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Abu Hamza trial: Former imam used UK’s Finsbury Park mosque as “base of operations for the global export of violence and terror”

Apr 19, 2014 7:21 am By Robert Spencer

abu-hamzaWhere are all those “hundreds of Muslims” whom Abu Hamza inspired and incited now? Is the British government watching them, or preparing to award them MBE’s? Back in 2009, before the British government went into full appeasement mode and started banning counter-jihadists from the country, I was in London and went to the Finsbury Park Mosque. There I was assured that Abu Hamza’s gang was all gone and they were all “moderates” there now, and a very kind young man weighed me down with books, hoping I would read them and convert to Islam. One was an edition of the Qur’an with commentary by the Pakistani politician and Islamic scholar Maulana Maududi. Maududi wrote in his commentary on Qur’an 9:29: “The purpose for which Muslims are required to fight is not, as one might think, to compel the unbelievers into embracing Islam. Rather, its purpose is to put an end to the suzerainty of the unbelievers so that the latter are unable to rule over people. The authority to rule should only be vested in those who follow the True Faith; unbelievers who do not follow this True Faith should live in a state of subordination. Anybody who becomes convinced of the Truth of Islam may accept the faith of his/her own volition. The unbelievers are required to pay jizyah (poll tax) in return for the security provided to them as the dhimmis (“Protected People”) of an Islamic state. Jizyah symbolizes the submission of the unbelievers to the suzerainty of Islam.”

Moderate!

“Abu Hamza trial: Former imam used Finsbury Park mosque as ‘base of operations for the global export of violence and terror’, New York court told,” by David Usborne, the Independent, April 17 (thanks to Pamela Geller):

Mustafa Kamel Mustafa, the former north London imam more commonly known by his alias Abu Hamza, used his Finsbury Park mosque in the mid and late-1990s as his “base of operations for the global export of violence and terror”, a US prosecutor has told a New York court.

On the first day of testimony in a terror trial that is set to last about a month, Assistant US Attorney Edward Kim described the mosque as “brimming with hundreds of men whom Abu Hamza sought to deploy for his own violent purposes”. Those men, he added, were “all able-bodied Muslims and their duty was to wage war against non-Muslims, a duty to kill. It was violent, it was global, it was mandatory.”

Extradited from Britain to the US in 2012, the 56-year-old former cleric faces charges variously of helping to set up a training camp for sympathisers of al-Qa’ida and the Taliban in Bly, Oregon, arranging followers to attend an al-Qa’ida training camp in Afghanistan and also providing a satellite phone for kidnappers in a 1998 hostage-taking attack on Westerners in Yemen which left four people dead.

If convicted on all charges he faces life in prison.

As a jury of 12 listened to opening statements from both sides in a federal courthouse in Manhattan, the defendant followed attentively from the defence table, wearing a short-sleeved smock that revealed his truncated arms – both hands were lost in an incident in Afghanistan. Under the orders of the court, he had been barred from wearing his trademark prosthetic hook which serves as a hand.

Even before the jury was led in, the judge, Katherine Forrest, revealed she had received a five-page letter from the defendant overnight requesting that he be allowed to deliver the opening statement for the defence. She denied the request.

But making the statement for him, his lead lawyer Joshua Dratel said that Abu Hamza would take the witness stand to testify on his own behalf later in the trial.

Mr Dratel urged jurors to distinguish between the alleged crimes, which he said would not be proven, and the content of the sermons Abu Hamza made at the mosque, some recordings of which are to be played to the jury by the prosecution as part of its case.

“He said a lot of harsh things,” Mr Dratel offered. “These are views, not acts. This is expression, not crimes. He needed to be outrageous to an extent to reach the entire spectrum of his community… he couldn’t walk a road that left him without access to extremists on one side or the other.”

Taking a brief historic detour, Mr Dratel noted that Western governments, including the US, and his client were once on the same side, fighting in defence of Muslims for example in Afghanistan against the former Soviet Union and in Bosnia against the Serbians. Perceptions of leaders like his client evolve over time, he argued.

“For decades Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist and now he is an icon. Things change.”

The defence also noted that after questioning in Britain, Abu Hamza had not been charged in relation to the Yemen kidnapping. Instead, he had been “relied on by New Scotland Yard, MI5 and British intelligence to be a moderating influence” in the Muslim community in Britain and to “help them to know when trouble was going to happen”.

But the prosecution painted a far more damning picture. “Abu Hamza was not just a creature of religion,” Mr Kim insisted. “He was a trainer of terrorists, he used a cover of religion so he could hide in plain sight in London.” He noted that when British police raided the mosque they found “tools of war stockpiled in a house of worship”. Those, he said, included “knives, gas masks, flak jackets and chemical war suits”.

A key witness expected to testify for the prosecution is Saajid Badat, a British man who plotted with “shoe bomber” Richard Reid, to blow up airliners.

Badat was released after serving six and half years in prison in the UK after agreeing to act as a terrorist ‘supergrass’ and testify against former associates in trials such as this. Because he has refused to travel to the US for fear of being arrested, he will testify by video link.

Mr Dratel, however, said that Badat had never even met Abu Hamza and had attended only two of his sermons. “You will hear that even the United States doesn’t trust him,” he told the jury.

Even the United States doesn’t trust him? How appallingly “Islamophobic”!

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Filed Under: mosques, United Kingdom Tagged With: featured


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Comments

  1. tpellow says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 7:32 am

    Supplementary.

    “Abu Hamza used Finsbury Park mosque to recruit terrorists for Jihad, court told.
    “Prosecutors claims Hamza used north London mosque to recruit terrorists.
    “Preacher accused of organising terror training camp in Oregon.
    “Witness said they received lectures on using AK-47 assault rifles.”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2608049/Abu-Hamza-used-Finsbury-Park-mosque-recruit-terrorists-Jihad.html#ixzz2zKZh99rM

  2. Veracious_one says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 7:40 am

    “He needed to be outrageous to an extent to reach the entire spectrum of his community”

    If he had been peaceful he probably would have been booted out of his ‘community’…..

  3. john spielman says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 8:10 am

    put him away in a SUPERMAX prison so no one will ever hear his demonic rantings of that Satanic religion of Islam again!

  4. duh_swami says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 8:37 am

    In most civilized countries, inciting people to riot, rampage and murder is illegal. With Islam it is a requirement.
    Hamza advocated, WMD, Women of Mass Destruction. By that he meant Muslimahs should giver birth to, and raise children to be martyrs. Lock him up, throw away the key.

  5. mortimer says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 9:47 am

    Maududi’s definition is generally considered ‘moderate’ by devout Muslims:

    “The purpose for which Muslims are required to fight is not…to put an end to the suzerainty of the unbelievers so that the latter are unable to rule over people.”

    That is a perfect description of political SUPREMACISM.

    Any Muslim who does not advocate political supremacism is guilty of ‘innovation’ (bida), the re-writing of Islam which makes one an apostate and deserving of the Islamic death sentence.

    Only Muslims in the West are able to advocate a separation of the mosque from the state. Such disestablishmentarians would be executed in every Islamic country.

  6. jewdog says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 12:07 pm

    Look at the bright side: After Britain’s economy collapses from trying to subsidize all those immigrant Muslims, at least they’ll be able to export violence and terror, thanks to people like Abu Hamza.

  7. Jay Boo says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 12:33 pm

    Why don’t Muslims behead their enemies in mosques at least it would be more honest in keeping with the true purpose of the mosque.

  8. tpellow says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 12:35 pm

    An update on Islamising Britain:-

    “Father of British teenager, 18, killed as he fought ‘jihad’ in Syria with his brothers says he only discovered his son had died when he read it on Facebook.
    “Abdullah Deghayes, 18, from Brighton, was killed during conflict in Syria.
    “His family said they did not know he had travelled to the war-torn country.
    “Abubaker Deghayes, 45, said he found out about son’s death on Facebook.
    “He said his son is a ‘martyr’ and had tried to defend ‘those who are weak.’
    “Tributes have been pouring in on Twitter and Facebook for the teenager.”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2607592/British-university-student-killed-fighting-Jihad-Syria-uncle-Guantanamo-Bay-detainee-Omar-Deghayes.html#ixzz2zKe6FceQ

    • tpellow says

      Apr 19, 2014 at 12:45 pm

      And now that deceased Islamic jihadist’s Muslim father demands (and BBC readily provided him with political platform) that Britain’s people should commit equipment and plenty of money (and preferably our non-Muslim soldiers?) for an Islamic jihad cause in Syria!”:-

      ‘Telegraph’ (£)-

      “Father of teenage fighter killed in Syria calls on UK to arm rebels.
      Syrian rebels must be gifted arms by the British government to overthrow Bashar al-Assad following the death of a Brighton teenager in the conflict.”

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/syria/10776078/Father-of-teenage-fighter-killed-in-Syria-calls-on-UK-to-arm-rebels.html

      • Charli Main says

        Apr 19, 2014 at 3:55 pm

        I am sure that you will remember that David Cameron and Ian Duncan Smith were ready and willing to do just that.
        With the backing of Imam Hussein Obama they were on the point of launching attacks on Assad from the RAF base in Cyprus, with out consulting or getting Parliamentary approval.
        It was only a public outcry that forced a vote in Parliament which David “its nothing to do with Islam” Cameron and Muslim arse kisser Smith lost.
        These two Muslim loving bone heads would still love the chance to kiss Saudi arse, by attacking Assad.

  9. Alarmed Pig Farmer says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 3:54 pm

    Factual vs acceptable fact analysis
    Whether it’s Abu Hamza or the Blind Sheikh, or the imams at the Boston mosques, we’re changing our standards of probable cause. Hamza’s on trial only because his outrageous behavior forced the globo-socialist Infidel elite running the UK. Had he cooled it down a bit, he’d still be operating, and with Infidel taxpayer subsidies, too.

    Even the Blind Sheikh didn’t get his just due. He shoulda been executed for his great crime, and a full investigation into his cohorts in the NYC Ulema shoulda been aggressively conducted to ferret out and prosecute his cohorts to the full extent of the law, too. But they weren’t.

    And now, the NYPD has halted routine mosque monitoring, a risky and deceptive move predictably made just after the globo-socialist environmentalist racist secularist mayor too office.

    DiBlasio made his decision not by weighing the facts of the matter, but by weighing the acceptable facts of the matter. That’s a big diff, the knew way of dealing with most political matters, Islam chief among them.

    A tip ‘o the cap to the Islamic activist Omar Abdel-Rahman
    I’ll give the Blind Sheikh credit for being serious by laying low until his mass murder job was done. Abu Hamza was always in it for the publicity, more serious about the acrimony and the death threats that in his god-given duty to deliver the most mass murders possible. Blah blah blah. The blind one must be kneeling east-northeastward from his jail cell, guffawing a religious hah hah hah at Abu prostrated in his.

  10. Mawloud Ould Daddah says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 4:51 pm

    all extremist mosques,all,everywhere,ask me,yes,yes,

  11. Mawloud Ould Daddah says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 4:51 pm

    absolutely,absolutely,absolutely,yes,yes,

  12. Mawloud Ould Daddah says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 4:52 pm

    yes,

  13. Mawloud Ould Daddah says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 4:53 pm

    yep,

  14. EYESOPEN says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 5:11 pm

    “The defence also noted that after questioning in Britain, Abu Hamza had not been charged in relation to the Yemen kidnapping. Instead, he had been “relied on by New Scotland Yard, MI5 and British intelligence to be a moderating influence” in the Muslim community in Britain and to “help them to know when trouble was going to happen”.”

    That is because the political hierarchy in GB have all been turned into dhimmi-fied eunuchs. They save their real opprobrium for people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller.

  15. Krispy says

    Apr 19, 2014 at 5:31 pm

    what if we replace our pet dogs with pet pigs? In fact, let’s make pigs as pets a requirement for US citizenship. And let’s hurry.

  16. Larry A. Singleton says

    Apr 20, 2014 at 2:27 am

    “Maududi wrote in his commentary on Qur’an 9:29…”

    I’m reading the Commentary in my Maulana Muhammad Ali Qur’an. The Romans were going to attack so Muhammad had to take the initiative or “their fate was what they had planned for the Muslims” is how they justified it. And that other bullshit about paying a “tax” as the compensation for the “protection which is guaranteed them being free from military service” whatever in the f– that’s supposed to mean.

    The Commentary is almost laughable all the way through this “moderate” version of the Qur’an.

    • Huck Folder says

      Apr 24, 2014 at 12:15 am

      Where do you think the Mafia got their idea of ‘the protection racket’ from?

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