Western Resistance

« UK: Yvonne Ridley Urges Fellow Muslims to not Cooperate with Police | | Turkey: Writer On Trial For Criticism »

June 7, 2006

UK: Fear And Loathing In Muslim London

We detailed the case of two Bangladeshi-origin Londoners, arrested on Friday June 2. During the raid by 450 police in Forest Gate, one of the two, Mohammed Abdul Kahar, was shot in the shoulder. He is now in the top security police station, Paddington Green, where his brother Abul Koyair is also being questioned. Police have requested more time to interrogate the pair.

The brothers' home was raided as a result of intelligence which suggested that they had in their possession a chemical weapon, which has not been found. The fact that the weapon, said in some reports to be a chemical "vest" which could be detonated to release toxic gas, has not appeared has led to a reaction from the Muslim community.

On Monday "June 5, the Telegraph reported that anti-terrorist police fear that the device may have been removed prior to the dawn raid on Friday. They were working on the premise that the device could still be at large, and could still be used in a terror attack.

An unnamed source at Scotland Yard said: "If the intelligence was wrong, we possibly have egg on our faces. We have wasted a lot of time, put a lot of people out."

Yesterday, the Telegraph reported that the newly elected leader of the Muslim Council for Britain, Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, warned that the trust that existed between the police and the community in Forest Gate may break down. From quotes made by young Muslims at the time of the arrest, it is obvious that for a significant proportion of the "community" there was never any trust to start with.

Bari toured the neighbourhood of Lansdown road, Forest Gate and said: "The message is the confusion, its the frustration and to some extent anger. People want to know what exactly happened and about the intelligence - is it genuine information, is it flawed? These are the questions police have to answer as soon as possible. Trust could be an issue. Trust could break down if things are not clarified as soon as possible."

The rest of Bari's comments, not mentioned in the Telegraph report, were more ominous. According to Yahoo News he continued: "Angry people can do anything, angry people can even feel that they should take the law into their own hands, so anger has to be directed into positive action."

Yahoo quoted a letter from local resident Yusuf Patel, printed in the Times: "Most people I have spoken to believe that these raids are designed to create fear within the Muslim community. If that is the case, it is working."

Yesterday Tony Blair said: "You can only imagine if they (security officers) fail to take action and something terrible happened what outcry would be then, so they are in an impossible situation. 'I think it is a real mistake to think that your average person from the Muslim community is any different from anybody else. They know perfectly well there is a problem with terrorism."

But things are already starting to take a new direction, taking a volatile situation one step closer to civil unrest. Today's Daily Mail notes that radical Muslim chatrooms are starting to threaten a deliberate conflict in the near future, most likely to take place at a rally which is expected to take place this coming weekend.

One contributor to such a forum asked if it was safe for "sisters" to attend, and was told: "They can come but it may become very heated and so may be safer for them not to."

Another individual stated the protest was to be "in defense (sic) of our young brother who was shot by the dirty kuffaar police. To show em we wont stand any dirty dog shootin our bro."

And yet another stated that they intended to "push the youth in the local community to step up for the demo too. They are already very angry."

One of the organisers of the displays of February 3 outside the Danish Embassy, where Islamists carried placards which read "Behead those who insult Islam" is Anjem Choudary. This individual is already facing charges of public order offenses and is awaiting trial. However he claimed yesterday on Sky News that Britain's Muslim community was "under siege" and claimed that this weekend's rally would "highlight the atrocities which have been committed against Muslims."

Choudary, a former head of terror group Al-Muhajiroun, said: "There have been hundreds of Muslims who have been raided, there have been mosques that have been raided. Muslims have been targeted in the streets. There's one law for Muslims and another for non-Muslims."

To add to this potent situation, the antics of former journalist turned Muslim convert Yvonne Ridley (pictured) are nothing short of disgraceful. The details are reported in Ekklesia, the BBC and Sky News. As we have a policy of ignoring the copyright of Iran's official media until Iran complies with international law, we reproduce the text of the account provided in IRNA:

British Muslims urged to withhold cooperation with police

British journalist Yvonne Ridley urged Muslims on Wednesday to end cooperation with the police following the latest anti-terrorist raid that led to the shooting of 23-year-old Mohammed Abdul Kahar.

Ridley, a Muslim convert, said police were "terrorizing" the country's 1.8 million community and that Muslims should adopt a "zero tolerance" policy of withholding cooperation.

"I don't think they should communicate with the police until they show respect to the community," she said in an interview with BBC Radio Four's Today program.

Her call comes after 250 officers carried out a pre-dawn raid on Abdul Kahar's family house in east London last Friday, but have so far not been able to find any evidence of chemical weapons as alleged in the justification for the intelligence-led operation.

Ridley, who is a member of the anti-war Respect Party, said that the operation was "way over the top."

If the police thought there were any chemical weapons, they should have "evacuated" the area first, she said.

The police, she said, were "unfairly" targeting the Muslim community. There had been more than 3,000 arrests which had led to less than a dozen convictions, she said.

Muslim community leaders who met with senior police officers believed that they were getting access and influence when in fact they were "getting neither," the journalist said.

The Muslim community in east London have voiced anger at the behavior of the police and plan to hold a protest this weekend about the latest raid.

This excuse for a woman is, remember, the person who said that terrorist Abu Hamza, currently serving seven year's jail for soliciting murder is a "bit of a sweetheart, really". She is not an elected Member of Parliament, but the party she belongs to, Respect is fronted by the odious justifier of suicide bombing, George Galloway. Ridley became a convert while imprisoned in Afghanistan in 2001, and now has her own "show" on satellite TV, on the Islamia channel.

Her comments will only add fuel to the potential conflict.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at June 7, 2006 10:52 AM

Comments

Posted by: jdr at June 15, 2006 2:47 AM

Post a comment