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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

UK Muslims killed in Syria lived secular lives, then grew more religious and went off to wage jihad

Feb 6, 2014 5:46 pm By Robert Spencer

Akram

Here yet again we see Muslims who were not particularly religious and living relatively ordinary lives growing more religious and then turning to jihad. Yet religion is the one aspect of their motivation that British authorities, like their American counterparts, have forbidden themselves to examine.

“What drove a British estate agent and his maths tutor brother to die as jihadists? How seemingly decent young men are living terrifying doubles lives,” by David Jones in the Daily Mail, February 5:

When the father of Mohamed and Akram Sebah told his neighbours last September that his sons had died in a car crash while visiting America, a wave of grief swept through the North London square.

Many residents of this close-knit community in Holloway attended a wake at the family’s elegant, three-storey townhouse and later joined a procession to the nearby mosque.

They had greatly admired the brothers, and not only because they were unfailingly cheerful, helpful and polite.

Having gained impressive qualifications and forged successful careers, even though their parents had arrived here as refugees from strife-torn Eritrea in East Africa, they were inspirational young men who seemed to epitomise the British immigrant dream.

To fully grasp their status among neighbours in Cornwallis Square, particularly among the younger people for whom they were role models, I should briefly explain its social make-up.

Though its elegant, mock-Georgian terraces were designed for Yuppies during the late-Eighties property boom, the cement was barely dry before property prices crashed, whereupon most were taken over by a housing association, which now rents them (for just £145 a week) to low-income tenants of many colours and creeds.

According to George O’Connor, 50, an Irish-Jamaican welder who’s lived a few doors from the Sebahs for more than 20 years, ‘if you’re looking for an example of people of all cultures living harmoniously together, Cornwallis Square is it’.

And when its families peered from their windows to see Akram, 24, arriving home in his yellow VW Beetle — a perk of his job as a £50,000-a-year estate agent — or maths tutor Mohamed, 28, striding off to teach a private pupil, they glimpsed the rewards that London might offer to anyone with sufficient purpose and endeavour.

We can only imagine the sense of shock, then, when these same families opened their newspapers last week to be confronted by a photograph of the pair in very different guise.

Gone were their favoured designer suits, replaced by paramilitary fatigues whose pouches bulged with bullets. Gone, too, their workaday briefcases; instead, both brandished AK47 machine-guns.

The only reminder of the young Londoners they had been was Akram’s back-to-front baseball cap.

To those who had heard their father, Abdulrahman, 62, describe how they had been killed in a mini-cab crash which had left the driver in a coma (an irony, given that he himself had worked as a taxi-driver), the story accompanying the photo was more astonishing still.

Mohamed and Akram had not travelled to America last summer. They had stolen away to fight alongside Al Qaeda-backed jihadis in the Syrian civil war, and died in a gun-battle.

One of Akram’s friends told me how the brothers had been buried amid the rubble where they fell, which would explain why neighbours were not invited to their funeral.

And now they have become ‘poster-boys’ in the drive to recruit still more naïvely idealistic young British Muslims to fight in Syria.

The picture of them clutching their guns shortly before they were killed has been posted on extremist websites proclaiming them Islamic martyrs, hailing them as the ‘Lions of Britain’.

Meanwhile, among their circle of friends in London, a grimmer image is being transmitted between mobile phones.

Flourished at me by one of their number last week, it shows the blood-encrusted corpses of two bearded young men, said to be Akram and Mohammad but captioned with their Arab noms-de-guerre, Abu Abdur Rahman Al-Eritri and Abu Usama Al-Eritri.

For the Government and anti-terror officers, all this is deeply worrying and precisely the sort of scenario spurring the new crackdown on so-called ‘jihadi tourists’ who go to fight in Syria.

Using executive powers beefed-up by Home Secretary Theresa May, police are seizing the passports of anyone suspected of travelling to engage in ‘fighting, extremist activity or terror training’.

Earlier last week, Sue Hemming, the head of counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, said that Britons who travel to join the rebels in the Syrian conflict will face prosecution and even possible life sentences on their return.

Border control and airport security officers are on high alert, and 14 people have already been held on Syria-related charges this month, compared with 24 in the whole of 2013.

Some have been arrested at Stansted and Gatwick airports, both of which also operate cheap connections to Turkey — the staging post of choice for jihadi tourists.

Official estimates put the number of British residents or citizens who have taken this route at around 300. However, the ‘hate-preacher’ Anjem Choudary claims the number is ‘in the thousands’.

Last week, Greater Manchester Chief Constable Sir Peter Fahy, leader of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ counter-terrorism strategy, spoke of the ‘real worry’ that they would be radicalised and trained in terror warfare, and return to threaten Britain’s security.

‘We have seen in a number of cases how people from conventional backgrounds — professional people — can turn in a relatively short period of time,’ he told me. ‘It is easy for people to become radicalised from mainstream or minority media material on the internet.’

Fahy has no idea why that is. Eventually he may be forced to admit that young Muslims can be “radicalized” so quickly because jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to appeal to them, portraying themselves as the exponents of true Islam and telling young Muslims that they can please Allah by engaging in jihad warfare.

Choudary insists British Muslims need only watch TV and see the atrocities being committed by Bashar al-Assad’s regime to be stirred into fighting.

‘There is a brotherhood of Muslims worldwide and they feel they are going out there to defend their brothers and sisters. That’s an admirable thing to do,’ he told me. ‘Why are people being arrested and demonised for it?’

In a typically abrasive aside, he added: ‘Anyway, It’s not hard to cause havoc here without going to Syria — Adebolajo (one of the Woolwich murderers) did it with knives from B&Q.’

So what drove Mohamed and Akram Sebah to sacrifice their lives for someone else’s struggle in someone else’s land?

Like many of the 40,000 Eritreans who fled to London, either to escape the war of independence with Ethiopia or the repressive regime which governs the new nation, Abdulrahman Sebah and his wife Zeinab were determined to provide the best for their two sons and four daughters.

Mohamed and Akram both loved sports, particularly football. Both were involved with the local youth team.

Education was the priority, however, and at Duncombe Primary School, headmaster Barrie O’Shea remembers them as ‘good, delightful students’.

They moved on to Islington Arts & Media College and quickly became two of its most promising new pupils. They then sat A-levels at a nearby college.

Akram earned a place on a biomedical sciences degree course at Westminster University. He was there between 2008 and 2011, working part-time at Marks & Spencer and Iceland to pay his way.

On graduating he landed a job at estate agent’s Ludlow Thompson, where ex-colleague and friend Marijus Revzinas remembers him as one of the firm’s most dynamic sales and letting negotiators, earning commission that more than trebled his basic £15,000 salary.

‘Akram was a good-looking, out-going, talkative, smart entrepreneurial guy,’ he says. ‘He was energetic and persistent — a born salesman.’

Reviewing the companies’ services online, a customer described him as ‘admirable’ — the sort of employee who ‘gives estate agents a good name’.

Coincidentally, Akram’s office was close to Finsbury Park Mosque, once a hotbed of radical Islam.

Akram’s friends told the Washington Post last week he had frequented the mosque, but its current director, Mohammed Kozbar, said neither brother was known to him.

Akram enjoyed a distinctly Western lifestyle. Though he rarely drank alcohol, he liked rap music, went clubbing, and had an eye for the girls.

His Facebook friends included a string of pretty acquaintances, including an Estonian model and actress, and other attractive Eastern European women.

He hardly sounds like an archetypical Islamic extremist, yet last June Akram simply vanished. Friends’ calls went unanswered, messages weren’t returned. Where on earth had he gone? The only clue came from a post on his LinkedIn profile.

‘Currently exploring new opportunities,’ he had written enigmatically. ‘Not looking for new role.’

What of Mohamed? Always aloof and self-contained, far less is known about him; not least because he had no traceable social network account.

Did he deliberately remain under the radar while preparing for his new role as a jihadi? It seems plausible, for he disappeared from Cornwallis Square in his early 20s, and was away for some five years.

He was said to be teaching in Saudi Arabia, the cradle of Islamic fundamentalism, but about 18 months ago, he suddenly reappeared, bearded, earnest-looking, given to wearing traditional Islamic robes.

Did Mohamed come home a fanatic and set about radicalising his younger brother? A neighbour believes so.

‘Akram looked up to Mohamed and did what he said,’ he told me. ‘Mohamed was always more religious, too, but when he got back you could see he was a lot more serious about it.

‘I reckon he probably brainwashed Akram. I’ve known him all his life and he was a very peaceful person who never got into any trouble. So why else would he have given everything up to fight over there?’

In the Blue Nile, an Eritrean restaurant occasionally frequented by the brothers’ father, however, I found a more prosaic view.

Many young Eritreans had lost touch with their cultural and traditional values, a huddle of customers told me. But still they didn’t feel they truly belonged here.

Alienated both from their own kin, and mainstream British society, they were seeking their own identity — and a worrying number were turning to radical Islam. It was a story we have heard in other British Muslim communities.

Whatever the reason for their decision, the brothers would have had to pay hundreds of pounds for the ‘privilege’ of joining the insurgents.

According to experts, they would have been obliged to buy their own weapons, and cover the cost of their training. Becoming a jihadi tourist is evidently a middle-class pursuit.

Messages posted on extremist websites reveal that the brothers were assigned to separate fighting forces but they were apparently killed in the same gun-battle — not with Assad’s troops, but with Kurdish separatists, this being a many-sided conflict.

Abdulrahman Sebah, their father, has indicated that he had no idea of their plans when they left home, and would have moved heaven and earth to stop them if he had.

His wife is said to be devastated, leaving the house only to shuffle aimlessly around the park opposite, propped on a daughter’s arm.

The Foreign Office says that, as Britain has no presence in Syria, it cannot confirm the deaths, and that it did not inform Mr and Mrs Sebah about them.

Among their neighbours, though, it is widely assumed that the couple must have learned very quickly how their sons were killed, and made up the car crash story out of shame.

If so, they will surely be forgiven.

Faced with the harsh reality, however, that the brothers were poster-boys for Al Qaeda, not multicultural Britain, today instead of harmony, there is distress — and not a little unease — among the residents of Cornwallis Square.

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Filed Under: Jihad doctrine, Syria, United Kingdom Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. Rob says

    Feb 6, 2014 at 5:53 pm

    Now that Kenya has taken the lead by entering a mosque to find out what really goes on there, we have hope.
    Hope that the hapless UK, US and others will see what Kenya now sees.

    • PJG says

      Feb 6, 2014 at 6:21 pm

      The South Sudanese found all this out but hardly anyone listened to them.

  2. Veracious_one says

    Feb 6, 2014 at 6:12 pm

    Earlier last week, Sue Hemming, the head of counter-terrorism at the Crown Prosecution Service, said that Britons who travel to join the rebels in the Syrian conflict will face prosecution and even possible life sentences on their return.

    how about banning them from returning should they survive?

    • Rob says

      Feb 6, 2014 at 7:10 pm

      doesn’t matter whether there have been Western boots on the ground or not.
      Muslim countries revert to ‘running sore’ status as night follows day.
      Separate these Muslim basket cases by whether the West has intervened:
      Egypt
      Iraq
      Syria
      Lebanon
      Afghanistan
      Pakistan

  3. PJG says

    Feb 6, 2014 at 6:19 pm

    “‘There is a brotherhood of Muslims worldwide and they feel they are going out there to defend their brothers and sisters. That’s an admirable thing to do,’ he told me. ‘Why are people being arrested and demonised for it?’

    In a typically abrasive aside, he added: ‘Anyway, It’s not hard to cause havoc here without going to Syria — Adebolajo (one of the Woolwich murderers) did it with knives from B&Q.’”

    “Defending brothers and sisters” can be done just as well in Britain, by slaughtering British people.

    This is their “logic” in a nutshell. Killing any non-Muslim anywhere in the world (and why not on home turf? Very convenient!) is “defending Islam”, because somewhere in the world, for one reason or another, Muslims are being killed (usually by each other, but this detail doesn’t interfere with the “logic”.)

    You can probably hear this view from any of your cheerful Muslim friends if you get to know them well enough.

  4. mortimer says

    Feb 6, 2014 at 6:39 pm

    extremist muslims behead their enemies moderate muslims cheer

  5. Rob says

    Feb 6, 2014 at 7:15 pm

    No doubt the parents, when they recover their ‘grievance sense’, will complain bitterly and publicly that the UK Foreign Office did nothing to find out where their boys were, or locate and repatriate the bodies at taxpayer expense.

  6. dumbledoresarmy says

    Feb 6, 2014 at 7:18 pm

    From the article – “police are seizing the passports of anyone suspected of travelling to engage in ‘fighting, extremist activity or terror training’.”

    Also from the article – “Britons [sic: “British-passport-holding mohammedan mobsters” – dda] who travel to join the rebels in the Syrian conflict will face prosecution and even possible life sentences on their return.”

    Foolish, foolish, foolish.

    The thing to do is to let them go, by all means – better that they should “Slay and be slain in the path of allah” somewhere in the lands already ruined by Islam, than that they should do it in Britain, or other lands of the non-Muslims – and then to make damn sure that once you know they’ve gone, they can *never never never get back in*.

    It should not be beyond the capabilities of non-Muslim countries’ intelligence, military and law enforcement to identify these jihad-tourists and track them, and – once we know where they intend to go, or where they have already gone and where they are – take the necessary steps to make sure that, once gone, they will never be able to get back in through our gates.

    It isn’t just here at jihadwatch that ordinary non-Muslim citizens can see the need for the flamingly-obvious application of the precautionary principle. I see it elsewhere, wherever this subject has come up.
    When I clicked on the link and read the currently-featured story in its original location, I also read the Comments. Here’s one.

    “DOWN THE DRAIN Why do we give the oxygen of publicity to Choudry? I’m at a loss to know why we always have to hear his views..If ‘not fit for purpose’

    Theresa May did her job properly he would be locked up as a danger to national security, what a joke.

    “**Anyone even thought to be returning from these places should have their pass ports taken away at the airport and put on the next plane back to that same place. No appeals, no bleeding heart liberals fighting their corner, nothing.** {my emphasis – dda}.”

    How on earth, across the entire non-Muslim world – not just the UK, but France, Australia, *Israel* (yes, they’ve had a couple of their local Arab Muslims scarper off to Syria), Russia, you-name-it – do the ordinary non-Muslim citizens get the message through to those who are supposed to be protecting and defending us, that these lethal Fifth Columnists should not be stopped from leaving, they should instead be allowed to leave – self-deportation!! – and NEVER permitted to return?

    If we played our cards right, we’d be relatively-painlessly rid – in quite a short time – of a very large number of very dangerous people.

    PS

    Did you notice this bit about one of the late unlamented jihadis, the one called “Akram”?

    “His Facebook friends included a string of pretty acquaintances, including an Estonian model and actress, and other attractive Eastern European women.”

    Said “pretty acquaintances” have just had a very narrow escape. One hopes that somehow they stumble across the news of his jihad activities and sticky end, and perhaps refrain from “friending” plausible, charming, Mohammedan males on FB or anywhere else.

    Final thought:
    It seems that this same oh-so-lovely mohammedan real estate agent had frequented the Finsbury-Park-mosque, but the mosque (as per usual when this sort of thing happens) is vowing and declaring they never saw hide nor hair of him:

    “Coincidentally, Akram’s office was close to Finsbury Park Mosque, once a hotbed of radical Islam.

    “Akram’s friends told the Washington Post last week he had frequented the mosque, but its current director, Mohammed Kozbar, said neither brother was known to him.”

    I don’t care what Mohammed Kozbar says. And as for “once a hotbed of radical Islam” (i.e it was teaching that old-time religion, straight from the recipe books) I don’t think anyone should believe it has changed an iota. It’s probably just been keeping a lower profile.

    If the British authorities have a gram of sense they would take very seriously the statements that Akram had “prayed” at the mosque; they would, with that statement as their justification, surprise-raid the place and search it from attic to basement. With sniffer dogs, and forensic IT specialists and accountants to go through all documents/ records electronic or otherwise. And search Mr Mohammed Kozbar’s place of residence, too, and give him a very thorough grilling; and search all residences and places of business or other instituations associated with the Finsbury-Park mohammedan mob forward-operating-base.

    Find the slightest whiff of anything jihad-related and / or criminal or illegal in the ordinary way (by which, I mean such things as identity fraud, welfare fraud, financial crookery, etc), and the place gets shut down. Bang.

    • PJG says

      Feb 6, 2014 at 9:01 pm

      In 1990, when Egyptians were going to the Sudan for terror training, Mubarak passed legislation making it a crime for an Egyptian to receive unauthorised military training in a foreign country. (From a book I am reading about Turabi and his connections.)

      Simple. We should do the same. Deem it a crime and impose a harsh punishment (breaking rocks comes to mind, but alas, it will never happen!)

      • fair_dinkum says

        Feb 6, 2014 at 11:22 pm

        absolutely. banished forever.

        something i have noticed over the years. the shia/sunni hatred takes precedence half the time. ive always thought that there will be no concentrated effort ever between the 2.

        i think the main attraction to these conflicts is that its within islam so atrocities are being covered up, and its almost a ‘free for all’ with thousands of unlawful murders and mutilations and kidnappings and rapes etc. all the time with the very good chance to kill blasphemers and of being martyred.

        this, (the evils of the syria conflict thus far) is more like a moslem fun theme park than the one they are building in dubai.

        which is why i think iran will be preoccupied with its sunni neighbours for most of the next decade at least.

  7. PJG says

    Feb 7, 2014 at 4:41 am

    I can never forget what I was told by a southern Sudanese ex-soldier who told me what cowards the Muslims were – mind you, the poor Muslims were young, unwilling conscripts – and how they had to carry captured Muslims on their backs to the camps (from where they were sent home).

  8. andrew sapia says

    Feb 7, 2014 at 9:53 am

    I’m all for European Muslims going off to Syria to die. This weeds out the most radical of them and gets them killed. They should not let them return if it can be shown that they are fighting there and that solves a huge problem. Assad is not going to lose to these rag tag savages. It may go on for years and jihadis from Denmark, England, France etc. will be bye byed, and that can only be a good thing.

  9. Rose B says

    Feb 7, 2014 at 3:09 pm

    Watch the Muslims you know VERY CAREFULLY! If you see something…say something to the police…to the FBI…to the CIA! The life you save may be your own or the lives of your children.

  10. Richard Hart says

    Feb 7, 2014 at 5:08 pm

    Two down, 298/998+ to go. You live by the watermelon, you die by the watermelon. Good riddance……

    • Richard Hart says

      Feb 7, 2014 at 5:11 pm

      P.s. I hope their 72 virgins look like Susan Boyle!

  11. jewdog says

    Feb 7, 2014 at 7:13 pm

    Becoming a religious Muslim and then going off to wage jihad and getting killed is a normal part of Darwinian evolution. Thousand of years from now, no humans will make that mistake.

    • dumbledoresarmy says

      Feb 8, 2014 at 12:41 am

      The Ummah doesn’t do too well at the Nobels, but I think they should really be sweeping the field at the Darwin Awards each year.

  12. gravenimage says

    Feb 7, 2014 at 10:58 pm

    UK Muslims killed in Syria lived secular lives, then grew more religious and went off to wage jihad
    …………………………

    That says it all, right there. Any Muslim population is a ticking time bomb, poised to rediscover the savage tenets of their vile creed even if they appear “secular” to begin with.

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