Western Resistance

« Yemen: Nineteen Suspected Islamists Acquitted | | UK: Why Did Pro-Islamist Leave Government Think-Tank? »

November 5, 2006

UK: Bad News For Tablighi Mosque Development

The Observer reports that the planned mega-mosque at Newham in east London is now encountering opposition from local Muslims. Previously, Christian groups had opposed the development of the mosque.

The mosque is expected to house any amount from 30,000 to 70,000, depending on planning permission. When the plans were first unveiled last November, it was announced that the mega-mosque would be open in time for the London Olympics in 2012.

Since then, it has been revealed that the London Olympics will take place at the same time as Ramadan, and this news has upset those who are backing the mosque construction. The group which intends to construct the mosque are Tablighi Jamaat, and they are associated with global terrorism and the moves to force women to wear both the Muslim headscarf (hijab) and the face-veil (niqab).

Tablighi Jamaat every year sponsors hundreds of British Muslims to travel to Pakistan, where they attend extremist madrassas.

The group's name means "missionary group", and their headquarters is the Markazi mosque in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. This mosque, based in Savile Town, was funded by Saudi money, and is the largest purpose-built mosque in Europe. It was opened in 1980. Adjoining the Markazi is a school, the Jaamia Talimul Islam, which is also run by Tablighi Jamaat. Here 300 students from around the world take a seven-year course in Arabic, and are indoctrinated into Tablighi's narrow and orthodox version of Islam.

A measure of how socially unhealthy both the TablighiJamaat and its Dewsbury Markaz are can be seen by the people who frequented the Savile Town mosque. Among its congregation of 5,000 mostly Pakistani Muslims, two are no longer with us. Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed SIdique Khan took the extreme ideology of Islam to its logical conclusion, and last year they blew themselves up on London Underground trains. Tanweer killed 17 people near Aldgate, and Khan murdered 6 on a train near Edgware Road station. With their two co-religionists, Jermaine Lindsay and Hasib Hussain, Tanweer and Khan managed to kill 52 people and injure hundreds on July 7, 2005.

The Daily Mail revealed last month that Aishah Azmi, the trouble-making teacher who worked at Headfield Church of England Junior School in Dewsbury, also attends the Savile Town Markazi.

Azmi attended the job interview while not wearing a veil, but once employed insisted that she had a "right" to wear the niqab. Even though children had complained that they could not understand her, Azmi was more concerned with getting attention for her political "cause" than the educational needs of her subjects.

After Jack Straw, former foreign secretary, wrote on October 5 that the face-veil hindered communication, Aishah Azmi took advantage of the situation to push herself into the limelight. She was challenging the decision of the school to suspend her, and appeared on BBC TV on numerous occasions, stating that her rights to wear the veil were more fundamental. Phil Woolas, the Race and Faith Minister, her MP Shahid Malik, and even the prime minister said that Azmi should be sacked.

The Daily Mail revealed that Azmi's father Dr Mohammed Mulk had until recently headed the secondary school attached to the Tabighi Jamaat school in Savile Town, Dewsbury. This school was criticized by UK government schools inspectors as less a place of learning and more of a "madrassa". The report by Ofsted claimed that the school's "over-emphasis" on religion meant secular studies were neglected. It wrote: "Teachers showed limited understanding of pupils aptitudes, needs and prior attainments."

Azmi's father had responded to the Ofsted report by saying: "Parents send their children here for an Islamic education. They don't want their sons to take exams."

Last weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Aisha Azmi was obeying a fatwa which had been made by Mufti Yusuf Sacha, a West Yorkshire Muslim cleric. Azmi had claimed that she was following her personal beliefs, and had not been influenced by anyone.

Azmi's lawyer, Nick Whittingham, confirmed that she had consulted Sacha before starting the job at Headfield Church of England Junior School. She had asked Sacha if a woman had a choice to wear the niqab. He had said it was obligatory. Sacha is a follower of Tablighi Jamaat.

Aishah Azmi was an irritant, in more ways than one. She is not, however, associated with terrorism. But the Tablighi Jamaat, despite its claims to be "peaceful" is associated with terrorism and political activity. As well as Shehzad Tanweer and Mohammed Sidique Khan, another British terrorist attended Tablighi-run mosques. Richard Reid attended such institutions, before he decided to try blowing himself up on a Miami-bound plane using a bomb concealed in his shoe.

The recent terror plot, which was revealed on August 10, involving liquid explosives on board transatlantic planes, also involved Tablighi Jamaat. One of the suspects, 26-year old Assad Sarwar had only become radicalized after coming into contact with Tablighi Jamaat. Another suspect, Waheed Zaman, was a Tablighi Jamaat member.

Tablighi Jamaat was founded in 1927 in Mewat, India, by Maulana Muhammad Ilyas Kandhalawi (1885 - 1944). An article in the Middle East Quarterly by Alex Alexiev states:

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.

Given the past history of the Tablighi Jamaat, such as its involvement with incidents such as coup attempts (Pakistan, 1995) setting up a terrorist group (Harakat ul-Mujahideen, 1980, at Raiwind near Lahore, where the group is based) and hijacking (a plane in India in 1998), Tablighi Jamaat should not be encouraged to build a mega-mosque in east London.

In France, the group is treated with mistrust. Reports by the Renseignement Generaux, the internal intelligence agency, have noted that the Tablighi is instrumental in the radicalization of Muslims in prisons, and has been doing so since 1972.

Marc Gaborieau, head of the School of Indian and South Asian Studies in Paris, states that Tablighi Jamaat's aim is "the conquest of the world". He states: "It is extremely secretive and suspicious of outsiders and no one at the centre of its activities has been fully identified or has spoken about how it operates. We know that it does not recognise national borders and that, despite its claim to be apolitical, it does have ties with politicians and branches of the military, particularly in Pakistan and Bangladesh."

In Waziristan in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, the Taliban who took control of the region announced a temporary cease-fire from May 1 to May 11 this year. This was because the Tablighi Jamaat were holding a national conference in the area. Such is the level of respect accorded to the group by terrorists.

Tablighi has been linked with extremism, but its links to terrorism are the most worrying. Jose Padilla, Lyman Harris, (who sought to bomb the Brooklyn Bridge), and the "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh all had Tablighi connections.

Two French members of Tablighi Jamaat, states Alexiev, were among gunmen who carried out the attack upon the Atlas Asni Hotel in Marrakesh, Morocco on August 24, 1999. Two Spanish tourists were killed.

In Morocco, Ilamado Yusef Fikri was sentenced to death on July 12, 2003. He was a member of Tablighi Jamaat, but also headed a terror group called Salafia Jihadia or At-Takfir wal-Hijrah. In letters to local press, he confessed to killing two people for being "against Islam". His terror group was linked with the Casablanca bombings of May 16, 2003, which killed 45 people.

Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who already supports individuals like Yusuf al-Qaradawi (spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who approves of terrorism against Israeli civilians) has openly supported the construction of the Newham mega-mosque. the London Development Agency has recently been involved in talks about the construction.

The mosque design, which also aims to be the centerpiece of an "Islamic village", is the handiwork of architect Ali Maghera, who states: "We've tried to develop a concept mosque that's inclusive. It will be not just for Muslims but for non-Muslims. In the present political climate it's important to create dialogue between different groups. This will be a radical new approach. Islamic architecture, philosophy, maths and science have been at the forefront of ideas and we're trying to go back to that idea."

"The funding will come from a variety of sources....some from the UK, some from abroad.....If Tablighi Jamaat was anything like some people say they are, they wouldn't go for a building like this: it wouldn't make sense," he claims.

Previously, the opposition to the construction of the giant Markaz has been led by Dr Patrick Sookhdeo of the Barnabas Fund, a Christian who had been born into a Muslim family on Guyana. He said: "I think, at the very least, we need to know much more about Tablighi Jamaat. Who runs it and what it is up to? And I think we need to ask whether we want an unequivocally 'Islamic Village' in London....and there ought to be some serious debate about it."

Last month, one Muslim member of the London Assembly criticized the Tablighi's plans to transform the brownfield site. Murad Qureshi said: "I would be concerned if the financing all came from Saudi Arabia because of the strong Wahhabist influence that comes from there. As for the planning application itself, l would like to see 50 per cent of the floor space given to women who normally don't get a look-in at mosques, let alone facilities."

Tablighi Jamaat treats women as second-class citizens. Its "religious" reasoning for women to be encouraged to wear the face-veil is not backed up by any religious texts. It stems from the belief that women are inferior. In Pakistan they tried to overthrow the government of Benazir Bhutto because she was a woman.

Today, the Observer reveals that the Christians who object to the construction of the Newham mega-mosque have been joined by local Muslims. 2,500 Muslims living in the Newham area have signed a petition, objecting to the construction of the mosque. Asif Shakor, chairman of a group calling itself Sunni Friends of Newham said of Tablighi Jamaat: "It is radicalising the younger generation. We have to make a stand."

Additionally, the mosque is now threatened by issues of planning permission. There are temporary buildings standing on the site where the mega-mosque is planned to stand, which serve as a temporary mosque. Tablighi Jamaat bought the Abbey Mill site in Newham more than a decade ago.

Last week on October 31, the planning permission for the temporary mosque at Abbey Mill expired. This was the date that Tablighi Jamaat had agreed to submit its plans for the mega-mosque for approval by local authorities. A representative of Newham Council said that Tablighi Jamaat had breached planning laws.

Hopefully, Newham Council will see sense and veto plans for the giant mosque. If 2,500 members of the local Muslim community are objecting to its construction, the council must acknowledge this. Tablighi Jamaat exists as a political group, and is not representative of many Muslims in Britain. It has too many links to extremism and terrorism to be allowed to proselytize on such a grand scale. The headquarters in Raiwind, Punjab province, would make a far more appropriate location for the giant mosque.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 5, 2006 9:15 PM

Comments

Post a comment