Experts contend that Tablighi Jamaat does not act "willingly as a global jihadist recruiting arm," but with the track record of its members as detailed below, it must be held to account even as a supposedly passive enabler of jihadists. Every Australian should demand to know why the group has operated unchallenged and gained enough strength in the country to be poised to take over a Sydney mosque.
"Mosque group 'in a line to jihad'," by Natalie O'Brien for The Australian:
THE Islamic group accused of trying to seize control of Sydney's Sefton mosque is part of a movement described as a recruiting ground for al-Qa'ida in a new terrorism intelligence report.
The group attempting the takeover has members who follow the Tablighi Jamaat stream of Islam, described this week bythe private US intelligence group Stratfor as an "indirect line to terrorism".
Members of the Tablighi movement have recently been linked to a terrorist cell in Spain that was planning a bomb attack in Barcelona.
During a series of raids last week, Spanish police seized bomb-making materials and arrested 14 men who were said to be members of the Tablighi.
The Stratfor report says that on the surface, the Tablighi is a peaceful, egalitarian and devotional movement stressing faith and personal development, but it has links to the world of jihadism.
"The TJ organisation also serves as a de facto conduit for Islamist extremists and for groups such as al-Qa'ida to recruit new members," the report says.
It is used by jihadis as a cover for both recruiting activities and for travel. "Significantly, the Tablighi recruits do intersect with the world of radical Islamism when they travel to Pakistan to receive their initial training," it says.
Western intelligence agencies, including Britain's MI5 and the FBI in the US, have been monitoring the activities of the group.
However, the Stratfor report points out that the organisation "unintentionally" serves as a front for or conduit to militant organisations.
"There is no evidence that the Tablighis act willingly as a global jihadist recruiting arm."
Members of the Tablighi in Sydney have been accused of attempting to oust the imam at the Sefton mosque, in Sydney's southwest, so they can take control and bring in their own Tablighi sheik.
Attempts by the The Australian to contact Talbighi for a response were last night unsuccessful.
Trouble at the mosque began last year and spilled over into legal action, resulting in the Bankstown Magistrates Court being told that the power struggle was about the Tablighi members staging a takeover.
Lawyer Richard Mitry successfully overturned an apprehended violence order against the Sefton imam, Abdul Karim Quasimi, telling the court the order forcing him to stay away from his home and the mosque had nothing to with fears for personal safety and was all about a takeover by an extremist group.
The Stratfor report says there is information that once the recruits are in Pakistan, radical groups including the Taliban and al-Qa'ida actively woo them and offer them military training.
John Walker Lindh, the American jailed for 20 years for fighting with the Taliban, had initially travelled to Pakistan with the Tablighi.
The sect has also been linked to two of the July 7 London bombers, the failed shoe bomber Richard Reid, the so-called dirty bomber Jose Padilla, who was planning an attack in the US, and Lyman Harris, who was planning an attack on the Brooklyn bridge.
Members of the Lackawanna Six terror cell in the US travelled to Pakistan on the pretence of studying Islam and culture at the Tablighi training centre.
However, they travelled through Pakistan to Afghanistan and trained at al-Qa'ida's infamous al-Farooq camp.
I congratulate Natalie O'Brien and the editorial staff of the 'Australian' for using the word 'jihad' in the title of an article, no less.
Now, if in all cases relating to Jihad - Islam's assault on things non-Muslim, or on Muslims deemed to be insufficiently Muslim - Ms O'Brien can bring herself to use, and her editor permit to be printed, the term 'jihadi' instead of 'terrorist', 'militant' or 'extremist', and the the term 'jihad' instead of 'terror', 'terrorism', or 'terrorist [if used adjectivally, as in: 'jihad raid', or 'jihad attack', instead of 'terror/ist raid' or 'terror attack'] then we'll be getting somewhere.
It would appear to me that Political Correctness is not just a threat here in the US but Australia and the rest of the world. How else could such activities take place in plain view?
It amazes me that people the world over, go to so much trouble to avoid upsetting the feelings of people who want to cut their/our heads off. The consequences of this ignorant behavior is manifesting itself as we speak. The enemy is in the hearts of all the major cities the world over. It would be wrong to show any concern because that would be showing prejudicial behavior. It's a damn good thing that PC wasn't alive and well in WWII or the Nazis would have had a lot bigger presence than they did.
Stealth invasion is happening now. Like termites...you won't know there's a problem until the house falls down.
Watch for Australia's newly minted Prime Minister, Mr. Krudd, to issue an apology to Tablighi Jamaat any day now.
A former leader of Krudd's party was responsible for getting the catmeat sheikh safely ensconsed in the country.
....things to do when traveling to Pakistan.
A) purchase massive quantities of heroin and other opiates for resale back home
B) train in AL-Qaeda military style camps to improve your physical abilities to kill people
C) visit Muslim torture chambers to view religious conversions in progress
D) view government films showing a smiling president as he accepts money from western countries who think he really wants to fight terrorists
E) visit the Pakistanian / Iranian border and help the Muslims radicals as they transport weapons and explosives destined for the frontier..
F) visit Lahore to see if you can find any smiling Ahmadis...
G) visit the historic Kyber Pass and talk to village elders who actually remember when the British were there...
H) travel to the northern area and admire the "I love Osama" posters...
I) travel to Azad Jammu & Kashmir and go on a scavenger hunt to see if you can find any Christian relics such as a rosary, a cross, or a bible or a Christian church...
J) travel to QUETTA and see if you can spot the Muslilm without an AK47
....yes...there are many things to do when you travel to Pakistan...
William A. Graham, Dean of Harvard Divinity School and an academic "expert" on Islam, assured his alumni in 2003 that the Tablighi Jamaat are really just a "moral" reform movement that is trying to help the "sufferings" of the Muslim people:
Probably one of the largest Islamist movements in the world today is a group called the Tabligis. The Tabligi Jama'a began in the late 1930s under a man named Mohammad Ilyas, in what is now Pakistan (at that time, it was still British India). The Tabligis have a strictly nonengagement-in-politics approach to Islamic revival and to becoming a better Muslim. Their practice is effectively "each one, reach one." They don't seek to convert the world, to go out and convert infidels, if you like, or people who are not Muslims. Rather they strive to convert Muslims to faithful practice of Islam, to being real Muslims, real "submitters to God."
To be a Muslim, according to the Tabligis, you only have to: have faith in God; pray; act with modesty; learn the word of God and transmit it; follow the right way; and receive all faithful Muslims, in other words, be kindly. That is a pretty simple credo. The movement has publishing houses around the world and has spread out through societies all over the world. In numbers, they are probably the largest Islamist, that is Muslim reform, movement in the world today. We don't hear about them because they are quietists; they are apolitical in their approach. "Reform the world, beginning with me" is their approach.
Again, I want to point out that the range of possibilities, even in this kind of totalism, integrating everything under the rubric of religious faith, is certainly quite varied as to how it works itself out. We know this much more from the groups that want to have a so-called theocracy of some kind, something that, by the way, is virtually unknown in Islamic history. I could argue that there has never really been an "Islamic state," at least not since the time of the Prophet. And I am not sure the Prophet would have even described his state as an "Islamic state."
It is important to recognize, then, that a lot of reformative zeal is due to the immense level of injustices that many Muslims, and particularly a lot of the leaders of Islamist groups, have suffered.
Finally, the other virtually universal characteristic of most of these groups is that they are highly moralistic and, in many cases, highly activist. The Tabligis with their "each one, reach one" notion of trying to spread moralism person to person are certainly activist in their own way. The level of activism ranges broadly, including much we don't hear about.
One reason that Islamist groups are now so important and powerful in many countries in the Muslim world is not because of their ideology, frankly, but because of their engagement with the social realities of their suffering peoples. They are the people that at a time like the 1992 Cairo earthquake provided all of the relief for the poor quarters of the town, which really suffered terribly. The government was hopeless about doing anything. Instead, local Islamist groups went in, got shelter for people, brought food and fresh water, and did all the infrastructure activities that the government was unable to do because of its incompetence.
This is a fact on the ground in a great deal of the Muslim-majority world, and we don't ever hear about it. It is one of the reasons that people flock behind the banners of a lot of the Islamist groups, because these groups are actually meeting the needs of the people on the ground. When they become political in this way, they are quite often successful.
There is a seriousness about social justice in a lot of the Islamist movement that reminds me of the Social Gospel of Protestantism in this country of a century and a half ago and that still abides: a notion that being religious means being concerned about one's fellow and doing something about it. This idea is very strong in most of these Islamist movements, whether they are radical or not radical in any sort of overt political terms.
http://www.hds.harvard.edu/news/bulletin/articles/graham.html
Seeing as this group acts as a sort of gateway for would be terrorists I would sincerely hope that some organizations are investigating it. Finding who the "recruiters" are in the organization could be the start to working up the ladder and getting access to terrorist trainers or other more "connected" members of the community.