Jihadists in London

[Timber Loftis]

Anyone mind filling in a knowledge gap for me -- What's the state of the law of free speech in England? Thanks.
_________________________________________________
Today's NY Times.
April 26, 2004
Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam
By PATRICK E. TYLER
and DON VAN NATTA Jr.

UTON, England, April 24 — The call to jihad is rising in the streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.

In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging outside No. 10 Downing Street.

They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the "Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to drive a wedge into Europe.

On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer of a truce — provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in three months — Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.

"All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is foolish to fight people who want death — that is what they are looking for."

On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.

In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."

Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and counterterrorism officials in the region say.

Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is that the level of "chatter" — communications among people suspected of terrorism and their supporters — has markedly increased since Mr. bin Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.

"Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.

And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring the fight to Europe.

Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the big countries" — the United States, Britain and Spain — so as to "scare" the smaller states.

Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.

Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.

On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."

Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of God.

Also this week, over Mr. Blunkett's vigorous objection, a 35-year-old Algerian held under emergency laws passed after Sept. 11 was released from Belmarsh Prison. The man, identified only as "G," suffered from severe mental illness, his lawyers told a special immigration appeals panel, which let him out of prison and put him under house arrest.

Mr. Blunkett insisted that that should not be the final judgment on a man already found by one court "to be a threat to life and liberty."

In an interview on the BBC over the weekend, Mr. Blunkett advocated a stronger deportation policy, initially focused on 12 foreign terror suspects held without charge since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.

One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of Muslims for Suicide Bombing."

The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.

That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are liberal and it's not easy," an official said.

At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to "impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."

"It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the godless society."

While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official said.

While some clerics, like Abu Qatada — said to be the spiritual counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team — remain in prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.

"There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, "but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."

Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret.

Most days, he and a handful of his followers run a recruitment stand on Dunstable Road much to the chagrin of the Muslim elders of Luton.

Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.

Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques.

"This is show-off business," he says in accented English. "I don't want these kids in my mosque."

Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or "Islamophobia," as some here call it.

"I think these kids are being brainwashed by a few radical clerics," said Akhbar Dad Khan, another elder of the Central Mosque. He wants them prosecuted or deported. "We should be able to control this negativity," he said.

In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise — sweet kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women — while he also preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.

He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al Qaeda.

"We may be caught up in the target as the people of Manhattan were," he told them.

And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the phenomenon, you cannot kill it — you cannot destroy it."

"Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.


Patrick E. Tyler reported from Luton, Slough and London and Don Van Natta Jr. from London. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Germany.

[Larry_OHF]

Aw crap. This is never going to be resolved ever...is it?


~Goes under house and starts digging a large hole to hide a family of four.~

[promethius9594]

Larry,

yes it is. But it isnt going to be pretty.

on the one hand we have a small group of lean mean fighters willing to die for a cause in order to supress and control all those who are deemed infidels (enter nazi V1.2)

on the other hand you have a majority of peaceful people who value life and cant understand why anyone wants to dominate/kill them. this group has grown fat and lazy and isnt yet ready to fight the battles that are going to resolve this conflict.

[johnny]

So... what you're saying is, everyone should stop doing what they do, get combatexperience, and get prepared for whatever may come ?

Errrrrrr..... okay.... i'll be in the pub if you need me.

[shamrock_uk]

To answer the question, inciting racial hatred is now a crime. Several people have been hammered for it, both muslims and non-muslims. Providing there's no incitement, people can say what they like. The national front can go on and be racist, the radical islamist can criticise the country. It may not be nice, but that's the price you pay for a liberal society I guess. Abu Hamza is a nasty piece of work though, the sooner he goes, the better. I agree with his right to appeal, that's due process, but I think the focus of the law is wrong. His appeal should be with respect to whether he's guilty of the charges. It's a sham at the moment, because this trial is about human rights instead, and whether we breach it by removing his citizenship. But our criminal justice system is really knackered at the moment. The judges need to sort their acts out.

[ 04-26-2004, 06:36 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[promethius9594]

Originally posted by johnny: So... what you're saying is, everyone should stop doing what they do, get combatexperience, and get prepared for whatever may come ? Errrrrrr..... okay.... i'll be in the pub if you need me.

Thats not what im saying at all, and pretending thats what you took it for doesnt lessen my arguement at all.

the american/brittish people are not ready for a war on terrorism. in Israel the chance of dying in some form of terrorist attack is just under 9%. Flipping NINE PERCENT!!! could america or the UK handle assaults reaping casualties of that amount? no, not at present time. western civilization has shown itself in recent times to be unwilling to accept any significant number of casualties or to draw out a conflict for more than half a year. that HAS to change before we can win this war on terror.

not everybody has to fight, but everyone must be in for the long haul, or its not going to ever get resolved. we can't half-ass this one, because half victory in this case means future retaliation against innocent civilians. it MUST be all or nothing.

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by Larry_OHF: Aw crap. This is never going to be resolved ever...is it?

AHA! You've uncovered the fact that makes the so-called 'war on terror' such a goldmine for political militancy!

"Support us until we win the war against terrorism for you! Which, incidentally, will be never! So, support us forever!"



[ 04-27-2004, 08:51 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

[Donut]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Anyone mind filling in a knowledge gap for me -- What's the state of the law of free speech in England? Thanks. _________________________________________________

That's a wide subject. Do you have specific questions. (I'll be blaming the lawyers BTW)

[The Hierophant]

Originally posted by promethius9594: the american/brittish people are not ready for a war on terrorism. in Israel the chance of dying in some form of terrorist attack is just under 9%. Flipping NINE PERCENT!!! could america or the UK handle assaults reaping casualties of that amount? no, not at present time. western civilization has shown itself in recent times to be unwilling to accept any significant number of casualties or to draw out a conflict for more than half a year. that HAS to change before we can win this war on terror. not everybody has to fight, but everyone must be in for the long haul, or its not going to ever get resolved. we can't half-ass this one, because half victory in this case means future retaliation against innocent civilians. it MUST be all or nothing.

Well, sounds like you're pretty resolved. But, can you actually tell me what it is you are fighting? Not who, but what. It's a war on terrorism, which means you are fighting an abstract concept, not a set, physical group of people? So what is your definition of terrorism? And, assuming you actually do have an idea in your mind of what this concept is, how can you prove that people are involved in it? I mean, it just seems like this is yet another jingoist 'war on evil'. What the hell???

[ 04-27-2004, 06:50 AM: Message edited by: The Hierophant ]

[Alson]

Originally posted by promethius9594: in Israel the chance of dying in some form of terrorist attack is just under 9%. Flipping NINE PERCENT!!!

Minus one for credibility, promethius. That's a false claim that has nothing to do with reality. Believe me.