A law professor targeted by a “vicious and potentially life-threatening” campaign that accused him of laughing at the Koran has criticised his former university for failing to stand up to student activists who continue to attack him.
Steven Greer, who retired as professor of human rights at the University of Bristol last summer, said he feared for his life and felt forced to leave his home after he was publicly accused of making “Islamophobic, bigoted and divisive” remarks while teaching.
An online petition created by the University of Bristol Islamic Society (BRISOC), which attracted more than 4,000 signatures and is still active, claimed that “students have reported that Professor Greer has brought the [Koran] into class, read a verse and laughed at it”.
Professor Greer, who received online threats and noticed strangers loitering outside his home after BRISOC began its campaign two years ago, was alleged to have made discriminatory remarks by referring to the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre in Paris in the context of Islam’s stance on freedom of speech, which the petition claimed was “an example of the kind of Islamophobic rhetoric that aims to posit the actions of killers as being representative of the entire Muslim community”.
