Incredibly disappointing, says SA Salaam chairman Salah-Din with regard to the cancellation of the lecture. “All we want is to raise awareness about the situation in Gaza. We have to speak up; we want to take action. We’ve been asked multiple times by our members and our community to organize something. And we expect TU/e to stand by its students. Instead, we’ve been sanctioned: we’re not allowed to organize any events for the next twelve months.”

The Islamic student association disagrees with the sanction. They believe they did nothing wrong. The chairman says that the reason they ultimately canceled the lecture was to avoid jeopardizing their good relationship with TU/e. TU/e sees things very differently. On May 7, the board received a request for a lecture called “The Life of the Prophet”. This request is approved.

Incorrect information

Later, it turns out that the title differs from how the lecture was presented on the social media channels and website of student association SA Salaam, according to Executive Board spokesperson Frans Raaijmakers. Furthermore, the request had made no mention of the presence of speaker Abou Hafs. The Executive Board only learned of this on Tuesday afternoon, one day before the lecture was scheduled to take place. “A quick screening revealed that the speaker in question is a controversial figure,” says Raaijmakers.

Hafs’ visit even led to parliamentary questions from the SGP. Given the short timeframe in which all of this came to light, the TU/e spokesperson says a careful consideration was no longer feasible. “Combined with the incorrect information we received about both the subject of the lecture and the speakers, this led us to decide to cancel the lecture. The student association in question was informed of this decision.”

100 attendees

Although chairman Salah-Din acknowledges that SA Salaam changed the lecture over the weekend without informing the Executive Board, he says they had good reasons for doing so. The student association was already in the process of organizing a lecture on Gaza with speaker Abou Hafs. When he offered to come to TU/e on Wednesday, the SA Salaam board decided to replace the planned lecture because of the urgency of the topic.

“The location at TU/e had already been arranged,” says Salah-Din. And submitting a new request to the Executive Board would have taken too long. Within a couple of days, some 100 attendees signed up. In retrospect, the chairman recognizes that it was not a good idea to replace the lecture. The board immediately issues an apology and assures the Executive Board that it will not happen again. Nevertheless, the student association decides to go ahead with the lecture. “What makes a speaker controversial is very subjective in our view,” says Salah-Din.

Rescheduling

In response, the Executive Board invited the SA Salaam board to a meeting on Wednesday morning “to quickly obtain further clarity and prevent a similar situation from happening in the future”. It does not come to that; instead, a sanction is imposed. According to the Executive Board, the student association did not respond to their invitation.

“For this reason, we’ve decided not to approve any events organized by student association SA Salaam for the time being, until they submit a concrete plan of action outlining how similar situations can be prevented in the future,” says the spokesperson.

Salah-Din says that while he was willing to meet with the Executive Board, the proposed time did not work. The chairman regrets the course of events and hopes to sit down with the Executive Board in the near future. And as for the lecture? “We’re going to try to reschedule the event, in consultation with TU/e this time.”