Birmingham University was informed by a number of groups about Tamimi's extremist pronouncements. They accused him of thereby breaching the university's own Code of Practice, and yet the university still refused to act. Why did the university bend its own rules, defend Tamimi's invitation and try to silence critics, to allow him to speak on campus, when it had previously shown how easy it was to ban racists and bigots? When it comes to banning the bigoted, why the double standards?

Indeed, Birmingham has a murky record when it comes to allowing extremism on campus. The Islamist organisation Hizb ut-Tahrir, which seeks to establish a worldwide caliphate, is treated by the NUS, quite rightly, as the equivalent of the BNP, and covered by that organisation's "No Platform" policy. Despite this, in 2008 the university's Guild of Students promoted an event by Hizb ut-Tahrir on campus.

In 2009, Hamza Tzortzis, a Greek convert to Islam who has links to Hizb ut-Tahrir and who explicitly refuses to condemn barbaric punishments under Sharia-such as executing adulterers and cutting off the hands of thieves-spoke at an event entitled "Islamic Law-Barbaric or Misunderstood?" 

The university has also given a permanent platform to Mohammed Naseem, who works as a part-time student chaplain and mentor. Naseem, who is also the chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, is a conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly suggested that the 9/11 and 7/7 attacks were carried out either by Israel or by the British and American governments. After a journalist confronted him with the martyrdom video of one of the bombers as evidence of their involvement, Naseem is reported to have said: "We are in the 21st century. The cows can be made to look as [if they are] dancing, the horses can speak like humans, so these things can be doctored or can be produced." 

Birmingham is just one of many universities providing an unchallenged platform for these figures, who circulate the country "on tour", giving talks that are ostensibly about serious political issues but dabble in casual anti-Semitism and homophobia in an attempt to rouse as many adherents as possible. This despite the fact that Islamic societies are meant to be religious, not political, bodies. In light of the growing evidence of Islamist extremism on their campuses, universities must now accept that they have a responsibility to prevent the radicalisation of their students.