Shortly after the London underground suicide-bombings in July, the government undertook a consultation exercise, primarily with representatives of the British Muslim community, to ascertain what special additional measures needed to be taken to combat further acts of terror by disaffected Muslims living in the UK.
One being mooted by the government was its acquiring the power, as a last resort after self-regulation by the relevant local Muslim community had failed, to order the closure of mosques known to have encouraged terrorism or to have expressed support for proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act.
Last week, the Home Office announced that, in face of much opposition to that measure from Muslim groups and others whom it had consulted, it had decided not to press forward with it.
Needless to say Muslims groups who, during the consultation exercise, had voiced their opposition to the proposed measure responded with jubiliation to the government's announcement, none more so than the Muslim Council of Britain.
On the day of the announcement, December 15, it issued a press release, welcoming the government’s climb-down over the measure, which stated:
‘In our formal submission to the Home Office consultation… we made it clear that the government’s original proposals had aroused a great deal of concern and even anxiety among many British Muslims. Mosques are and remain entirely peaceful centres of worship. … We believe that the police already have sufficient powers to deal with any potential problems so we are delighted that the government has today listened to these concerns and opened the way for mosques to be seen as partners against extremism and not as incubators of extremism.’
To demonstrate the government’s ability, without need of this further power, to deal with any potentially problematic mosques, the Muslim Council cited in its press release the temporary closure of the one in Finsbury Park, London, after it fallen under the control of the notoriously pro-terrorism cleric Abu Hamza, whilst control of it was being wrested from him.
In its original submission during the consultation exercise, the Muslim Council expressed full agreement with a claim that had been made by the Bishop of Southwark as part of his own submission. The claim was that ‘there seems to be only one case in the public domain, where any potential link between a place of worship and terrorist activity has been suggested’.
From the Bishop’s quoted claim, the Muslim Council drew the inference in its own submission that ‘mosques are being misidentified as incubators of violent extremism, while the social reality is that they serve as centres of moderation;… the notion of influential “back-door” mosques is a figment of the imagination’.
In its view, what had done more to radicalise young British Muslims than any form of indoctrination they might have received in any British mosques was the present government’s ‘foreign policy and the double standards … in its dealings in the Middle East in partnership with the government of the US.’
Of that view the Muslim Council went on to say in its submission: ‘This view has received support from the Task Groups convened by the Home Office. We urge you to accept this fact. We ask you to take urgent remedial action so that our citizens, here as well as in the rest of the world, do not become targets of… terrorists’
The somewhat oblique phraseology to which the Muslim Council resorted here suggests it believes Blair’s support for, and involvement in the current US led military action in Iraq -- and, perhaps beyond that, the more long-standing support of Britain for the State of Israel, has been fundamentally to blame for the mayhem visited on London commuters on July 7 and narrowly spared them again on the 21st of that same month.
It is clear the present government has not acceded, nor is likely to in the immediate future at least, to the Muslim Council’s plea that it radically alters its current foreign policy in the Middle East.
It is equally clear, however, the government has decided to accede to the plea of the Muslim Council and of others not to risk further alienating the Muslim community by assuming additional powers to close mosques found to have supported terrorism.
Clearly, the government accepted the assurance of the Muslim Council, and of other like-minded representative bodies whom it consulted, that, with the sole exception of the one in Finsbury Park, no other mosques here have been a source of the radicalisation of young British Muslims.
The Muslim Council's credibility on this matter, however, is surely thrown seriously into question by the following two facts:
First, as reported on December 15 by the Times, the London bomber’s immediate leader used a makeshift gymnasium housed in the basement of a mosque in Beeston to recruit two of his accomplices and possibly others.
Admittedly, those in charge of that mosque might claim not to have known about what was going on in its basement. However, to harbour a gymnasium in one hardly corresponds with the Muslim Council’s description of mosques as ‘places of meditation and reflection’. It suggests either a worrying complacency on their part or else their support for a much more muscular version of Islam than that suggested by the more tranquil picture painted of their function by the Muslim Council.
However, the credibility of the Muslim Council as a reliable source of information about what goes on in British mosques is brought even more into question by a second fact. This is its apparent ignorance, or, worse still denial, of the existence within Britain of other mosques besides the one in Finsbury Park which have caused concern among British Muslims as well as the police about their radicalising role in relation to young British Muslims attending them.
As early as December 2001, shortly after the arrest of Richard Reid, the London shoe-bomber who tried without success to blow up an American Airlines airplane on a flight from Paris to Miami, the BBC reported in connection with the radicalisation of British Muslims that: ‘Muslim leaders say Mr Reid is one of many young men who have been tempted towards extremism by special recruitment agents who, they say, prey on UK mosques.’
The report went on to relate that Dr Zaki Badawi, Principal of the Muslim College, had told one of its reporters that ‘militant groups were running after-school classes to teach younger children a radical brand of Islam’.
Dr Badawi is further reported as saying that ‘Taleban-style indoctrination, unchecked by mosques, was creating extremists and should be closed down.’
That sentence is somewhat ambiguous, since it is difficult to see what anyone could mean by calling for the closing down of indoctrination. The ambiguity suggests what Dr Badawi might actually have told the BBC reporter is that he thought mosques deserved closure that did nothing to check Taleban-style indoctrination that was going on in them.
The BBC also reported that Richard Reid and Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person to date charged in connection with the September 11th suicide attack on the Trade Towers, had both attended the Brixton mosque.
There is one further puzzling aspect to the opposition of the Muslim Council to the government gaining further powers to regulate British mosques.
If the Muslim Council is as apparently satisfied as it seems with existing controls and laws to ensure any problematic mosques can be dealt with appropriately by the appropriate authorities, how come it does not share the similar view as that espoused by Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, President of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain,who has claimed existing laws against incitement to hatred are adequate in dealing with, by criminalising, incitement of hatred towards Muslims, and that the proposed new legislation on the matter, of which the Muslim Council is a principal advocate, is unnecessary?
Dr Siddiqui has rightly expressed concern the proposed new legislation might ‘not only protect the believer but also the belief’.
Could it be that, as well as throwing up a shield of legal immunity around British mosques, the Muslim Council wants also to throw up a shield of legal immunity around lslam per se?
It is worth recalling, as Salman Rushdie recently reminded us in a piece in the Times, that, back in 1989, shortly after the publication of his book, The Satanic Verses, the Muslim Council’s current head, Sir Iqbail Sacranie, said of him that ‘death perhaps is too easy for him’.
The war in Iraq might currently be going less than fully smoothly at the moment for the British and American military forces, but, here at home, the war on terror seems hardly to have begun before a cease-fire has been called and terms of surrender begun to be drawn up by those who promised to fight it for us.
To paraphrase Lord Wellington, I don’t know what effect the sight of our troops fighting the war on terror here might be having on the enemy, but they are sure scaring the hell out of me!
Comments (2)
LONDON : JULY 7 05 :
NOW TRY THE REALITY
The July 7 05 : 07.40 : Luton to London train was cancelled. The next train to London, the 07.48, arrived at London King’s Cross at 08.42: seven minutes before and miles away from the detonations of the first explosives.
As the cancellation could not have been foreseen and with it being far too late to alter the plans, the police released the pre-prepared “four suicide bombers took the 07.40 train” etc. statement.The London Underground - entrances, platforms, carriages, escalators - has saturation CCTV coverage.
No footage showed any evidence of “suicide bombers”The “four bombers outside Luton Station” photograph - “taken from the” non-existent “CCTV footage” - is a hopeless fake : white-hat-man has been badly superimposed with his body in front of the railings and half of his face and lower left arm behind the rails : the rail sections, either side of the phantom, do not line up : rain puddles are shown : the road outside of the station was dry at that time. At a busy time no-one else is on the photo ....
Eye-witness reports tell of the explosions on the underground being on the rail-tracks : effectively ruling out any external party involvement.
The immediate announcement that it was military explosives that were used, was quickly changed to “home made” : then followed farcical raids on “home-made-bomb-factory-houses” in Yorkshire etc.
Stagecoach employees have reported that the no. 30 bus - the one which had the explosive device under the top-deck back-seat - was the only bus diverted after the tube explosions . The previous Saturday, a maintenance group, previously unknown to the depot crew, spent “20 hours” “on CCTV maintenance” ; an unheard-of length of time for that task.
There has never been any evidence, whatsover, linking the explosions with Islam or the mythical “Al Qaeda”.
www.london77truth.com
Posted by Viv Rawden | January 4, 2006 10:48 AM
Posted on January 4, 2006 10:48
First Time i've visited this site prompted by seeing teletext item about p.c. by civitas. On a more general point than the blog above, but all linked: political correctness, religious groups, the main culprits being islamists,zionists and roman catholics,(i'm an atheist thank god)then we have the chips on their shoulder's set, (we're all being discriminated against). A government which is weekly chipping away at civil liberties 1984 style, but strangely directed at joe bloggs rather than bomb manufacturer's, its o.k to incite death to your fellow man but we'll do you if your tv licence is out of date, or litter is dropped or if your a teenager and you dare to hang around with a couple of mates (read the riot act). We know this is cop out politics (its so easy to be politically correct) Anyway sometimes it's good to get things off your chest.
Posted by sak | January 3, 2006 5:18 PM
Posted on January 3, 2006 17:18