Terrorists ‘Targeting Universities and Scholars’ Says Report
30th June 2015
Most serious are “at least 485 killings involving members of higher education communities in 18 countries”. Some were completely indiscriminate, as when gunmen affiliated with Somali militant group Al Shabaab forced their way on to the campus of Garissa University College in Kenya, asked students whether they were Muslim or Christian, and shot at least 142, along with three security officers and two university security personnel.
Yet the report also draws attention to a number of far more targeted murders. Muhammad Shakil Auj, “an outspoken and progressive religious scholar” who served as dean of Islamic studies at the University of Karachi, was killed by unidentified attackers. Many others have been “disappeared” or threatened with violence designed to keep them quiet, including Professor Mohammed Dajan of Palestine’s Al-Quds University, “accused of treason for leading a student trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland as part of a course in conflict resolution”.