WE NEED A COMPLETE AND TOTAL SHUTDOWN OF CAMBRIDGE UNTIL WE CAN FIGURE OUT JUST WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON THERE: Why is Cambridge platforming Islamic creationism?
At Charles Darwin’s old university, where a college is named after him, Darwin’s discovery is now described by one Cambridge researcher as an example of “potential challenges posed by Eurocentric* monoculture.”
It is the latest sign of fundamental problems at Cambridge’s education faculty, the same department which hired Jason Arday.
The project which platforms the creationist claims, the Islamic Educator Learning Community (IELC), is led by Cambridge’s assistant research professor of education, Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the since banned terror group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Ahmed’s extraordinary CV, and her long record of grossly bigoted, extremist and separatist views, were revealed by a 2002 pamphlet exposed by The Spectator on Tuesday.
IELC is “hosted by” and “partners with” a university body called the Cambridge Teacher Research Exchange, Camtree. Camtree is a project of Hughes Hall, the Cambridge University college where Ahmed is a governing fellow. Ahmed is also an “affiliate” of Camtree.
IELC publishes on its website, with a Camtree address, a paper on “Islamic scientific critical consciousness” which asks: “Does the common modern biological assumption that humans have common ancestry with other life forms conflict with [Islamic] religious beliefs about God creating Adam and Eve?”
* I’m pretty sure most British parents footing the bills for their sons and daughters’ educations are rather hoping that their kids are being taught from a largely “Eurocentric” point of view.
Meanwhile:
Compare the two cases and a pattern emerges. Cofnas cleared every formal bar that Cambridge erected—a competitive fellowship, a strong publication record, an eventual ruling that he’d broken no law and no policy—but he was punished anyway, and his position quietly expired while…
— Quillette (@Quillette) August 16, 2026
Tweet concludes, “and [Cofnas’] position quietly expired while the university dithered. Arday did not clear the bars his professoriate peers had to clear, he was defended anyway, and he was propped up by administrators who failed to do due diligence. One scholar was punished for an opinion; the other was protected despite misconduct that objective methods could verify. Two different treatments, one shared instinct: expedience trumps evidence.”