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UK city shocked! shocked! by family’s flight to join the Islamic State

Jun 20, 2015 4:02 pm By Robert Spencer

Ice-Cream-BurqaAnd counter-terror measures will just make more Muslims join the Islamic State, doncha know. How many times have we heard this song and dance? And yet no one, especially in Britain, seems to have caught on to the game that is being played.

One of the Muslims interviewed in this story says that the Muslims who join the Islamic State aren’t learning their understanding of Islam in the mosques. Reuters accepts this without objection or invocation of a dissenting voice. So we are to believe that the Muslims in the UK who are — by their own account — most fervent and devout are adhering to an Islam that is completely foreign to the Islam taught in the local mosques. What a strange phenomenon! Yet no one seems in the least curious about how it came to be.

“English city stunned by family’s flight to join Islamic State,” by Michael Holden, Reuters, June 19, 2015:

BRADFORD, England (Reuters) – Zahoor Ahmed shakes his head in disbelief as he surveys the back of a terraced house belonging to the family of the three Dawood sisters, believed to have traveled to Syria to join Islamic State militants and brought their nine children with them.

“Why would you go to Syria? I don’t understand it,” said Ahmed, 52, wearing traditional Muslim attire as he surveyed the unremarkable street in the northern English city of Bradford, where he said he had never encountered extremism.

He is far from the only person in Bradford bewildered by the apparent decision of Sugra, Zohra and Khadija Dawood to journey to Syria with their children, the youngest aged just three, and leave their husbands behind.

The case came to light just two days after reports that Talha Asmal, a 17-year-old from Dewsbury just a few miles from Bradford, had carried out an Islamic State attack in Iraq, becoming what is believed to be Britain’s youngest suicide bomber.

Both incidents have provoked soul searching among British Muslims at a time when the government is proposing new laws to give the authorities greater powers to fight radicalization and potentially shut down mosques linked to extremists.

There is actually no evidence of soul-searching in this article. Instead, it is filled with the finger-pointing we usually see.

The authorities say more than 700 Britons – men and women, some teenagers, some well-educated – have been lured to fight in Syria and Iraq, most to join the group Islamic State….

He plans new laws to ramp up powers to ban “extremist” groups, close mosques where radicals thrive and censor media to restrict broadcasts that encourage extremism.

But some British Muslims say such measures are counter-productive, increasing the feeling of isolation that fuels radicalism. The state needs to work with Muslims, not demonize them, said Bana Gora, founding member of Bradford’s Muslim Women’s Council.

“This onslaught of counter terrorism legislation that’s coming through is not going to help matters,” she said.

In other words, fighting against jihad terrorism only leads to…jihad terrorism. Better to surrender outright.

If the government takes on “powers to shut down mosques at their pleasure, how is that going to help build relationships between the Muslim community and the state?” she said.

Why aren’t Muslims in Britain expelling jihadis from those mosques on their own initiative?

Stories of recruits traveling to Iraq and Syria open politically sensitive questions about whether Britain is doing enough to integrate minorities, especially in poor northern cities with a history of racial strife.

Nearly a quarter of Bradford’s estimated 526,400 population are Muslim and the area has England’s largest proportion of people of Pakistani heritage. Like many northern towns and cities it has struggled economically in recent years with the unemployment rate above the regional and national average.

Parts of Bradford were torched in race riots between whites and people of Asian descent in 2001, although today most people who live there say it is a friendly city and communities get along well.

The Dawoods’ neighborhood is typical: working class and ethnically-mixed, where women in veils are as common as white men in England soccer shirts, and churches and mosques operate cheek by jowl.

Unlike officially secular France, Britain has no policies against religious dress in public places. The government pays for pupils to study full-time at Muslim faith-run schools, just as Catholic and Protestant schools receive state funding.

Secularist critics say such “multi-cultural” policies can encourage segregation, isolating minorities while provoking resentment and political backlash among some whites.

“Whites”? What race is Islam? And anyway, usually Reuters is against France’s efforts to preserve its own culture, but here it seems critical of Britain’s willingness to destroy its culture. In both cases, this allows them to portray Muslims are victims, and that explains the inconsistency.

After Asmal’s reported suicide attack, the stridently right-wing Daily Mail tabloid labeled his home town Dewsbury “The breeding ground for jihadis where even the ice cream lady wears a burqa”. It printed a photo of a woman hidden behind a black full-face veil, selling ice cream from the window of a van with a picture of Mickey Mouse.

The three sisters, aged between 30 and 34 had been with their children on pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia but failed to return home eight days ago….

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a UK-based think tank that promotes an anti-extremism message, said women were being drawn to the conflict zone not because they wanted to become “Jihadi brides” of fighters on the front lines, but because they felt culturally and socially isolated, believed Muslims were being persecuted, and were attracted by Islamic ideals.

In other words, it’s all the Infidel’s fault. Muslims need do nothing to stop “radicalization.”

Bradford cafe owner Aziz Ahmed, 56, said British Muslims recognized the problem of radicalization and were working hard to confront it.

“We have been talking in the mosques: Who are these people that actually brainwash these people? And it certainly isn’t the mosques,” Bradford cafe owner Aziz Ahmed, 56, told Reuters….

Take his word for it on that! Reuters will!

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Filed Under: Featured, Islamic State (aka ISIS, ISIL, Daesh), journalistic bias, United Kingdom, War is deceit Tagged With: Bradford


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Comments

  1. Voytek Gagalka says

    Jun 20, 2015 at 4:25 pm

    “Who are these people that actually brainwash these people? And it certainly isn’t the mosques.”

    Who then? Maybe those nasty Christians unwilling to submit and turn the other cheek? Or Jews who don’t want to surrender and lay down arms and convert? Oh, wait, let me guess! Archangel Gabriel visited them in the cave and told them to join the only existing caliphate? Or Caliph Ibrahim himself? No – that must be certainly that vast right-wing conspiracy as HRC assured us! Still no? Thus those in Reuters will be surely at total loss…

    • TediNeo98 says

      Jun 20, 2015 at 4:56 pm

      No wait…I’ve got it, maybe it was the Jews, you know the ones that stole Asghar Bukhari’s slipper…honestly – I am absolutely fed up with muslims, spouting nonesense about how peaceful they are.
      So much tiqiyya…I hope plenty more pack their bags & head off to Syria.
      I will NEVER trust a muslim.

      • particolor says

        Jun 21, 2015 at 5:02 am

        And I want to learn more about the “Attraction of Islamic Ideals ?” 🙂

        • Georg says

          Jun 21, 2015 at 5:27 am

          The Admin just made Arabic language and cultural study ;mandatory at some Texas school/s, perhaps start there? It was proclaimed Arabic is, “A language of the future.” Funny, I could’ve sworn it’s a language of the stoned age. But at this rate, that is our future.

  2. Georg says

    Jun 20, 2015 at 4:44 pm

    Someone may need to explain to Muzz that being continually “shocked” is not… Eh, what’s the damned point anymore. Obviously they’re just full of it. Wow, do they take us for fools.

    “The state needs to work with Muslims, not demonize them, said Bana Gora, founding member of Bradford’s Muslim Women’s Council.” Here’s an idea: How about Muslims get on their hands and knees and beg forgiveness for having sent, by a British Muslim’s own unofficial estimation on BBC, some 1,500 “fighters” to Islamic State while some fraction of that have been in the Royal Armed Forces over the last decade or so! The NERVE of this “community”, I’d prefer cult, in even showing their faces (which of course they don’t always do) let alone asking for more, asking for more, asking for more. We are to show an ounce of respect or accommodation for a group which sends many more fighters to our enemy? How then are they not our enemy? We would have pandered to Nazis within Britain during WWII? How has it all come to this? Is there any SHAME??!? Obviously they’d prefer us all to go to hell in a hand basket, but forget us, just for their own self-respect and to save face, even if it’s only to deceive, might they even feign embarrassment?! If nothing else, they just look like a bunch of logic-bereft maniacs brazenly running amok as exasperated adults have to chase them around like toddlers who’ve escaped the crib. I cannot see how this will benefit them in the long run… But again, logic and shame with them is pearls before swine.

    “If the government takes on powers to shut down mosques at their pleasure, how is that going to help build relationships between the Muslim community and the state?”

    IT’S NOT!!!! It’s not designed to, you self-obsessed ___________ who can NEVER, EVER see past the end of your own nose! There is no relationship! At some point you all will have to lie in your miserable bed. It’s getting to the point where we couldn’t give a rat’s ass what it means to you. We simply must save ourselves, stem the upcoming suicide bombings, beheadings, and who knows what else — coordinated attack on parliament, for all we know to expect. Stop thinking of yourselves, for once!!!

    “…usually Reuters is against France’s efforts to preserve its own culture, but here it seems critical of Britain’s willingness to destroy its culture. In both cases, this allows them to portray Muslims are victims, and that explains the inconsistency.” Does it ever end? This cousin of theodicy whereby anything and everything results in their victimhood — whether it’s policing them or not policing them, forcing them to integrate or allowing them to their multi-culti glee in self-segregated madrassas, on and on and on and on.

    Being nice hasn’t only not worked, it’s simply made things much, much worse. It’s time to get serious, act an adult, and let the Muslim umma in Britain know the free lunch is over. Act like normal human beings willing to participate in society or get bent. Britain owes you nothing — you all owe Britain! You all never shut up about your stupid religion and its wonder — SHOW US! LET”S SEE THE FRUITS OF THIS MARVELOUS, DIVINE GUIDANCE!

    “…they felt culturally and socially isolated, believed Muslims were being persecuted, and were attracted by Islamic ideals.” Right. This explains why Jews are so disaffected today despite being so monstrously more plagued with REAL racism and bigotry for FAR longer and much more insidiously. Muslims have all of Arabia and then some while Jews have an area the size of New Jersey for which they must fight tooth and nail to the entire world’s hideous chagrin. It also explains why Jews suicide bomb Germany almost daily. And why Jews are so underrepresented in all the finer areas of society.

    Get a grip, you scumbags. Now you’re even embarrassing me.

    • Georg says

      Jun 20, 2015 at 5:19 pm

      A couple more things:

      The state doesn’t demonize you — you demonize you!!!!!!!!! Learn some accountability.

      And when the state has to take time out from doing productive things to come close down one of your treasonous and evil terrorist dens, don’t ask how is this good for us!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! APOLOGIZE and make AMENDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Then apologize some more.

    • particolor says

      Jun 21, 2015 at 5:09 am

      Wont they get OFFENDED When the 12 and a Half Billion gets cut off the Jizra ER ! Welfare this year !! 🙁 🙁

      • Georg says

        Jun 21, 2015 at 5:36 am

        As water flows downhill.

  3. Neil Jennison says

    Jun 20, 2015 at 5:18 pm

    Such is the level of denial in the UK.

    Why the left are incapable of looking at states where Islam is the majority, and working out that this is what we will get when it happens here……I just do not understand.

  4. Cecilia Ellis says

    Jun 20, 2015 at 6:00 pm

    “Why would you go to Syria? I don’t understand it,” said Ahmed, 52, wearing traditional Muslim attire as he surveyed the unremarkable street in the northern English city of Bradford, where he said he had never encountered extremism.”

    – Here are some possible reasons:

    a. They wanted to be first in line at the opening of Jurassic Caliphate.
    b. They were disenchanted at finding no anti-Islamic extremism (Islamophobia) in Bradford.
    c. They wanted a husband who wore male, military-style attire, not traditional Muslim garb.
    d. All of the above.

    “Nearly a quarter of Bradford’s estimated 526,400 population are Muslim and the area has England’s largest proportion of people of Pakistani heritage. Like many northern towns and cities it has struggled economically in recent years with the unemployment rate above the regional and national average.”

    – No good deed goes unpunished. Imagine if the UK had not provided food, shelter, stipends, etc.,
    to assist them. How Muslims have been victimized!

    “The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a UK-based think tank that promotes an anti-extremism message, said women were being drawn to the conflict zone not because they wanted to become “Jihadi brides” of fighters on the front lines, but because they felt culturally and socially isolated, believed Muslims were being persecuted, and were attracted by Islamic ideals.”

    – Muslims do not assimilate. Indeed, they are culturally and socially isolated for that very reason.
    The origin of that isolation, however, is the unwillingness of immigrants to adopt the social norms of the country which has graciously allowed – not forced – them to enter and to their defiance in discarding the Middle-Age ideals of their Islamic heritage. ISIS should provide them an overt, superior expression of those lofty ideals: supremacism, intolerance, killing, raping, theft, lying, savagery, etc., everything the Qur’an offers.

    “We have been talking in the mosques: Who are these people that actually brainwash these people? And it certainly isn’t the mosques,” Bradford cafe owner Aziz Ahmed, 56, told Reuters….

    – Of course it’s not the mosques . . . nor the Qur’an . . . nor the Hadith. It has to be something far
    far more sinister than these . . . oops . . . can’t think of anything more sinister . . .

    • particolor says

      Jun 21, 2015 at 5:16 am

      The answer is make them all Convert to Christianity or else !! And pay Half their Welfare to the Church instead of the Mosque !! Yep !! 🙂 🙂

  5. Angemon says

    Jun 20, 2015 at 6:08 pm

    Both incidents have provoked soul searching among British Muslims at a time when the government is proposing new laws to give the authorities greater powers to fight radicalization and potentially shut down mosques linked to extremists.

    Hmmm, should they remain in Britain, where “extremist” mosques will, allegedly, be under risk of being closed, or should they go to Syria and join the islamic state, as “extremist” mosques exhort them to?

    Decisions, decisions…

  6. jayell says

    Jun 20, 2015 at 7:29 pm

    “English city stunned by family’s flight to join Islamic State”……Oh, fo God’s sake do me a favour! (as we say in the UK, with the implied ending …”and shut up” or something less polite). No one, I can assure our readers, is in the least bit ‘stunned’ although certain of our recently-arrived new fellow-citizens on this side of the pond often come up with this kind of utterly predictable hog-wash, even though it convinces absolutely no-one and in any case we all know they’re lying through their teeth (as usual). We’re all well awarel what our ‘friends’ in the ‘muslim community’ (I like that phrase because they’re certainly not members of MY ‘community’) are thinking, saying and doing behind our backs, and it comes as absolutely NO surprise whatsoever to find that they’ve scarpered off to the distant climes whence they originally came in order to do as they revered ‘prophet’ did all those centuries ago.

    • jayell says

      Jun 20, 2015 at 7:41 pm

      And I should have added, once they’ve scarpered off, we don’t want them back. Ever. And it’s not just me saying this. Look up (shall we say?) the UK ‘Daily Mail’ or ‘Daily Express’ online and look at the comments to stories like this, and they’re practically all saying the same thing. Sometimes in stronger language. So, dear readers, do not be fooled by the wishy-washy, bleeding-heart PC garbage by some of our oh-so-well-intentioned pundits in politics and the media, because these idiots are just speaking for themselves and most decidely NOT the majority of the 65+ million in the UK.

      • particolor says

        Jun 21, 2015 at 5:24 am

        You see, what they miss most in the UK is they are not making them feel at home by Showing Beheading and Suicide Bombing Movies at the Cinema’s !!

        • jayell says

          Jun 21, 2015 at 3:32 pm

          One of the first things this lot did when they first settled themselves in our green and pleasant land was to open their own cinemas (or take over our cinamas, which were closing down anyway) in ‘their’ areas just to make themselves feel at home. God only knows what they showed in them.

  7. Larry A. Singleton says

    Jun 21, 2015 at 4:09 am

    Read a good article that kinda confused me at first but… …(From Jihad Watch?)

    “That Imaginary War Room” by Hugh Fitzgerald.

  8. tilda says

    Jun 21, 2015 at 5:19 am

    Now the husbands are claiming that their runaway wives were radicalised and groomed by UK police…

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3132915/UK-terror-police-radicalised-groomed-runaway-wives-Shock-claim-husbands-women-fled-Syria-children.html

    • Georg says

      Jun 21, 2015 at 5:42 am

      If I were dictator… they’d get the death penalty for such slander.

      • Celtic says

        Jun 23, 2015 at 2:18 am

        @Georg

        The world does not need a new Hitler. Your comment makes it very clear that Hitler wasn’t some very evil man, but a man filled with hatred in a position of very great power. What would you do if you had unlimited power of your country? Probably things very similar that Hitler did with the jews I bet.

        Is this your idea of a solution?

  9. The Dane says

    Jun 21, 2015 at 10:26 am

    Europe must wake up! They should close all borders to muslim so-called asylum-seekers, and they should start expelling all moslems, including imams, that preach islamic terrorism. The families of these three evil women should be expelled from the UK. Get tough!

  10. Joseph says

    Jun 21, 2015 at 11:19 am

    I would never buy an ice-cream from this lady, I hope nobody in my neighborhood would buy any either.
    I wouldn’t trust the bar to be safe, even to give to the ants.
    Maybe she has some “special” C-4 bars that she sells to her “special” and most dedicated clients.

  11. Truth Seeker says

    Jun 21, 2015 at 1:13 pm

    Why should we go to Syria? It is a matter of Time. Unlike in the past, now avenues for Terrorism is well available in Europe itself. But the persons are impatient. They want get the Visa to Gluttonous Janaah at the Earliest Possible. But whether this Janaah is Real or Imaginary is not yet known!

  12. TheBuffster says

    Jun 21, 2015 at 11:54 pm

    Even if it’s true that the mosques in Bradford don’t radicalize their members, if they whitewash the Koran and avoid the nasty hadiths, all a devoted Muslim has to do is read Islam’s primary texts for themselves and be radicalized by Mohammad. No further input required.

    As to government measures to act against jihadist activity by closing mosques that *do* radicalize – any halfway sort of Muslim who is against terrorism, the jihad, the imposition of Sharia on the world, should be all in favor of shutting down mosques and Islamic organizations who are acting as a fifth column to undermine our freedoms. People who are true believers in individual rights can’t be pushed over to the dark side because the bad guys are being routed from their midst?

    Suppose there were some Christian churches joining with some synagogues who were fomenting violence, aiming to reinstate the harshest Old Testament punishments on the country. Would peaceful Christians and Jews join up with them if the US government shut those churches and synagogues down? Would the peaceful Christians and Jews be upset at the closings and decide they should go fight on the side of the Levitican Forces? Would normal Christians and Jews be “radicalized” because the government wouldn’t let radicalizing churches and synagogues spew forth violent “jihadists” for Old Testament punishments?

    Ridiculous. Normal Christians and Jews would support the shutdown of terrorist churches and synagogues.

    If you’re dedicated to liberty, you won’t be swayed from it. You won’t go join forces with people who want to destroy it.

    Those who can be swayed – we need to know who they are. Let them be swayed so we can put a target on them/

  13. TheBuffster says

    Jun 22, 2015 at 12:04 am

    “People who are true believers in individual rights can’t be pushed over to the dark side because the bad guys are being routed from their midst?”

    Ooops! I meant that as a statement. Please ignore the question mark.

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