[We will now discuss]…the decision by Griffith University in Queensland to accept $100,000 from the government of Saudi Arabia for its Islamic Studies Centre.
Griffith University describes itself as ‘The Australian university of choice for Saudis’, and in the past Week District Court Judge Clive Wall, who is also Deputy Judge Advocate General in the Australian Defence Force, has compared the university with a Pakistani madrasa and accused its administration of naiveté over its decision to accept funding from the home of hardline Wahhabist Islam.
It has also revealed that the university had previously lied when it said it had not solicited the funding. Documents obtained by The Australian newspaper show the university asked for $1.35-million from the Saudis. Even worse, the university offered to keep the source of the donation secret.
Then last week in an opinion piece published in The Australian, the Vice Chancellor of Griffith University, Professor Ian O’Connor, described the official religion of Saudi Arabia as ‘Unitarianism’ and suggested that the reason the Saudi government was financing Islamic Studies Centres in foreign universities was because it was keen to promote progressive Islam. It was later revealed that Ian O’Connor had lifted his material on Wahhabism from Wikipedia, substituting the innocuous term ‘Unitarianism’ for ‘Wahhabi’ on the way through.
Professor O’Connor has since released a statement in which he says the material used in his newspaper article was provided by senior staff, and a small number of sentences were not directly attributed, but that this was unintentional.
“[The university’s vice chancellor] described the official religion of Saudi Arabia as ‘Unitarianism’ and suggested that…the Saudi government was financing Islamic Studies Centres in foreign universities…to promote progressive Islam”
Good enough for April 1.
I trust Australians to distinguish a “university” from a bad joke.