As we have often seen in other cases, the family of an Islamic jihadist is shocked! Shocked! to find that he was involved in such a thing. Abdul Waheed Majeed showed no signs of “extremism,” according to his family. He was, apparently, a “moderate” of the type that the British government so very much wants in Britain. And yet here again we see that in the absence of any clear action against the understanding of Islam that justifies jihad violence on the part of Muslims in the U.K., there is nothing being done to stop more Muslims from taking up that understanding. There was just a report released by Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation that purports to refute the jihadists’ understanding of Islam on Islamic grounds; I will try to get hold of a copy, but the noted Islam expert Mark Durie doesn’t have a positive view of it, so I don’t have high hopes.
“Police search Crawley home of alleged Syria suicide bomber,” from ITV, February 12 (thanks to Marc):
Alleged Syria bomber ‘no extremist’ says family
The family of a man suspected to be the first British suicide bomber in Syria was in the country doing humanitarian work for a charity, his family says.
Abdul Waheed Majeed is a father of two boys and a girl aged 18, 16 and 12. He was born and bred in Crawley and worked as a highways contractor.
His uncle, Mohammad Jamil, 65, said Majeed had never shown any sign of extremism. He said: “If the family knew about this, we wouldn’t have let him go.”
Arif Syed, a community leader in Crawley, said Majeed would phone or Skype his family every three days, but communication was lost with him about seven days ago.
“He has mostly been working with a charity on the refugee camps and distributing aid which he collected from here and other towns in the UK,” Mr Syed said.