of a violent racist wave in the Islington borough. A public meeting was held at Finsbury Town Hall on Monday with the rallying cry ‘Stop Islamophobia and Racism in EC1′.

Police have arrested two suspects for the latest attack in a series of racist aggressions that started last November. Foreign students, Muslims in particular, were the subjects to these racist attacks which have shocked the North London community.

Some people at the meeting voiced the suspicion that there could be a connection between the attacks and the British National Party (BNP) presence in north London. “The BNP hate the harmony we’ve created in this community and is trying to destroy it”, said Ceinwen Hilton, a City and Islington college teacher.

Anti-racism organisations such as Unite Against Fascism, representatives of the National Student Union and several City students are currently preparing a campaign to promote cultural integration in the area. However, as James Haywood of the National Students Union has seen, the University has not been much help.

Both the management and Student Union of City University have been strongly criticised for taking a soft approach to the problem, campaigners maintain. They refused to host a meeting on how to defend Muslim students.

In the end, the meeting took place last Monday at Old Finsbury Town Hall. “It’s a scandal that the City University Student Union disagreed to host us,” Haywood said. “There was lot of anti-racism talk before the student representative elections, but now they’ve failed.”

Dominic Kavakeb, an MA International Journalism student at City University, said that City’s Student Union “didn’t consider the attack as racist”. When he went to ask for space in the University to host the meeting they said that it would take 4 or 6 weeks to book a room.

Islington is no stranger to these kinds of racist attacks, as some of participants at the Finsbury Town Hall meeting pointed out. Kevin Muller, a teacher at Islington College, says that in 1990 some Asian students were attacked on their way home close to Islington Green. At the time the community reacted strongly, going door by door to ask for support against racist crimes committed by members of the National Front.

Muller describes his campaign in the audio clip below.