While we’re hearing about how “Islamic” must never be used to modify the word “terrorism,” and that the 7/7 London bombers just “happened to be Muslim” and presumably could just as easily have been Methodists, the British-born Mufti Zubair Dudha is singing a very different tune. But I trust that Sir Iqbal Sacranie will soon set him straight and convince him that he is misunderstanding Islam. (For details on how likely that really is, see here.)
AN ISLAMIC scholar who loathes Western values is advocating “physical jihad” in the Yorkshire home town of one of the London suicide bombers.
While Tony Blair and leaders of Britain’s Muslims were condemning extremism at their Downing Street summit, Mufti Zubair Dudha explained why British foreign policy led directly to the 7/7 atrocities. Mr Dudha, 29, teaches primary school children, teenagers and young adults at his Islamic Tarbiyah academy in Dewsbury.
He condemned the London atrocities and signed the Sunni Muslim fatwa against suicide bombings, but he is also an advocate of jihad. In his foreword to a 1996 translation of a pamphlet by one of his mentors, entitled Jihaad, Mr Dudha wrote: “Today many of us are misled into believing that in our times jihad of the sword is not warranted. Most definitely physical jihad is, and will be needed to a large extent.”
Later he added: “Besides the jihad of the pen and tongue, the Muslim ummah [nation] cannot be exempted from physical jihad. No learned person and no true Muslim can deny the benefits, fruits and blessings of physical jihad for the course of Allah.” One chapter title in the book is: “Preparing for Jihad and obtaining warfare equipment is also compulsory.”
Writings such as these could be declared illegal under the Government’s plans to introduce laws against glorifying or indirectly inciting terrorism. For now they remain legal.
Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police commissioner, said yesterday that his force has had 19 attempts to prosecute seven “preachers of hate” for incitement to racial hatred rejected by prosecution lawyers.
At his academy in Dewsbury,the town where the Edgware Road bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan lived, the softly-spoken mufti trains young minds to reject Western culture and follow Sharia law. Mr Dudha, who was born in Dewsbury, said that he understood the anger of young Muslims. His mission is “about channelling that anger in the right manner . . . controlling it and giving it the correct guidance”.