- Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social
worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy
a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic
chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet
out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.
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- "As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London,
the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I
know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali,
like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."
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- "Pass the brown sauce, brother," says Abu Malaahim,
the IT specialist, devouring his chicken and chips.
-
- "I agree with you, brother," says Abu Yusuf,
the earnest-looking financial adviser sitting opposite. "I would like
to see the Mujahideen coming into London and killing thousands, whether
with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they need a safehouse, they
can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for a bomb], I'll
tell them where to get it."
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- His friend, Abu Musa, the security guard, smiles radiantly.
"It will be a day of joy for me," he adds, speaking with a slight
lisp.
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- As they talk, a man with a bushy beard, dressed in a
jacket emblazoned with the word "Jihad", stands and watches over
them, handing around cups of steaming hot coffee. His real name is Ishtiaq
Alamgir, but he goes by his adopted name, Sayful Islam, meaning "Sword
of Islam". He is the 24-year-old leader of the Luton branch of al-Muhajiroun,
an extremist Muslim group with about 800 members countrywide, who regard
Osama bin Laden as their hero.
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- Until recently, nobody took the fanatical beliefs of
al-Muhajiroun too seriously, believing that a British-based group so brazenly
"out there" could not be involved in something as "underground"
as terrorism. The group is led by the exiled Saudi, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad,
from his base in north London. Yesterday, in a magazine article, Bakri
warned that several radical groups are poised to strike in London.
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- For all its inflammatory rhetoric, al-Muhajiroun has
never been linked to actual violence. Yet, with the discovery last month
of half-a-tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser - the same explosive ingredient
used in the Bali and Turkey terror attacks - and with the arrest of eight
young British Muslims in London and the South-East, including six in Luton,
extremist groups such as al-Muhajiroun are under the spotlight like never
before.
-
- Detectives fear that the "enemy within", the
homegrown extremists leading apparently normal lives in suburbia, now pose
the greatest threat to security in Britain. Sayful and his friends fit
this "homegrown" profile: three were born here, two came as young
children from Pakistan; all were educated in local Luton schools; and they
grew up in families of full employment - one of their fathers is a retired
local businessman, two are engineers, and two worked in the local Vauxhall
car plant.
-
- The question is: how worried should we be? Is al-Muhajiroun
nothing more than a repository for disaffected Muslim youths who have adopted
an extreme interpretation of Islam - perhaps to cock a snook at the white
establishment - but who are essentially posturing? Or does the group also
perform a more sinister function, sucking in alienated young men and brainwashing
the more impressionable into becoming future suicide bombers?
-
- Although none of the arrested Muslims - aged 17 to 32
- appear to be current al-Muhajiroun members, rumours have circulated of
informal links to the group. Moreover, parents of the arrested men have
spoken anxiously of the "radicalising influence" of al-Muhajiroun
militants who " corrupt" their children at mosques.
-
- Nowhere has this public confrontation between radicals
and moderates been more apparent than in Luton, which has the highest density
of Muslims in the South-East - 28,000 out of a total population of 140,000
- and has long been regarded as a hotbed of extremism.
-
- Sayful Islam, for one, is particularly proud of his contribution
to Luton's hardline reputation. His exploits include covering the town
with " Magnificent 19" posters glorifying the 11 September suicide
bombers. "When I joined al-Muhajiroun four years ago, there were five
local members," he says. "Now there are more than 50 and hundreds
more support us."
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- The strange thing is that four years ago, Sayful Islam
was a jeans-clad student completing his degree in business economics at
Middlesex University in Hendon, north London.
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- The son of a British Rail engineer who came to this country
from Pakistan, Sayful grew up in a moderate, middle-class Muslim family
in Luton. At the local Denbigh High School, he is remembered as one of
the smartest kids, and was selected to attend a science masterclass at
Cambridge University. He would go on to marry, have two children and find
work as an accountant for the Inland Revenue in Luton. He was thoroughly
uninterested in politics.
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- THEN he met Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad at a local event.
Within two years, he had swapped his decently paid job as an accountant
for an unpaid one as a political agitator. What turned him into an extremist?
And how far is he prepared to go to achieve his aims?
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- Prior to seeing the group at the fastfood restaurant,
Sayful meets me at his semi-detached rented home in Bury Park, Luton's
Muslim neighbourhood. He no longer works, even though he is able-bodied,
he admits, preferring instead to claim housing benefit and jobseeker's
allowance. He smiles sheepishly and says the irony is not lost on him that
the British state is supporting him financially, even as he plots to "overthrow
it".
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- "I made a decision that I wanted to follow what
Islam really said," Sayful begins, sitting on his sofa in his thowb
(a traditional robe) and bare feet. "I went to listen to all the local
imams, but I found their portrayal of Islam was too secularised. When I
heard Sheikh Omar [the leader] of al-Muhajiroun speak, it was pure Islam,
with no compromise. I found that appealing.
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- "At the same time," continues Sayful, "wars
were happening in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan. People were being
oppressed simply because they were Muslim. Although I had never experienced
racism in the UK, it opened the eyes of a lot of Muslims, including mine."
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- But it was the events of 11 September that crystallised
Sayful's worldview. "When I watched those planes go into the Twin
Towers, I felt elated," he says. "That magnificent action split
the world into two camps: you were either with Islam and al Qaeda, or with
the enemy. I decided to quit my job and commit myself full-time to al-Muhajiroun."
Now he does not consider himself British. "I am a Muslim living in
Britain, and I give my allegiance only to Allah."
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- According to Sayful, the aim of al-Muhajiroun ("the
immigrants") is nothing less than Khilafah - "the worldwide domination
of Islam". The way to achieve this, he says, is by Jihad, led by Bin
Laden. "I support him 100 per cent."
-
- Does that support extend to violent acts of terrorism
in the UK?
-
- "Yes," he replies, unequivocally. "When
a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my
own children. Islam is clear: Muslims living in lands that are occupied
have the right to attack their invaders.
-
- "Britain became a legitimate target when it sent
troops to Iraq. But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in
acts of terrorism in the UK because I live here. According to Islam, I
have a covenant of security with the UK, as long as they allow us Muslims
to live here in peace."
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- HE USES the phrase "covenant of security" constantly.
He attempts to explain. "If we want to engage in terrorism, we would
have to leave the country," he says. "It is against Islam to
do otherwise." Such a course of action, he says, he is not prepared
to undertake. This is why, Sayful claims, it is consistent, and not cowardly,
for him to espouse the rhetoric of terrorism, the "martyrdom-operations",
while simultaneouslylimiting himself to nonviolentactions such as leafletting
outside Luton town hall.
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- He denies any link between al-Muhajiroun and the Muslims
arrested in the recent police raids. But, as I later discover at the fastfood
restaurant, not everyone attaching themselves, however loosely, to al-Muhajiroun
draws the same line. Two members of the group - Abu Yusuf, the financial
adviser, and Abu Musa, the security guard - scorn al-Muhajiroun as "too
moderate".
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- "I am freelance," says Abu Yusuf, fixing me
with his piercing brown eyes. What does that mean? I ask.
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- "The difference between us and those two,"
interjects Abu Malaahim, pointing to Musa and Yusuf, "is that us lot
do a verbal thing, [but] those brothers actually want to do a physical
thing."
-
- Referring to the latest truce offered by Bin Laden, and
Britain's scathing rejection of it, Abu Malaahim adds: "He tried to
make a peace deal. When terrorism happens, you will only have yourselves
to blame."
-
- How far are you prepared to go? I ask.
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- "You want to know how far I will go," says
Abu Musa, his high-pitched lisp rising an octave. "When Allah said
in the Koran 'kill and be killed', that's what I want. I want a martyr
operation, where I kill my enemy."
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- Are you saying, I probe, that you are looking to kill
people yourself ? "Yes," Abu Musa says, "to kill and to
be killed." He emphasises each word.
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- What's stopped you doing it? "As you know from watching
the news," intones Abu Yusuf, "there are brothers who do leave
the country and do it." He is referring to the four Muslims from Luton
who died fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the two British Muslims,
said to have had ties to al-Muhajiroun, who last April left to become suicide
bombers in Israel. "In-shallah [ Godwilling], there will be a time
to go."
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- It is hard to know whether Musa and Yusuf are deadly
serious or just pumped full of misguided, youthful bravado. Though I see
coldness - even ruthlessness - in their eyes, I sense no malice. Both young
men agree, perhaps foolishly, to be quoted using their real names, though
they decline photographs - thus illustrating their uncertainty of which
way to jump.
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- Muhammad Sulaiman, president of the Islamic Cultural
Society, the largest of the 14 mosques in Luton, dismisses al-Muhajiroun
as "verbal diarrhoea".
-
- "They are an extreme Right-wing group - the Muslim
version of the BNP," he says disdainfully. "They think Muslims
should dominate, just like the BNP thinks whites should dominate. They
use Islam as a vehicle to promote their distorted beliefs, particularly
to unemployed young bloods who are vulnerable."
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- ALTHOUGH unemployment in Luton is just six per cent,
the rate among Muslim youths is estimated at 25 per cent. "They are
no more representative of our Muslim community than the BNP are of the
white community."
-
- Sulaiman insists that Sayful Islam and his crew are not
welcome at the mosque. He cannot prevent them praying there, but he will
never give them a platform. "I've told Sayful to bugger off and ejected
him many times," he says brusquely. "Even Sayful's father, who
I know well, thinks his son has been brainwashed."
-
- But Sayful and his friends laugh at the idea that they
are local pariahs. "The mosques say one thing to the public, and something
else to us. Let's just say that the face you see and the face we see are
two different faces," says Abdul Haq. "Believe me," adds
Musa, "behind closed doors, there are no moderate Muslims."
-
- They also mock the idea that they are attracted to al-Muhajiroun
because they have suffered alienation from white society. "Do we look
like scum?" they ask. "Do we look illiterate?"
-
- As they call for the bill, Abu Malaahim flicks open his
3G mobile phone and, with a satisfied grin, displays the image, downloaded
from the internet, of an American Humvee burning in Iraq.
-
- Abu Yusuf says: "That's nothing. I downloaded the
picture of the four burnt Americans hanging from the bridge." It's
oneupmanship, al-Muhajiroun style.
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- Sayful, the only married one in the group, prepares to
go home to his wife and children. Before he departs, he says he has a message
to deliver.
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- "I want to warn that the police raids - if repeated
- could create a bad situation.
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- "Islam is not like Christianity, where they turn
the other cheek. If they raid our homes, it could lead to the covenant
of security being broken.
-
- "Islam allows us to retaliate. That would include"
- he tugs his "Jihad" coat tight against the night air - "by
violent means."
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- http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/londonnews/articles/10329634?version=1
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