The Guardian talks to the student union activities officer who spurned suggestions that their approach to the union’s Islamic Society needed to change following the failed Detroit bombing attempt of its former president, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

Two Google alerts told James Hodgson that things would get bumpy. Life as a student union activities officer at University College London was ever eventful. Clearly this was different.

Bad enough that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit bomber, was a former student at UCL. Worse that Abdulmutallab was for a year president of the Islamic Society, which exists under the umbrella of the students’ union and falls within James’s area of responsibility. That was the second beep. “My thought was the effect it would have on the Muslim student population,” he says. “This stuff is highly damaging.”

And within 24 hours, it was, as James and his colleagues fended off hostility from the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph and found themselves talking to the anti-terrorist squad.

Before long, they were facing a clamour – generated via the web – for the Islamic Society to be closed, or at least reconfigured so as to shield its members from anyone who might conceivably be construed as a radicaliser.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jan/08/hidesously-diverse-britain-student-islam