PA NUS President Malia Bouattia has blamed Government cuts on young Muslims joining ISIS

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Malia Bouattia said young people in Britain have “no choice but to go off to Syria” because they “feel so disempowered”. The outspoken 28-year-old has previously refused to condemn ISIS since she was elected as president of the NUS in April. And the controversial student leader has now claimed that the closure of youth centres, coupled with “the fact that education is being privatised and rendered inaccessible”, is the reason more than 800 British citizens have travelled to Syria and Iraq to join groups such as ISIS.

'If you want to look at the problem, you have to look at the state's hand' @MaliaBouattia #UCLBindmans pic.twitter.com/hW4D0BvwVQ — Bindmans LLP (@BindmansLLP) June 15, 2016

Her bizarre attack, which was made during a debate at University College London, has been widely derided by other student groups. She said: “To answer the question around what is leading people to taking certain actions and joining these groups and wanting to inflict violence, I'd say it surrounds the political climate which we're in. “We need to start asking why people feel so desperate that they have to take such actions that they're not necessarily in a space where such ideas are harnessed or encouraged like in the education system, we might say.

GETTY Ms Bouattia made the bizarre claim during a debate at University College London

“What is leading particularly young people to feel so kind of disempowered that they're left with no choice but to go off to Syria or join certain groups? “And I'd also say we have to look at mass unemployment, the fact that education is being privatised and rendered ever inaccessible, youth centres have been closed down, every service available to support young people to allow space for critical thought and development has been shut down by the state.

“Further to that our foreign policy and the space in which we would discuss and be critical of through the prevent strategy are being monitored and ever watched so that even the utterance of dissent is being policed and criminalise. “If you want to look at the problem you have to look at the state's hand."

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