And yet the Muslims who ostensibly reject the understanding of Islam that motivated the jihad murderer have no program in Britain or anywhere else to teach converts to avoid this view of Islam. Yet no one in authority ever ponders the implications of that. “‘Lone wolf’ terrorism hits London,” by Nick Miller for The Age, May 23 (thanks to Block Ness):
One of the two men involved in the Woolwich terror attack used to attend meetings of a banned Islamist organisation notorious for its Islamist rhetoric, The Independent newspaper has reported.
Anjem Choudary, former leader of the group Al Muhajiroun, told the newspaper he had known the man who was seen on video after the killing, waving a cleaver with bloodied hands.
He said the man went by the names of Mujahid or Michael.
Mr Choudary said Mujahid converted to Islam in 2003 and was a British-born Nigerian.
But he said he had stopped attending meetings two years ago.
“He was a pleasant, quiet guy .. just a completely normal guy,” he said. “He was interested in Islam, in memorising the Koran. He disappeared about two years ago. I don’t know what influences he has been under since then.”
Al Muhajiroun was notorious for Islamist rhetoric, including attempting to justify the 9/11 attacks, The Independent reported.
Police have also raided an address on a Greenwich housing estate – near Woolwich – the BBC reported….
Both of the alleged attackers were previously known to security services, The Times reports.
“Their names were on a file,” Whitehall sources told the newspaper. However neither suspect was thought to have links to terror groups based in Nigeria.
The attack was unprecedented. A British soldier run down and beheaded in a London street in the middle of the afternoon.
Britain has spent millions of pounds since the 2005 London Underground attacks to prepare against the threat of terrorism, yet here, in broad daylight, two men brandishing a meat cleaver and a butcher’s knife, have shown how cheaply that veneer of security can be punctured. The barbarous horror of freelance jihad has reached the high street.
The nation is in shock, but this has been security chiefs’ greatest fear, an attack straight from the playbook of the new, ”lone-wolf” brand of terrorism….
This was an attack from the al-Qaeda handbook. The terrorist group’s English-language magazine, Inspire, produced in the Arabian Peninsula, exhorts people to carry out ”lone wolf” attacks. Articles and advertisements urged readers to use knives and run people down in vehicles, the Daily Mail reported.
The first issue of the magazine contained an article ”How to build a bomb in the kitchen of your mom”, which was reportedly used by the Boston Marathon bombers….
Since the July 7 London bombings in 2005, security forces have used electronic surveillance and border security to identify jihadists who travelled overseas for training. Only half of MI5’s work involved plots with a Pakistan or Afghanistan dimension, said Sir Jonathan, with Yemen and Somalia the new priority areas.
But much of the ”education” and radicalisation now happens on home soil, or online. YouTube and other sites carry video sermons from radical clerics.
One of the most-cited is Yemen preacher Anwar al-Awlaki – who was killed by a drone strike in 2011.
The co-founder of Inspire advocated what some officials dubbed the ”just do it” brand of terrorism, writing, ”Assassinations, bombings and acts of arson are all legitimate forms of revenge against a system that relishes the sacrilege of Islam.”
Awlaki’s sermons are continually put on YouTube and other sites, as officials work to have them removed. In one video he advised, ”Don’t consult with anybody in killing the Americans – fighting the devil doesn’t require consultation.”
Roshonara Choudhry, 21, who was jailed for stabbing East Ham MP Stephen Timms with a kitchen knife in 2010, told police she had been radicalised by Awlaki ”explaining stories from the Koran and explaining about jihad”. ”If you go on YouTube there’s a lot of his videos there,” she told police.
A lot of the radical material online mentions beheading, quoting a verse from the Koran on ”smiting the necks” of unbelievers….
That verse is not just in the “radical” Koran.