Leeds university has cancelled a talk by US academic Matthias Kuentzel for "security reasons" after it received Islamist emails complaining about the talk.
The talk was to be entitled "Hitler’s Legacy: Islamic Antisemitism in the Middle East".
It is a widely-argued thesis - and, besides, a true one - that much of the anti-semitism now commonplace in Islamist ideology derives not from old Islamic traditions, but from the influence in the 1930s on Middle Eastern politics of European fascism.
Certainly it's a thesis worth discussing. Kuentzel appears to be no sort of leftist, but no sort of fascist or racist either.
The cancellation seems to have been an example the same sort of bowing to Islamist pressure that made Leicester University cancel a talk by dissident Muslim writer Irshad Manji on her last visit to the UK.
More: Engage;
The Guardian.
