The situation is the same in the U.S. Honest discussion of the motivating ideology behind jihad terrorism just does not happen in universities. If anyone tries to initiate such a discussion, he or she will be shouted down as an “Islamophobe.”
“No criticism of Islam at German universities,” translated from “Keine Islamkritik an deutschen Universitäten,” by Michael Stürzenberger, PI News, March 13, 2022:
On March 1, the groups of professors “Universitas” and “Ratio” active at Goethe University Frankfurt invited to an online event. It was discussed whether some topics are now taboo for research and teaching.
Professor Susanne Schröter, the head of the Frankfurt Research Centre Global Islam and professor at the Institute of Ethnology, reported, according to the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, that the political stance of a young researcher now plays a major role in his or her career.
She herself is defamed by some leftists at universities as an alleged “racist” because she speaks critically about the Muslim headscarf and examines connections between integration and cultural imprinting. Professor Schröter denounced the excesses of “cancel culture”, which seeks to ban politically or morally unpalatable positions from universities.
She reported on doctoral students whose dissertations were not accepted because they had dealt with the “wrong” topics. For example, “honour killings”. She also knew of students who had not been able to realise the projects they had chosen for their Bachelor’s or Master’s thesis: The supervisors found the projects too “hot”. This is true for her own subject:
“If an anthropologist deals with Islamism, his career is over.”
Professor Schröter sees such tendencies, regardless of which political direction they come from, as a threat to academic freedom.
The political scientist and publicist Hamed Abdel-Samad already reported in 2016 that the universities in Augsburg and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich did not allow him to hold a discussion event on Political Islam and present his research results on the Quran. Hamed Abdel-Samad said:
“The University of Augsburg, which once honoured me with prizes as a role model Muslim, now refuses to allow me to discuss the Koran critically. The University of Munich, which once trusted me to teach German and foreign students about Islamic history, now refuses to let me discuss the results of my research on the Quran in an open dialogue with students and citizens of the city.”
Since these research results are critical of Islam, and that is quite obviously undesirable at German universities. Hamed Abdel-Samad also sees a worrying development in freedom of expression in Germany:
“Universities, intellectuals, Islam functionaries and politicians of the centre parties refuse to face an honest and open debate about Islam. And then they all whine that this debate is being conducted on the right-wing fringe!”
Criticism of Islam is not only fought at universities. Mainstream media are self-censoring, it is taboo for the traditional political parties to criticize Islam, in society one is ostracized and excluded if one expresses one’s opinion openly, and the judiciary threatens to throw one into prison even if one limits public criticism to political Islam.