“John Reid should not come to a Muslim area, we do not want to see him.” So evidently Abu Izzadeen does not accept British sovereignty over East London.
“Barracked” is the Queen’s English for “jeered” or “heckled.” “Reid barracked during speech to Muslims,” from the Times Online, with thanks to Churchill:
The Home Secretary was barracked by a protester as he tried to address a hand-picked audience of Muslims in East London today in which he called on parents to monitor their children for signs of brainwashing by extremists.
John Reid was midway through a speech in which he urged Muslims to do more to root out potential terrorists when he was interrupted by a man identified as Abu Izzadeen.
Mr Izzadeen, a well-known Islamic extremist who has been investigated over remarks about the July 7 suicide attacks, brought a young boy with him into the meeting and said his aim was to disrupt John Reid’s speech.
He shouted down the Home Secretary, calling him a tyrant and yelling: “How dare you come to a Muslim area when you have arrested so many Muslims in this area.”
Mr Izzadeen, a Muslim convert also known as Omar Brookes is said to be a former spokesman for the radical Islamic group al-Ghurabaa, an offshoot of al-Muhajiroun – both of which are now banned in the UK.
He came to public prominence last year after refusing to condemn the 7/7 London bombings, instead, describing the attacks as “Mujahidin activity” which would make people “wake up and smell the coffee”.
That’s sedition. It ought to be identified as such.
“I am furious I am absolutely furious – John Reid should not come to a Muslim area, we do not want to see him. John Reid, Tony Blair and George Bush’s crusade can all go to hell,” he said today during Mr Reid’s speech.
“You all know as Muslims that we are treated as second class citizens,” he shouted to the crowd. “How many Muslims have been arrested?”
How outraged this must make him, since he believes that it is the dhimmis who ought to be treated as second-class citizens, not Muslims. But seriously, he displays admirable chutzpah in praising the 7/7 bombers and then complaining that Muslims are being arrested.
Still shouting, Mr Izzadeen was ushered from the hall by a number of police officers and continued to address journalists outside as Mr Reid picked up the thread of his remarks. Minutes later though, a second protester again interrupted, shouting: “Enemy of Islam” and holding up placards reading, “John Reid Go To Hell” and “John Reid. You will pay.”
Now there’s a helpful sign of good will from the British Muslim community.
The Home Secretary had been expecting a tricky reception, and in a sign of the tension surrounding his visit, the precise location of today’s meeting, in Leyton, East London, not far from the scene of the botched police raid in Forest Gate and the arrest of several suspects in connection with last month’s alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners, had been kept secret.
Mr Reid defined the Government’s campaign against terrorism as a contest of values rather than a battle of religions or ideologies, and he said that mainstream Islam shared a host of common values with rest of British society.
Anjem Choudary disagrees. See below.
He said that the values shared by Britain’s Muslim community and the rest of the country were “deep and enduring and worth fighting for”, adding that terrorists were not Muslims “in the true sense of the word”.
Is that really for him to say? Isn’t it for Muslims in Britain to prove by their actions? But we’re still waiting for that.
He went on: “They are militants who seek to achieve their aims through the forces of terror and violence. They cloak their language in the rhetoric of Islamic teachings, but they behave in ways that contradict the very principles of the Islamic faith.
“They believe that the West is evil and that all modern values are corrupting to Muslims, when in fact, it is they who are wicked and ruthless and they who are corrupting young Muslim minds.
Urging parents to be on the lookout, he said: “There is no nice way of saying this. These fanatics are looking to groom and brainwash children, including your children, for suicide bombings. Grooming them to kill themselves in order to murder others.”…
Among others protesting today was Anjem Choudary, who objected to the insinuation that Muslim children may be brainwashed.
He said: “Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day. It is very rich for you to come here and say we need to monitor our children when your Government is murdering people in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“Muslims do not need British values. We believe Islam is superior, we believe Islam will be implemented one day.” This is a call to replace British law with Sharia. If British officials have no problem with that, they should indeed not resist terrorism and non-violent efforts directed toward impose Sharia. But if they don’t want to see Britain become an Islamic state, then they see such statements as seditious.
One of the older local residents attending the speech at Leyton Youth Centre was 55-year-old Shankat Khan, who welcomed the fact that Mr Reid had made the visit but said that it was very narrow to suggest that it was just Muslim children who were being targeted.
“What about the British parents? What about the Afro-Caribbean parents? We are as worried as other parents are but we need to be part of a wider society,” he said….
What about British and Afro-Caribbean parents? Where are the British and Afro-Caribbean terrorists?
Responding to the Home Secretary’s article in The Sun, the editor of the Muslim News said Mr Reid’s comments were “worse than looking for reds under the bed”, a reference to anti-communist witchhunts in America during the 1950s.
“The Home Secretary is generating a new climate of fear against Muslims, by not only suggesting they are all potential terrorists, but appears to be also trying to divide Muslims families,” said Ahmed J Versi.
I wonder if Mr. Versi would be so kind as to provide us with a reliable way to distingish Muslims who are potential terrorists from those who are not.
Commenting on Mr Reid’s words, Dominic Grieve, the Shadow Attorney General, said: “While John Reid’s remarks are relevant, he is in danger of repeating what the Prime Minister has already said; that Muslim extremism is a problem for the Muslim community. He needs to realise that it is a problem for all of us.”…
“The Government has not shown itself able or willing to do the grinding, difficult work of eradicating the root causes of this problem.”
And of course, Muslims themselves have no responsibility whatsoever to do any work on this problem. It’s all up to the government.