When advocacy organizations adopt motions to praise or — more typically — condemn this or that, it’s a symbolic, well-intentioned act that rarely changes anything. Sometimes, the more horrific and farther flung the actions being protested, the more inadvertently comical the proudly announced statements of disapproval become.

Such was the case when the left-leaning U.K.-based National Union of Students condemned the bloodshed by ISIS terrorists the other day, in a motion that made the Islamist butchers quake in their boots.

Oh wait — neither of those things happened. The NUS couldn’t get the required votes for its anti-ISIS motion, despite the language being relatively weak and more than a little mealy-mouthed (you can read the full text here).

The bill called for the Union — which claims to represent UK students — to support unity between Muslims, condemn the bloody terror of ISIS (also known as the Islamic State), and support a boycott on people who fund the militants. But the motion offended Black Students Officer Malia Bouattia, who said: “We recognize that condemnation of ISIS appears to have become a justification for war and blatant Islamophobia.

She led a bloc who either abstained or voted against the proposal — leading to the bill’s defeat at the NUS NEC (National Executive Council) meeting.

Reza Aslan, is that you?

Douglas Murray commented in the Spectator that

The word and charge of ‘Islamophobia’ really is deadly. Today it is deadliest of all for the Kurds, the Christians, the Shia and the Yazidis of Iraq and Syria.

It must be for people like Bouattia that the term useful idiot was invented.



