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August 15, 2006

UK: Terror Plot Links To Islamic Preaching Group

A report which was featured on Channel 4 News tonight, and is discussed in the Guardian, describes how the brother of one of the 24 suspects in the air terror plot to blow up several US bound planes has spoken openly of his and his brother's involvement with an Islamic preaching group.

The whole interview can be be found on the Channel 4 News website. There is a link on the page to the video report - note to Mac users - you will have to use Internet Explorer to view the video.

The interview features Amjad Sarwar, the brother of 26-year old Assad Sarwar, who was arrested last week from his home (pictured) at High Wycombe. Amjad says that he, his brother and two other friends had become involved in the group Tablighi Jamaat, whose name means "prozelytising group". This group is noted for its missionary work, attempting to redirect lapsed Muslims on the path to Allah.

Its headquarters is the Markazi mosque, which is in Savile Town, a few hundred yards from the town center of Dewsbury. This mosque is the largest purpose built mosque in Europe, and was built in 1980 with help from Saudi donations.

According to an article from the Middle East Quarterly from Winter 2005, Alex Alexiev states:

The West's misreading of Tablighi Jamaat actions and motives has serious implications for the war on terrorism. Tablighi Jamaat has always adopted an extreme interpretation of Sunni Islam, but in the past two decades, it has radicalized to the point where it is now a driving force of Islamic extremism and a major recruiting agency for terrorist causes worldwide. For a majority of young Muslim extremists, joining Tablighi Jamaat is the first step on the road to extremism. Perhaps 80 percent of the Islamist extremists in France come from Tablighi ranks, prompting French intelligence officers to call Tablighi Jamaat the "antechamber of fundamentalism.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly adopting the same attitude. "We have a significant presence of Tablighi Jamaat in the United States," the deputy chief of the FBI's international terrorism section said in 2003, "and we have found that Al-Qaeda used them for recruiting now and in the past.

We reported in November that Tablighi Jamaat was planning to build a massive mosque to house 40,000 people in the London Borough of Newham, so that it could continue its missionary work during and beyond the 2012 London Olympics.

In Pakistan, the group is approved by the "Pakistan Taliban", who ordered a ceasefire of hostilities between May 1 and May 11 to allow members of the group to travel to a grand meeting in the region of Waziristan, North-West Frontier Province.

Like the Taliban, the Tablighi Jamaat espouses a severe form of Islam known as Deoband, a Sunni ideology. Most of the Afghan Taliban's leadership were educated at Deobandi madrassas, such as Mullah Omar who studied at Haqqania madrassa in North-West Frontier Province.

Tablighi Jamaat was founded in 1927 in Mewat, India, by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi (1885 - 1944).

Tablighi is also one of the main forces recruiting prisoners in French jails into Islam. It has been active in France since 1972.

This group arrived in High Wycombe, and Amjad Sawar claims that the group helped his brother to become a better Muslim. At one stage, Amjad said he was sent on a 40 day course by Tablighi Jamaat, to strengthen his understandings of Islam.

Amjat said that his brother had dropped out of university and become increasingly religious. He said: "He was at Tablighi Jamaat, which is a sect in Islam which encourages the youth to grow beards, pray five times a day; and how the prophet lived on a daily basis. He thought religion is more important than study because you can find work easily in this country."

The reporter on the Channel 4 video says that around 2001, a new group had descended upon High Wycombe, and this un-named group would start to leave literature of an extremist nature at a local mosque, according to Mohammed Khaliel, a mosque spokesperson.

The reporter stated that at the house of one of the suspects, there was found audio material of the sermons of the Saudi-educated Jamaican convert preacher, Abdullah al-Faisal, who was sentenced to seven years' jail. On 24 February 2003, al-Faisal was convicted on three counts of racial incitement and three of "soliciting murder" (under the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act) by a unanimous verdict.

AL-Faisal's sermons call for murder of Jews, Hindus and others. He was funded by Saudi Arabia to come to Britain to preach his message of hate and to incite. His sermons are popular in Beeston, where Shehzad Tanweer, the 7/7 bomber lived.

Amjad Sawar is convinced his brother Assad is innocent. He says: "He attended a mosque which had small talks on Islamic stuff and they must've got mixed up and arrested him for that reason."

The arrest was made following a long period of surveillance. This police action, performed in coordination with Pakistani and American intelligence, was codenamed Operation Overt. In future references to this plot, I will be employing this title, to make it easier for people doing a keyword search of our archives.

Channel 4 news reported that the discovery made at the area of woodland near High Wycombe contains apparently, in addition to the firearms mentioned in another report, a cache of detonators.

US authorities are convinced that the Tablighi Jamaat is linked to Al Qaeda as an agent of recruitment. The group itself denies this, but there is no doubt that it is extreme. It intends to make Muslims more devotional via a narrow and "Deobandi" form of radical Islam, rather than helping them to accept and adjust to the Western societies they live within.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at August 15, 2006 10:39 PM

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