An Islamic cleric who defends domestic violence is among a string of extremist speakers touring British universities unchallenged, the Mail Investigations Unit can reveal.
Egyptian cleric Fadel Soliman spoke at five such events last year, using them to refer Muslim students to an online lecture series in which he speaks in favour of hitting women and outlines the Islamic case for sex slavery and polygamy.
Mr Soliman told students at Sheffield University that watching his lectures could be ‘a turning point’ in their lives.
In his extraordinary videos, he advises physical punishment for wives who have displeased their husbands, saying ‘the hitting must be done with a small stick’.
Explaining why it is necessary, he says that when a husband is unhappy with the behaviour of his wife, ‘after passing through two stages of non-physical interaction, the next stage must involve something physical, in order to escalate the intensity of the warning’.
The preacher is one of several extremists being permitted to espouse their views unchallenged at Britain’s universities – in a possible breach of the Government’s counter-extremism strategy, Prevent. Since September, universities and colleges are legally required to have policies to stop extremists radicalising students on campus. This includes an obligation to ‘ensure those espousing extremist views do not go unchallenged’. [Mail on Sunday] Read more
