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| The new face of Islam The phenomenon of educated, white, middle class English converts to Islam. by Nick Compton At first she tried to resist. She did not want this to happen. She was not that sort of person. After all, there were no gaps in her life, no spiritual ache, she did not need support or direction. But she kept reading and it kept making sense. 'I had absolutely no expectation or desire to end up where I am,' she says. 'It was almost with trepidation that I kept turning the pages and the trepidation just increased. I kept thinking: "OK, where's the flaw? Where's the bit that doesn't make sense?" But it never came. And then it was like: "Oh no, I can see where this is leading. This is disastrous. I don't want to be a Muslim!" Caroline Bate is 30 years old, blonde, blue-eyed and pretty, with a soft Home Counties accent. She has a degree from Cambridge (she studied Russian and German before switching to management studies) and works for an investment bank in the City. She is Middle England's dream daughter or daughter-in-law. And though she has yet to make her formal declaration of faith in Allah and the prophet Mohammed - a two-line pledge called the Shahada - she considers herself Muslim. She ticked the box on a form recently. It felt good, she says. Caroline is not alone. Though data is hard to come by, several London mosques have been reporting an increase in the number of converts to Islam, especially since 11 September. Like Caroline, many of these converts are from solid middle-class backgrounds, have successful careers, enjoy active social lives and are fundamentally happy with their lot. This is not a new trend, however. Matthew Wilkinson, a former head boy of Eton, became Tariq, when he converted to Islam in 1993. Jonathan Birt, son of Lord Birt, late of the BBC and now the government's transport guru, converted in 1997. The son and daughter of Lord Justice Scott also converted and Joe Ahmed Dobson, the 26-year-old son of the former Health Secretary Frank Dobson, has recently and, somewhat reluctantly, emerged as the voice of new Muslim converts in Britain. But it is a trend that has been pushed along by recent events. So far it has gone largely unnoticed, as the press concentrates on some of the more colourful characters that 11 September has thrown up. Since 11 September, the luridly painted poster boys of British Islam have been radical clerics such as Abu Hamza al-Masri, the steel-clawed, milky-eyed so-called 'mad mullah' of Finsbury Park mosque. Here are Victorian villains, fiendish emissaries of some ancient and foreign evil, straight out of an Indiana Jones movie. Their followers are blank-eyed drones like Richard Reid, packing his high-tops with high explosives. Or James McLintock, the 'Tartan Taliban'. There are lost boys, dislocated and dysfunctional, petty thieves preyed on in South London prisons and young offenders' institutions by fakir Fagins who forge an untempered anger into a righteous ire and provide it with a target. (Three imams working in British prisons have been suspended since 11 September for making 'inappropriate remarks' about the terrorist attacks.) But that is a sideshow, a compelling melodrama played out beyond the fringes of Islamic culture in this country. And while it might be stretching a point - and answering caricature with caricature - to insist that a demure English rose is the exemplar of the modern British convert to Islam, Caroline Bate is certainly more representative than Richard Reid. Talking to recent Muslim converts, it is striking how similar the descriptions of their embrace of Islam are. Most were introduced to Islam, and Islamic history and teaching, by friends. And, given that Islam is not generally a missionary faith, these were gentle introductions. For most, conversion was born of curiosity, an attempt to better understand the people around them. Caroline first started reading about Islam last April. A school friend she has known since she was 11 was marrying a Tunisian, a Muslim. 'My best friend was marrying into a different culture so I wanted to know more about it,' she explains. 'I came at it from more of a cultural perspective than a religious one. But the literature that I picked up just stimulated me. And Islamic teaching made perfect, logical sense. You can approach it intellectually and there are no gaps, no great leaps of faith that you have to make.' Roger (not his real name) is a doctor in his mid-thirties. About a year and a half ago, he started talking about Islam to Muslim colleagues at work. 'All I had ever heard about Islam in the media was Hezbollah and guerrillas and all of that. And here were these really decent people whom I was beginning to get to know. So I started to ask a few questions and I was amazed at my own ignorance.' He became a Muslim a couple of months ago. For these new converts, embracing Islam is usually a covert operation. They quietly read, talk, listen, learn. The hard part is coming out, declaring your newly acquired faith to friends and family, and, in some cases at least, facing up to fear, scepticism and even loathing. Caroline insists that the coming-out process has not been too painful. 'The reaction has been pretty much what I expected. I've had everything from "Do you know how they treat women?" to "Wow, great timing!" But your friends are your friends and I expect them to deal with it.' Others have had a harder time. Eleanor Martin, now Asya Ali (or some other combination of these names, depending on the circumstance), was a 24-year-old TV actress when she met Mo Sesay. She had a regular role as WPC Georgie Cudworth in BBC's Dangerfield during the mid-Nineties and Sesay, who later starred in Bhaji on the Beach, was also a Dangerfield regular. Sesay is a Muslim. 'Mo was such a kind man, just a good person. He wanted to know me as a person, there was nothing else going on. And I thought, well, here is this really decent guy and he is a Muslim. And the image I had of Islam was of men beating up women and going round in tanks killing people. 'The thing is we both had regular parts on the show, but they weren't very big parts, so we had a lot of time to sit in the caravan and talk. He really opened my eyes.' Eleanor finally converted in 1996. 'I wasn't sure I was going to until the last minute and then it just felt as if everything had fallen into place and there was no other option.' At first she kept her conversion secret. 'I was afraid of an adverse reaction from friends and family. I was really worried about what my father would say.' Her father was a devout Christian. A former radiotherapist, he had taken early retirement to go into the priesthood. But circumstances forced Eleanor's hand. A few months after she converted she met a Muslim African-American actor, Luqman Ali, and they decided to get married. 'I went home and said: "I've got some news. I'm getting married and I'm a Muslim." My mum was great. My dad said: "I think I'm going to get a drink now." 'It took Dad time. He went to see his spiritual adviser, a nun, whose brother happened to be a convert to Islam, and that helped. And he's great now, too. He's just happy that I'm following a path to God.' Roger, meanwhile, has yet to tell family or work colleagues of his conversion. 'I worry it will affect my career prospects,' he admits. 'I know first-hand how little people understand Islam. I know there is prejudice based on ignorance. A couple of years ago, if someone had told me they had converted, I would have thought they were odd. I don't want people to think I am an oddity or a curiosity because I don't think of myself like that.' Most converts acknowledge that living in an ethnically diverse city has made conversion easier than it might have been elsewhere. Stefania Marchetti was born and raised in Milan but came to London to study in 1997. She converted to Islam from Catholicism in April last year. 'It would have been far more difficult for me to convert in Italy,' she admits. 'The Italian media is very anti-Islam and generally Italians think that Muslim men are all terrorists and all Muslim women are slaves.' Certainly Karen Allen, a 28-year-old scheduler for Sky TV from Stoke Newington, has enjoyed a relatively smooth transition period. She converted to Islam last June and soon started wearing the traditional headscarf or hijab. 'When I first started wearing the hijab to work, there were a few jibes about Afghanistan and stuff, but people are fine now. They say things like: "That's a nice one you're wearing today." 'I think it might be more difficult outside London, but here there are a lot weirder things to look at than me.' What is especially striking about this stream of converts to Islam is that the majority seem to be women. Some suggest that twice as many women as men are turning to Islam. Batool Al Toma, who heads the New Muslim Project at the Leicester-based Islamic Foundation, which offers advice and support to recent converts, suggests this might be exaggeration, but admits that female converts are in the majority. 'A lot of people seem to think that women are more susceptible to Islam. I think it's largely because a lot of people are obsessed with the idea of an educated, liberated British woman converting to Islam which they feel subjugates and represses them in some way. We just get a lot more attention I suppose and that sparks people's interest.' The lure of Islam for women is surprising, given that the conversion process may be even more problematic for them than for men. There is the commonly held belief that Islam represses women and female converts often have to deal with recrimination from female friends who view their adoption of Islam as some sort of betrayal. The wearing of a headscarf or hijab (a sartorial option, it should be noted, not a requirement) also makes Muslim women more visible than their male counterparts. Certainly, all the women I spoke to were quick to refute the idea that Islam imposes a women-know-thy-place ideology. 'The perception of how women are treated is completely incorrect,' insists Caroline. 'Women have a fantastic position in Islamic society.' Indeed, many women converts talk about the adoption of the Islamic dress code as a liberation. They see it not as a denial of sex and sexuality but rather as an acknowledgement that these are treasures to be shared with a loved one and them alone. They are not hidden but rather freed from objectification. Asya insists that the trick is to turn preconceptions on their head. She wears a scarf to show she is a Muslim and a smile to prove she is happy being one. One problem for converts is that they are caught between two cultures. 'Young Muslims are very accepting,' says Caroline. 'They are really happy that you have chosen to become Muslim. The older generation are not so accepting. For them, Islam is part of their cultural background, it's about the country they came from and it's what binds their communities together.' One step towards greater acceptance came last October when Reedah Nijabat opened ArRum, an Islamic restaurant/members' bar/ cultural centre/social club in Clerkenwell. Nijabat, a 31-year-old former barrister and management consultant from Walthamstow, originally conceived ArRum as a meeting place and networking venue for professional first- and second-generation London Muslims. But it has also become a focal point for many of London's Muslim converts. It is easy to see why. On any work evening, a mixed bag of middle-aged Pakistani men, young couples (some Muslim, some curious non-Muslim), kids and white British converts chat and tuck into halal 'fusion' food. While the club promotes Islamic culture, the vibe is a Hempel temple of inner calm. Sufi wailing calms the nerves, while the bar specialises in healthy juices. For the new converts I spoke to, ArRum is a place to meet other Muslims and somewhere to bring non-Muslim friends and introduce them to Islam in a way that doesn't scare them. ArRum accents Islam's USP among the major faiths: its openness and lack of hierarchy. And Nijabat has realised that if there is an endemic suspicion of stuffy organised religion among the British (and increasingly, one suspects, second-generation British Muslims) there is great interest in 'spirituality', whatever that might mean. 'I think that the problem has not been with the substance of the major faiths, whatever they are, but a marketing defect,' argues Nijabat. 'Everything we do here is about remembrance of God and Islam, but you can get that across in a cool way. I'm not saying anything that isn't in the Koran, but you have to talk to people on their level. 'I'm beginning to see that there is a huge misunderstanding and a bridge that needs to be crossed between ethnic communities, host communities and spiritual communities, and I think we are making a contribution to that. You can get so hung up on the divisions and how different we are, but it is the same God for all of us. And we still feel that loss whether it is an American life or a Palestinian life. A lot of people are going through a period of soul-searching and that can only be a good thing.' For many, that soul-searching has led them to Islam, not the Islam of the suicide bombers but mainstream Islam. And, as Joe Ahmed Dobson points out, ArRum and its new converts do not represent some kind of liberal IslamLite, a media-friendly dilution of the real thing. Dobson and the other new converts are orthodox, in the truest sense, and proud. They are also part of a project that may help all parties see Islam in new ways. As Nijabat admits: 'You can end up being quite defensive about it. And you can either get hung up about it or be proactive. Opening ArRum has helped me recognise that I can be British and Pakistani and a Muslim and a woman. And I'm not going to be a victim in any of this.' |
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| A reason to hate What makes an al-Qaida suicide bomber? After a year spent talking to the terrorists and their families, Peter Taylor is convinced that it's all down to Iraq - whatever Tony Blair might claim Friday September 1, 2006 The Guardian One of the most bewildering sights since last month's dramatic Heathrow alert has been the succession of government ministers insisting that the terrorist threat has nothing to do with Iraq and British support for American foreign policy. Such political certainties fly in the face of all the empirical evidence I have found in a year of investigating how young Muslims are radicalised and recruited to fight in Iraq, not just in Britain but across Europe and the Middle East. Whenever and wherever I asked the families and friends of suicide bombers why their loved ones had been prepared to blow themselves up, top of their list was Iraq. Some were radicalised by the alleged illegality of the US invasion, others by torture at Abu Ghraib and abuses by the American military, and all by the continuing occupation of a Muslim land by foreign forces - including the British army. Mike Scheuer, former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, put it bluntly: "Iraq is an almost unimaginable force multiplier for Bin Laden, al-Qaida and their allies," he told me. In the Middle East, I met a young Arab who was hoping to go to Iraq and become a shaheed, a martyr. He told me he had already tried to get into Iraq via Syria to join the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group, al-Qaida in Iraq, but had returned home to try again later after some of those he travelled with were arrested near the border. Some, he said, managed to get through. At some stage he hoped to follow. He was clearly nervous. He was young, barely 20, with a red keffiyeh covering his face to conceal his identity. He said he planned to go to Iraq "to support our oppressed brothers and send the enemy out of Muslim lands, to fight in the name of God and ask for entry into paradise". I had no doubt he meant it. He said he was prepared to become a suicide bomber. "The important thing is to be killed as a martyr," he said. Shezhad Tanweer, one of the 7/7 bombers from Leeds, expressed much the same sentiments in the video he recorded before he killed himself and seven passengers on the Circle line near Aldgate. He made it clear "to the non-Muslims of Britain" why he had done it. "Your government has openly supported the genocide of 150,000 innocent Muslims in Falluja," he said. "You are directly responsible for the problems in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq to this day." It is not known precisely how many Muslims have left the UK for Iraq. I asked Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, if it was possible to put a figure on the number. "We don't know exactly how many. We simply don't have a very clear picture of the total scale of the problem," he admitted. Muslims about to go to Iraq do not tell even those closest to them what they are intending to do. There is at least one case in Britain where an individual appears to have been stopped, but it is currently sub judice and cannot be discussed. Wail al-Dhaleai, 22, from Sheffield was the last person his friends ever dreamed would go to Iraq and die. He is thought to have been shot dead by US troops in 2003 while trying to blow them up. He had never figured on the radar of South Yorkshire special branch or MI5. The first they appear to have heard was when a newspaper in his native Yemen reported that a family friend had called with the news that Dhaleai had become a shaheed. Dhaleai came to the UK in 2000 as an asylum seeker, settled down and married a young Yorkshire woman at Sheffield registry office in January 2002. His wife converted to Islam. Dhaleai soon became a father. He appears to have been universally popular, not least because of the martial arts skills he developed and passed on to others at the young people's class he set up. His tae kwon do mentor and friend was Andy Hill. He knew that Dhaleai was a Muslim who took his faith seriously - he would sometimes stop in class to pray - but never realised how deep that faith ran until Dhaleai took the examination for his black belt. After displaying his skills before the visiting grand master, Dhaleai had to bow before him. To Hill's horror, he refused. "I bow to no man but Allah," he said. "Bollocks!" was Hill's reaction. Dhaleai stood his ground - and was still awarded his black belt. In September 2003, Dhaleai made a pilgrimage to Mecca and brought back an Arab tea set for Hill. He was very touched. Dhaleai said he had met someone who had offered him a job as a security guard in Dubai. The next month, he left. On the eve of his departure, a friend asked him why he was leaving when he had such a great family and prospects. Dhaleai replied that where he was going he would meet an even more beautiful woman. Presumably he meant paradise. A fortnight later, special branch came to Hill's door, questioned him and then told him what was said to have happened to his friend. Hill was shattered. "I still can't believe that somebody so nice could do that," he says. Last year, French intelligence neutralised five networks that were channelling young Muslims to Iraq. Unlike Clarke, France's anti-terrorist coordinator Christophe Chabout will put a figure on the numbers who have gone to Iraq. He estimates around 20 and says that most of them went to join "al-Qaida in Iraq", which is subordinate to al-Qaida's central command. Chabout is also concerned about new networks emerging to replace those that have been broken. "It's quite amazing to see how fast these young men can be convinced and brainwashed to go to a country they have no idea of," he says. "But that's the reality." The most startling example of rapid radicalisation involved a number of North Africans from the Parisian suburb of Butte Chaumont who are said to have fallen under the influence of a 22-year-old self-proclaimed imam called Farid Benyettou. Three died of them died on suicide missions in 2004. They were aged 18, 19 and 20. Benyettou is now in prison awaiting trial. So too are others he allegedly recruited. One has just been sentenced to 15 years in an Iraq prison after being arrested by the Americans in Falluja. Another, Thamer Bouchnak, was intercepted at Orly airport before he could fly to Iraq. His lawyer knows what things made his client angry. Abu Ghraib was one. "When he saw his Muslim brothers being tortured and humiliated by the American forces and being killed by American soldiers for oil and petrol and not to set people free, he was revolted and wanted to fight." There is now another growing worry: that jihadis trained in Iraq are returning to carry out operations back home, as happened with the Afghan jihadi diaspora. It is known as "blowback". It is a concern that Britain shares. Although Clarke says there is not much evidence of people returning to Britain from Iraq, he adds the rider "as yet". "It's something that we're looking at very closely," he says. In France, there is already evidence of blowback. Hamid Bach, a French Moroccan living in Montpellier, is now awaiting trial on charges of making a bomb and planning an attack in France. As part of his radicalisation, he was taken to listen to Abu Hamza at Finsbury Park mosque. Iraq appears to have triggered his decision to take drastic action. His wife told me about the conversations they used to have at home. "We discussed Iraq, like all families. We can't ignore it. It's dreadful to see people being bombarded day and night. These people suffer and we suffer with them." Hamid decided to do something about it and was recruited by a network to go to Iraq. His wife says that when he crept out of the house one morning, she had no idea where he was going. When he got to Syria and found out that he had been selected to become a suicide bomber, he had second thoughts. He had wanted to fight like a soldier and not blow himself up. In order to return to Montpellier, he told his lawyer, he had agreed to assist with logistics for an operation in France. Back home, he bought 19 bottles of hydrogen peroxide from the local supermarket and accessed details of explosives and detonators on the internet. According to his lawyer, he was only going through the motions to make it appear to those who might be watching that he was keeping to his part of the bargain. In Jordan, I saw the sorrow of parents who had lost a son. Raed Elbana was a young lawyer who went to California and enjoyed a rock'n'roll lifestyle. He returned to Jordan during the Iraq war where, according to one of his college friends, Abdullah Abu Rahman, he was radicalised by Salafi jihadis. "They told him about holy war and fighting the Americans," he said. When his father noticed that he was growing a beard, Elbana explained it away by saying he had been travelling for three days and had not had a chance to shave. He then told his parents he was leaving for Dubai, where he had got a legal job. Later, his father got a phone call from Iraq saying, "Father of Raed, I congratulate you. Raed was martyred." Then the line went dead. According to al-Qaida in Iraq's website, Elbana was a shaheed who attacked a Shia clinic in the Iraqi town of Hi'lla; 118 died. It was said he was handcuffed to the steering wheel of the car bomb. In the wake of last year's bombings in London, Tony Blair said, "Let us expose the obscenity of these people saying it is concern for Iraq that drives them to terrorism." Such attacks in London and elsewhere are undoubtedly obscene, but the reason for them is scarcely beyond doubt. As Scheuer says, "Iraq is a self-recruiting machinery for al-Qaida. Al-Qaida doesn't have to do anything except let Iraq speak for itself". · Al Qaeda: Time to Talk?, the first programme in Peter Taylor's new series, will be shown this Sunday at 9pm on BBC2. |
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| THIS MAN IS A BRITISH DOCTOR.NOW HE'S GOING TO BE A SUICIDE BOMBER The Mail on Sunday (London); Feb 3, 2002; BARBARA JONES; p. 13 Full Text: ( Copyright Associated Newspapers Ltd. Feb 3, 2002) BRANDISHING a Kalashnikov machine gun, too cowardly to show his face, this hooded Muslim fanatic vows to take his Holy War to Britain - and to target Tony Blair himself. The Al Qaeda fighter says he is planning another atrocity on the scale of September 11, threatening to attack Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. Shamefully, he is British. And just two years ago he says he was working as a doctor in a leading London hospital. Educated in Church of England schools, the man calling himself only Dr Hakani grew up in Luton, the son of respectable Bangladeshi parents. He claims he suffered racism at school and developed a hatred for non-Muslims at university, later joining fanatical groups supporting Osama Bin Laden. Wearing a chequered scarf across his face, he met us at a secret address in Lahore, close to a training camp where he claims fellow British extremists are preparing to return to England. He is among the Muslim fanatics regrouping in religious teaching centres in Pakistan and in Al Qaeda camps still flourishing in mountains near the Afghan border. Despite the Pakistan government's efforts to close them down, these medrassas are welcoming growing numbers of foreigners. Other converts are undergoing weapons training in the quasi-military camps, preparing to bring their Jihad to the West. The Mail on Sunday saw many foreigners at fundamentalist preaching centres last week, where elders openly exhort them to take up arms. We were told dozens of Britons were among them. At our highly-charged meeting, Dr Hakani said: 'Our work has hardly started. America is still bombing Afghanistan, now we want to bring the war to Britain and America. We are waiting for the right time to return to our sleeper cells in the West and launch full-scale attacks. 'Unlike America, we do not want to harm civilians. We will be hitting public buildings, government and military targets and leading politicians like Tony Blair. All of us who have fought with Al Qaeda would welcome martyrdom. We can see spectacular results from another September 11. We could hit Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament.' Hakani spelt out chilling plans for attacks on Karachi airport, used by British and international troops protecting Kabul, and where American forces plan a base. 'This is a perfect target for us,' he said. 'An opportunity to humiliate them. They must be punished for the damage they have done to Islam. The Americans have taken over an entire hotel near the airport; they would be a sitting target.' Hakani, cradling a Kalashnikov and a hand grenade 'for security', said he suffered racism as he grew up, developing a disgust for non-Muslims at university. 'Their idea of living was to get drunk and let their women behave little better than prostitutes. I looked in the mirror and didn't want to call myself British any more.' Two years ago he was befriended by Muslims at the London hospital where he was working. 'They were from Al Qaeda. They inspired me to fight back for all our people who have suffered.' Hakani, who says his parents are proud of him, came to Pakistan willing to die for his beliefs. He trained in Bin Laden's camps, and is today a weapons instructor. He was unable to provide documentary evidence of his British background but spoke in a cultured English accent. 'I've kept in close contact with mosques in Britain,' he said. 'Many Muslims have come out to join me. We're training more fighters than ever to renew the Jihad.' He said he envied the four Britons who died in American bombing early in the war, saying they had trained with him. All were members of the extremist Al-Muhajiroun group, which has links to Finsbury Park mosque in North London. With Hakani was Ramzi Yousef, 30, an American-born Afghan who fought in Palestine. He said: 'People like us, with Western passports, find it simple to go back and reactivate military cells. It's time to take this war home. British and American Muslims are like universal soldiers. We can go anywhere to fight.' |
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| My chilling meeting with British doctor training to be a UK suicide bomber The Mail on Sunday (London); Jul 17, 2005; BARBARA JONES; p. 9 Full Text: (Copyright Associated Newspapers Ltd. Jul 17, 2005) WAITED until the dead of night in a hotel in the centre of Lahore, Pakistan, until I got the signal that we were ready. Finally Hassan Butt, the Manchester-raised fanatical leader of the now-defunct Al-Muhajiroun extremist group motioned that I should follow his car. I drove for what seemed like hours through the dusty plains north of the city until we reached a rundown, flyblown hotel used as a staging post by British-born Muslims en route for the paramilitary training camp in the lawless, mountainous north of Pakistan, close to the Afghan border. Masked gunmen met us in the car park and rushed us down a narrow, grimy passageway to a room where the door jerked open and an arm reached around to drag us in. Men patrolled the corridor as we spent time inside. Who was most nervous, us or them? The man who dragged us in brandished a Kalashnikov. He stood there silently, looking only too ready to use it. Butt sat down on a small bed in the room. On another bed was a large, muscular man with a Kalashnikov at his feet and holding a hand-grenade, his finger and thumb hovering over the pin. He wore the chequered scarf of the Jihadist around his head and face. His eyes were dark brown, intelligent and angry. I was face to face with a young Briton, educated in Church of England schools in Luton, but now committed to waging a Holy War on the country that nurtured and educated him. His mission, he said, was to stage another atrocity on the scale of 9/11. Tony Blair, he added in his slight estuary accent, was his No 1 target. He called himself Dr Hakani and said he was 33. Shockingly, he told me that he used to work in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, East London the very hospital where many of last week's bomb victims were treated. He said he was the son of respectable Bangladeshi immigrants. After studying at Manchester University and becoming sickened by the frivolity of his fellow students' lives, he joined fanatical groups supporting Osama Bin Laden. He declared: 'Our work has hardly started. We want to bring the war to Britain and America. We are waiting for the right time to return to our sleeper cells in the West and launch full-scale attacks. 'Unlike America, we do not want to harm civilians. We will be hitting public buildings, government and military targets and leading politicians like Tony Blair. All of us who have fought with Al Qaeda would welcome martyrdom. 'We can see spectacular results from another September 11. We could hit Tower Bridge, Buckingham Palace or the Houses of Parliament.' HAKANI said he suffered racism as he grew up, developing a disgust for people he described as 'infidels' at university. 'Their idea of living was to get drunk and let their women behave little better than prostitutes. I looked in the mirror and didn't want to call myself British any more,' he explained. He was befriended by extremist Muslims at the London hospital where he was working. He said: 'They were from Al Qaeda. They inspired me to fight back for all our people who have suffered. They had been busy recruiting in England at universities and hospitals. 'They were clever, drinking with non-activist Muslims in pubs and appearing to join in the lifestyle, but all the time subtly indoctrinating.' Hakani quit his job and came to Pakistan to train in Bin Laden's camps. 'By the time we arrived we were already willing to die for Allah,' he said. Hakani said he and other Britons were in Kabul with Al Qaeda when the Americans invaded Afghanistan in 2001. 'We thought, yes, this is our chance to fight them face to face. We lost the battle for Afghanistan and we were driven out, but we did not lose the war. We will take it to them again and again. There are many millions of us. 'Islam is my land but it is occupied, treacherously, by so- called Christians. Spain is one of those countries we will target. We will use all our power to have that land back in our hands. That is what we are training our young people for, that is the motive we teach them. There is a bigger goal than just attacking America or Britain. The goal is to regain our land. 'Young British Muslims come to us and we give them physical and psychic training to get their minds ready for the work ahead. I've kept in close touch with British mosques. Many have come out to join me and we are training more fighters than ever to renew the Jihad.' Hakani said his job was in weapons instruction and martial arts. 'I am proud to say I have helped form many cells back in Britain,' he told me. 'There are hundreds of them and the mullahs in the mosques are there to guide them. The mullahs are our universal soldiers, fighting against the Western way of life. We don't want to alienate the British public. They are all potential Muslims who could one day be on our side and react against the derelict way of life they see around them. 'It's true I had a privileged background and trained as a doctor in England but today things have gone full circle for me. Even my parents believe in what I am doing here.' The taciturn, big-built man standing guard behind Hakani said he was Ramzi Yousef, aged 30, brought up in America. He said he hated Americans. 'Their support for Israel against Palestine has disgusted me all my life,' he spat out. 'I can't remember a time when I didn't hate them. I know my place in the world, my aim: to destroy that American and British way of life.' Suddenly, after a brief conversation with two mullahs, we were ushered out. An angry mob saw us and surrounded our car. They took our keys and subjected me to the most frightening half hour of my life before we were finally allowed to leave. I have never been to a place as hostile to the western world and all it represents. AND it is into this fevered atmosphere that impressionable young Muslims are sent from Britain to learn hatred in the name of Allah surely a monstrous-perversion of the Muslim faith. It is here they are schooled in how to kill and maim, how to handle firearms, how to produce deadly toxins such as ricin and cyanide and how to make crude bombs with home-made explosives. Then, of course, they are sent back to Britain to become 'sleepers' like the perpetrators of the London bombings: to live their lives like hundreds of other graduates of these sick and deeply alarming universities of death beyond the taint of suspicion until the time comes to go out and kill in cold blood. Soon afterwards, returning to Kabul, I found a nervous young man staying at the house where I lived. He was Anwar Khan, a Pakistani born in Burnley and brainwashed by the mullahs at his local mosque until he came to Pakistan and joined the Taliban. He was picked up during a firefight long before September 11 and spent several years in jail. Anwar was on his way back home to Burnley to work in his brother's fish and chip shop. My meeting took place in January 2002. It was a frightening glimpse of how far Al Qaeda had reached into the lives of British citizens such as Anwar. The horrific consequences are now plain for all to see. |
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Islam: Preaching from the converted The Independent, UK May 16, 2004 Peter Stanford www.independent.co.uk -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ReligionNewsBlog.com • Item 7283 • Posted: Monday May 17, 2004 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- More articles on this topic: Islam She Wanted to Save the Planet, Now She Says 11 September Was a Good Thing. He Liked to Party, Now He Prays for Democracy’s Destruction. What is It That Draws Middle-Class Westerners to Allah? Peter Stanford Meets Five British Converts to Militant Islam and Hears Why, By `Word and Sword’, They Hope to Make This Country a Muslim State. Khalid is trying his best to be the image of hospitality but the police officers outside the hall are not helping his meeter-and-greeter routine. They watch from their car as a crowd of about 80 gathers inside to hear a talk by Sheikh Omar Bakri, the founder of the small, radical Muslim group Al-Muhajiroun. Khalid circulates, handing out photocopied leaflets to help focus minds. There is one entitled “The Enlightened Advice: To the Disbelievers (Kuffar) and Hypocrites (Munafiqeen)”, which summarises what Bakri is going to say tonight on his theme of the Muslim psyche. There is another on Osama bin Laden’s latest message telling Europe to break with the US or face the consequences. “The message was so polite,” the analysis begins. You begin to understand why the police are here. We are in an old school building just off Brick Lane in the East End of London, the heart of the capital’s Bangladeshi community. Bakri has been accused by mainstream Muslim community leaders of targeting disaffected young men with inflammatory rhetoric and the promise of Sharia law being established in the UK. He has certainly described the 11 September hijackers as “the magnificent 19″. And among those his organisation has provided with spiritual advice are several of the men arrested in recent anti-terrorist operations [Crevice] and the two British suicide bombers who, in 2003, attacked Israelis in Tel Aviv. Women and children are in a segregated area at the back of the hall. I’m told bluntly not to go near them. The young men at the front are mostly of Asian background. There is a group of teenagers - whose Burberry caps and designer trainers set them apart - who leave as one about 15 minutes after Bakri starts talking. Khalid also stands out from the crowd. His school-teacher-style beard doesn’t obliterate his pale skin; and his clothes, despite no doubt having been chosen specifically to be bland and grey, fail to look either. Khalid is a convert. Or more to the point, a double convert. There’s nothing new about Westerners converting to Islam - Cat Stevens, or rather Yusuf Islam, being the most famous - but recently many of those switching faith are choosing an uncompromising form of Islam as represented by groups such as Al-Muhajiroun. Khalid may be the most obvious convert in the audience but as soon as everyone is seated more become apparent, either by their skin colour, their dress or their zeal, the traditional attribute of the convert. Once Bakri - his white robe trimmed with gold and his face as benign as Father Christmas’s - gets into his stride, damning governments, other Muslims and anything else that springs to mind (Bill Clinton is “Mr Pinocchio”), the converts are the most diligent note-takers. Why does Bakri appeal to them? Why do converts such as Khalid embrace this particular approach to Islam - followed by less than 1 per cent of British Muslims? After the lecture, I meet with Khalid and two other converts who are also part of Al-Muhajiroun. The three men come to talk in a photographic studio where they have also agreed to have their pictures taken. They are as happy to spare their time as Jehovah’s Witnesses are to go out knocking on doors. They are all sure they have found the truth and nothing will stop them sharing it. But there are limits to the missionary spirit. Only Khalid will tell me what his name was before he converted. Their pasts, you sense, are something they wish to forget. The women converts I speak to will not come to the studio. It isn’t their way, I’m told. So I meet them in a jumbled Islamic bookshop in London’s Walthamstow where we talk in an upstairs room, always with a chaperone, and for most of the time with their own gazes averted. The photographs are a problem, even though they have been agreed in advance. There is much debate behind the counter and husbands have to be phoned to be consulted before the women finally cover their faces and allow a few snatched shots. But read their words, because these provide the clearest portraits. Uum Ayob Ayob, 36, is from Northern Ireland. After art school, she travelled to Morocco where she met her husband. She converted and married him in 1991 and now educates their four children at home in Highbury, north London When I graduated from university in Sheffield, my heart wanted certain things and my heart was turning away from certain things. I was turning away from rulers and governments. I was going to Friends of the Earth and it was enlightening me that governments might pretend to be concerned but they sell arms and deal with terrorists and start wars and exploit the aftermath of wars with their banks and systems. That was the first stage of my wanting something for the whole planet that eventually led me to Islam. Another thing my heart turned away from was opinions. In my four years at art college, I had listened to too many opinions and too many people saying what they thought life was about and what made art good. I had become really sick of opinions. I’d go into the library at college and look at books and feel physically sick because they were so many opinions. At this time I went to Morocco and liked what I saw in society there - people using their time to do purer things, such as praying and talking about constructive things. There was a happiness and tranquillity there. As I looked around everything spoke to me of the power of God. I felt under God’s protection and guided by him. I met my husband in Morocco. He introduced me to the Koran and Mohammad as the final prophet, the final sorting out of the detail that Christianity had started. The Prophet perfected the divine way of life. When my husband said that, I knew that was what I wanted. I converted and married him simultaneously. I didn’t tell my family for a while. When I did, they kept asking why. I try to explain but my mum wants me to go back to Christianity. I think everyone knows that Islam is the truth, but maybe they are too old to change. They’ve been very supportive. At first they resisted - like when I started to wear the khimar (scarf) and jilbab (coat) - but now my mum irons them for me. I think being brought up hearing about murders in Northern Ireland made me feel sick of killing. But at the same time, the Koran says that sometimes you hate a thing and it’s good for you. I can see a lot of good from the terrorism going on today - terrorism that is approved by God. There have been so many people converted to Islam since 9/11. It has brought to the forefront how we are being hoodwinked by leaders. Khalid Kelly Kelly, 37, was born in Dublin. He trained as a nurse and went to work in Saudi Arabia. While there, in 2000, he embraced Islam. He now lives in London and has an 11-year-old daughter who lives with her non-Muslim mother I was brought up as a Catholic. My baptismal name was Terence. As an adolescent, I asked a priest to explain the Holy Trinity to me. He’d studied for seven years and couldn’t. I just thought, “Forget it.” Christianity has put people off religion. I came to London to study to be a nurse, qualified in intensive care and got a job in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia in 1996. I wanted the tax-free salary. My life was all drinking and partying - the capitalist ideology. I spent four and a half years over there. For the first three and a half, I lived downtown in a Saudi villa, not in one of the Western compounds. When I’d hear the call to prayer, I’d open the window and turn up the stereo in opposition to what I saw as an imposition. I got really good at making drink. I had three stills in my house and then I got arrested one day with five cases of Johnny Walker in the back of my car. I was sent to prison for eight months. I lost everything. It was all confiscated. The prison was 150 people in a dormitory with a mosque at the end. I’d been inside for four weeks and was at my lowest point when I was given the Koran in English. Someone explained it to me. And then it was very quick. I saw that God was the creator, the provider, the commander, and the legislator for mankind. It was all suddenly very clear. I felt freer than I had ever been - even though I was in prison. When I was deported back to Britain in 2002, I started attending lectures, and I keyed in on someone who I felt was giving the best understanding of Islam: Sheikh Omar Bakri. He doesn’t try to change or adapt Islam. He’s uncompromising and sticks to the Islamic standard - set by the Prophet and his companions. I no longer work as a nurse. I was at St Thomas’s Hospital in central London but after the invasion of Afghanistan the management asked me what my views were. I said I have the opinion that is in the Koran. Allah says I have to stand with my Muslim brothers. They didn’t like it and so I left. I believe that Islam should be dominant throughout the world. We can do it by the word and by the sword. We do not believe in freedom and democracy, these are not Islamic things. Our job is not to integrate. It is to call people to Islam and expose the false belief that they are under at the moment. I want everyone to have what I have, but I have learnt to be patient. ` Omar Brooks Brooks, 28, grew up in Hackney. He embraced Islam in 1994 and lives in east London with his wife and two small children I became a Muslim at 17. My older brother had become a Muslim four years before me. My initial reaction to his conversion was the same as many people’s - that Islam was something to do with Asians. He faced a lot of opposition in the household and verbal abuse outside. But we spoke, we discussed, we argued, we shouted. I was coming from a secular point of view. I was interested in partying. But he persevered. We’d talk about what was going on in the world in Palestine or Kashmir. I started to catch a different slant on the news beyond the sloganisation of Western governments. They talk about freedom and democracy but it’s all about their own interests - economical and political. It all seemed so bogus. I’d discuss it with my mum and dad and, one day, they said, “You sound like a Muslim already.” And I realised that I did. Gradually, I stopped shouting and began asking my brother questions - what about prayer, women, life, living? Eventually I couldn’t find any holes in what he was saying. It sounded correct to me. My brother was always asking when I would become a Muslim and one day he asked and I said, “Today.” So I took my shahada - declaration of faith - on the day before my birthday. At the time of my conversion I was at college studying electrical installation. I went straight back there and said, “I’ve become a Muslim.” There were some negative reactions, but I am a strong person. I dealt with it. The obligation of the Muslim is to speak out, not to remain silent or integrate. There are British Muslims whose allegiances are to the government and the Queen. Islam for them is some mere spiritual matter that covers celebrations, kebabs, curries and a loose moral code. But in following Allah on how to live your life, how to behave, how to think, how even to feel, I’m not a British Muslim. I’m a Muslim in the UK. Assimilation is not an option for Muslims. It means becoming a non-Muslim. Many of those who appear on the TV, speaking as Muslims, aren’t at all. They are speaking on behalf of the government. The British government wants Muslims to see themselves as British. When I converted I spent all my time reading and thirsting for knowledge. I came across a video of Sheikh Omar Bakri. It was amazing. Through studying with him, I see that Islam is a complete way of life with an answer for every circumstance. Islam believes all are equal. Man-made societies in the West and East are racist. They are not based on God’s teaching. They are based on the interests of one group over another. Multicultural society is nothing more than a melting pot where the dominant culture is the government’s. And that is imposed on all the others. So my culture, Islam, says we should support the Mujahedin in Afghanistan, but if I said that in Britain I could be arrested. That’s a multicultural society for you. Umm Rashid Rashid, 32, is from the West Country. She worked as a teacher in Hong Kong, where she embraced Islam in 1995. She is married with three children and lives in east London I was lodging in Hong Kong with a Pakistani family. I became friends with the mother of the family. It wasn’t that she used to talk about Islam in any organized way. She just lived it. At that stage it wasn’t a question of it making sense to me, because it wasn’t explained. I just observed. My own family were very normal middle-class, not religious, but traditionally minded, and that had always appealed to me. I had seen society in Britain moving away from those values. At university, life had not matched so much with what I’d known at home. With the family in Hong Kong, there was the same order and respect. I didn’t have specific questions in my mind at the time, but there was an instinctive feeling that what they had was right, that there was a spark of good in it, and that I must go towards it. I was at a crossroads. I took the road to become a Muslim without really knowing what it entailed. The family told me that in order to become a Muslim you say the shahada - which translates as, “I bear witness that there is no deity worthy of worship, obedience and following other than Allah and that Mohammad is his messenger.” You need witnesses, but it is no big ceremony. I knew it wasn’t enough, but there was not much going on in Hong Kong in terms of talks and study. That came when I returned to Britain, in 1997, with my husband. He is the brother of the woman whose family I was living with in Hong Kong. They introduced us. And now we go to see Sheikh Omar Bakri, he is an expert and he is trustworthy in helping us to understand the Koran. with islam, there is not this burden of weighing things up. there are obligations and you do them. it is very liberating. especially for women. there are no longer questions such as should i wear this or that. it was a whole daily hassle in my former life. Life is so much better now. Before, I never felt quite right. Now it all works. It all makes sense. http://www.religionnewsblog.com/7283 |