"Birmingham and its links to militant Islam," from the Times Online, with thanks to Twostellas:
Khalid Mahmood, Labour MP for Perry Barr in Birmingham, has led calls in the House of Commons for tougher action against extremist groups and has demanded that Britain's Muslim population expose those on the radical fringes of the religion."The mainstream Muslims need to speak out," Mr Mahmood told the House of Commons on July 20, as he described the dangers of groups such as al-Muhajiroun, which has held conferences and boasts of extensive recruitment in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
And on July 18, the Sunni Council, the largest British Sunni Muslim group met in Birmingham to issue a fatwa, a ruling on a point of Islamic law, declaring the London suicide bombings "haraam" or strictly forbidden.
Explaining the fatwa, Grand Mufti Muhammad Gul Rehman Qadri said: "Anyone who commits suicide will be sent to Hell... It is the explicit saying of the Holy Prophet who ordered his followers to seek peace and harmony wherever they should live, not to cause death and destruction or to live counter to the laws of that host country."
This doesn't touch on Qaradawi's contention that such bombers are not suicides, but martyrs.
But over the last six years, radical Islamists from Birmingham's 150,000-strong Muslim community have been linked to a series of attacks in the Middle East.In 1999, five men from Birmingham were arrested in Yemen in connection with the kidnapping of 16 tourists in the country. Four of the tourists were killed in a botched rescue attempt by the Yemeni army and Shahid Butt and Sarmad Ahmed, both from Birmingham, were sentenced to serve five years in prison in Aden.
Four years later, officers from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism branch were given a list of men and organisations in Birmingham and the West Midlands by Israeli security forces after Omar Khan Sharif, a 27-year-old from Derby, killed himself in Israel after failing to detonate his bomb in a Tel Aviv bar.
Mr Sharif's accomplice, Asif Mohammed Hanif, from Hounslow, in West London, became Britain's first confirmed suicide bomber when he killed himself and three people the same night in Tel Aviv in April 2003. Both men were thought to have been funded by organisations in the West Midlands.
Birmingham hosts annual conferences every year from the broad and mixed world of Britain's Muslim community.
Along with mainstream groups, radical and fringe sects hold large meetings in Birmingham, including Hizb Ur-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, two groups condemned by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan in a speech last week in which he said "there is a lot to be done in England" to combat Islamic extremism.
"There is Hizb Ur-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun, who operate with full impunity in that area," said General Musharraf, referring to Britain as a whole. "They had the audacity of passing an edict against my life and yet they operate with impunity."
In 2003, a Hizb Ur-Tahrir conference entitled "British or Muslim?" attracted 10,000 people to Birmingham, prompting the Home Office to commission a study on the group and warn of the spread of fundamentalist doctrine in the region.
10,000 members of the tiny minority of extremists, that is.
Hizb Ur-Tahrir, which calls for a worldwide Islamic caliphate, has been banned from British university campuses by the National Union of Students after holding controversial recruitment sessions.The fringe group, founded in Jerusalem in 1953, separated into factions in the early 1990's, when Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of its London branch, broke away to form al-Muhajiroun, which espouses violent struggle in the name of Islam.
Al-Muhajiroun, which has boasted of recruiting British Muslims to fight in the Bosnian war and offering advice to others who seek a role in extremist Islam, was officially disbanded last year.
"The mainstream Muslims need to speak out..."
Get serious.
I watched a press conference at lunchtime with Dr Mohammed Naseem the president of the Birmingham Central Mosque in which he cast doubt on whether the London bombers were Muslim or not - when told by the reporters of the evidence, including DNA evidence, he said 'Tony Blair lied about Iraq and fabricated evidence, we need transparency before we believe these things' - the head of Birmingham Police who was standing beside him was wincing.
Dr Naseem also doubts whether Muslims carried out 9/11 and insinuated it was the Zionists who did this - I cannot find the link - but I remember reading him say so.
The Midlands has been a focal point for extreme Islamic activity for many years - I have personally had recollected to me the stories of Sikh and Hindu boys being beaten up and harassed by Muslim youth there and also of Afro-Caribbean teenagers being targetted for violence and beatings in towns like Walsall.
All of the extremist Islamic groups have constituencies across the Midlands - the Muslim Association of Britain, under the rubric of George Galloway's 'Respect' party, a gradualist theocratic-shariaist party, narrowly missed out winning a parliamentary seat in the last election by a few thousand votes in the very constituency in which these terrosists were captured - Small Heath. In their election campaign the issues of Kashmir were highlighted in a campaign of communalist politics the like of which has never been seen before in Britain - it makes you wonder how all those Indian voters must have felt when confronted on the doorstep with their leaflets.
Do not forget that in 2001 a Pakistani man from Birmingham became a suicide bomber in Kashmir.
Birmingham is also the city in which recently Muslim politicians were convicted of electoral fraud in what the judge described as the most serious incident of electoral corruption since Victorian times and a scene that would put a banana republic to shame.
First they came for the Islamic terrorists. Then they came for the One-World Federalists. Then they came for the Esperantists. Oh, when, when, will this madness of the cruel and racist Western governments end?
Birmingham Central Mosque. Where the condolence books for Ken Bigley and the dead of Madrid were stolen. I don't suppose they even bothered to start one for the victims of the London bombings.
Why waste paper when there are better uses of paper, ie flyers for the Mujahideen? "Pray for death and decay to be visited upon the West."
http://icbirmingham.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/mercury/tm_objectid=14533861&method=full&siteid=50002&headline=terror-leaflets-found-at-mosque-name_page.html
Granny
That kind of literature manifests itself in inner-city Birmingham in violence against Hindus, Sikhs and Jamaican youth - all of whom are close at hand for hot blooded Jihadis to test their resentment on - and not one of these groups is white or Jewish (against whom the resentmenst could be 'justified') - and all of them have been more or less abandoned and ignored by the Guardian and Independent - who of course spout Islamic propaganda by the mile every week but seem to ignore the very real issues other minorities face in the growing Islamisation of our cities.
I also remember that there was a mosque funded by Saddam Hussein in Birmingham which held his name until his downfall - it kept his name through the first Gulf War.
From Timesonline: "It emerged last night that Ibrahim, 27, was granted a British passport despite a criminal record for violence" -
Mugging at knifepoint.
I have just finished sending my emails to British authorities (PM / HS / Home Office / FS / Foreign Office) demanding to know how this "man" was granted a Passport.
I urge all British citizens to do the same. I want the asshole who did not do his or her job exposed, shamed & sacked.
Any of our allies could be attacked by these bastards using British Passports. Write & phone your political representatives now & get all British Passport holders screened BEFORE they arrive on your shores.
That would be the President Saddam Hussein mosque on Birchfield Road in Perry Barr, now called Jame Masjid, or Main Mosque.
First they came for the Islamic terrorists. Then they came for the One-World Federalists. Then they came for the Esperantists. Oh, when, when, will this madness of the cruel and racist Western governments end?
Posted by: Hugh at July 27, 2005 11:42 AM
ROTFL!! ROTFL!!
Gold Star for you today!
http://www.beecy.net/frank/
just heard some one say I don't understand why this hasn't happened in the USA??
WELL COULD IT BE WE HAVE GUNS AND ARE SICK OF THEIR SH-T??
Part of the American Tribe
Squirrel Hunter
Spider Killer
GOD BLESS THE USA AND HER FIGHTING FORCES AND ALL WHO FIGHT WITH HER GIVE THEM STRENGTH, WISDOM, SIGHT, AND COURAGE AMEN
They live in a fantasy world. Operating with impunity is evidence that they believe that these and continued "acts of terror" will cow the British public, and in fact, they believe that have them on the run. What gives them such confidence? Hmmmm.
Internment and mass-deportations are long overdue.
When will we start shipping them out?
He was granted a British passport despite a criminal record for violence?
Do you know that routinely Australian tourists are turned away from British customs because the British think that they might stay there illegally?
Hundreds, maybe even thousands of Australians have been turned away coming in to Britain.
Maybe we're just not muslim enough for them.
Voltaire:
It's because the Aussies never claimed to be refugees from persecution back home. Never mind that it's those well-known pacifistic Islamists who are crying about persecution, whose own penchant for totalitarianism would make the average Arab dictator blush.
In the black-and-white illogic that prevails today, crying refugee is about all it takes. The Brits have people like Cherie Booth QC (aka Mrs. Blair) leveraging human rights and civil liberties, so that Islamists can freely coerce their women to cover 96% of their bodies and it's not much different here in Canada, where the late PM Trudeau's son and David Lewis's grandson are posting sureties for a self-admitted Syrian passport forger who fought in Afghanistan and doesn't want to go back home.
"Operate with impunity" seems to be a grotesque understatement of the conditions in the UK. They are SUPPORTING the muslims in their terrorist intent with housing, clothing, food, and the dole. For what? Maybe if anyone out there has hard data - specifically, how many muslims in the UK are actually employed vs. how many are mooching off the workers- the populace will object. How much taxpayer money is being diverted to foster the terrorist lifestyle and freeloading on an annual basis? What is the cost to this rather tiny island nation for giving money to the rabbit-breeding mooslims? If you have any answers, especially re: the cost of supporting mooslims, please respond.