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November 14, 2006

UK: A Decade Of Radical Islam On College Campuses

On September 14 last year, Ruth Kelly addressed a conference of university leaders from Universities UK (UUK) at their headquarters in Tavistock Square. Kelly then was speaking in her capicity as education secretary. Only nine weeks earlier, on July 7, Hasib Hussain had detonated a rucksack full of triacetone triperoxide on board a Number 30 bus in the road outside, killing 13 people.

Kelly said to the university heads: "Following the London bomb attacks in July, we are all having to re-examine certain policies. I believe that higher education institutions need to identify and confront unacceptable behaviour on their premises and within their communities. That means informing the police where criminal offences are being perpetrated or where there may be concerns about possible criminal acts. Institutions have a duty to support and look after the moderate majority as they study, to ensure that those students are not harassed, intimidated or pressured."

The day before her meeting, the Social Affairs Unit had published a report detailing 24 universities where Islamic radicalism was said to be flourishing. These included: Birmingham, Brunel, Durham, Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan, Luton, Leicester, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham, Reading, Swansea, and Wolverhampton.

The main threat to university students was seen to come from Al Muhajiroun, a group led by radical cleric Omar Bakri Mohammed which had officially disbanded in 2004, and the international Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. The first British branch of this movement, which despises democracy and wishes to establish a Caliphate, was founded by Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed. Both groups had been officially banned from university campuses.

Less than a week after Kelly's speech to university heads, Middlesex University became embroiled in a debate. The head of its Student Union, Keith Shilson, had invited representatives of Hizb ut-Tahrir to a question and answer session which it wanted to hold at its Trent Park campus on September 28, 2005. Even the notorious left wing National Union of Students (NUS) had officially banned Hizb ut-Tahrir from its unions because of their support for terrorism and for "publishing material that incites racial hatred".

Shilson was escorted from Middlesex University and had his studentship terminated. This evoked angry responses from Imran Waheed, spokesman for Hizb ut-Tahrir, who said: "Muslim students want to be able to engage in legitimate political expression at universities without fear of being branded 'extremist'." Faisal Hanjra of FOSIS (The Federation of Student Islamic Societies) said: "The recent media hype about extremism on campus has already done its damage, thanks to unfounded allegations linking 'Islamism' with individual universities."

The issue of Muslim extremism in Britain's colleges had been brewing for years, yet had rarely been objectively addressed. Though now the incident has been largely forgotten, the first outward sign of college radicalism manifested itself in 1995, more than a decade ago. The incident took place at Newham College of Further Education in east London, near where the extremist Islamic group Tablighi Jamaat currently wishes to construct a mega-mosque.

On Monday, February 27, 1995 at around 1 pm, an African student at the college was entering the building. A large group of Muslims were distributing leaflets. It is said that the student, Ayotunde David Obanubi, took a leaflet and then laughed. This caused the Muslims (of Pakistani/Bangladeshi origin) to pile onto him. About fifteen young Islamists, some of whom were already carrying knives and hammers, attacked Ayotunde. He was stabbed through the heart, and died on the college steps.

I remember the case I was living in east London at the time. This was the first time that I had heard of Muslim girl students being intimidated into wearing Muslim headscarfs, a practice carried out by the Muslims at Newham College. It was reported that the victim was also a Muslim, but did not agree with the ideology of his attackers.

The Institute for the Study of Islam and Christianity (ISIC) reported in a pdf document from the time that: "Hizb ut-Tahrir is strongly implicated in the killing of a Nigerian student at Newham College of Further Education, East London, on 27 February. The Nigerian, Ayotunde Obanubi, was stabbed by a group of Asians at 1.05 pm in the college grounds. The incident took place four days after Omar Bakri, the leader of Hizb ut-Tahrir had addressed a group of 200 students at the college to mark the end of Ramadan, and three days after another (non-fatal) knifing incident at the college. Fellow students believe that Obanubi may have insulted Ramadan. Hizb ut-Tahrir followers have also been running Ramadan Radio, an FM station providing 20 hours a day of religious lectures and Middle East politics (but no music) for London Muslims.

The previous knife incident had involved Ayotunde Obanubi as the victim. On Friday February 24, he had received a light stab wound in the left arm from Abdul Qadir, brother of one of those accused of his murder.
In 1996, four Muslims stood trial at the Old Bailey for Ayotunde Obanubi's murder - Saeed Mustapha Nur, 27, Yusuf Sofu, 20, Umran Qadir, 17 and Kazi Rehman, 18. The prosecution claimed that Saeed Nur had inflicted the fatal knife wound. Nur had earlier said to Obanubi: "don't mess with Muslim boys and my religion."

Saeed Nur was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation of 15 years' imprisonment. Though not a student at the college, Nur had led the Muslims. Umran Wali Qadir was also found guilty of murder. He had struck Obanubi's head with a hammer during the attack. He had been 16 at the time of the attack. He was sentenced to be detained a Her Majesty's pleasure with a recommendation that he serve 10 years in jail.

Behind the intimidation and fanaticism on Newham College's grounds, there was Hizb-ut Tahrir, and the influence of Syrian-born Omar Bakri Mohammed. This man, a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood, had arrived as an asylum seeker into Britain in 1985, after he had been expelled from Saudi Arabia for being a member of a banned group - Al-Muhajiroun. He had set up this entity in 1983, as a cover for Hizb ut-Tahrir, which is banned in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries.

Bakri remained in Britain, organizing Hizb ut-Tahrir and also ensuring that Al Muhajiroun flourished. In October 2004 Al-Muhajiroun was officially disbanded, after being proscribed by the government. Omar Khan Sharif, who had failed to blow up Mike's Bar in Tel Aviv on April 30, 2003, had been a follower of Hizb-ut Tahrir in his home town of Derby. His companion Asif Hanif had killed three and injured 65. It was widely believed that Al Muhajiroun had helped the two UK suicide bombers to link up with Hamas who organized the attack.

Bakri had supervised the formation of new groups from the former membership of Al Muhajiroun, the Saviour sect and Al Ghurabaa. The Saviour Sect soon changed its name to the Saved Sect, before being banned in September this year. They still operate under the same leaders, Abu Izzadeen and Anjem Choudary, though under the new name of Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma. This tactic of changing names to avoid attracting attention is also employed by Hizb-ut Tahrir.

Though banned from universities and colleges, Hizb-ut Tahrir last year began to operate on campuses under the name of Stop Islamophobia, as the Sunday Times reported on October 16 last year. In August 2005, Tony Blair announced that he wanted to ban Hizb-ut Tahrir, but to this date that has not happened.

Stop Islamophobia set up stalls at Luton University, two campuses of London University (the School of African and Oriental Studies and Queen Mary College) and also London Metropolitan University.

In November last year, Ann Cryer, Labour MP for Keighley announced that at one West Yorkshire University, Hizb ut Tahrir were still active, intimidating Muslim women into wearing the hijab, or Muslim headscarf. She did not mention the establishment by name, lest it dissudaed people from enrolling, but it appears to have been the University of Bradford. Cryer told MPs that she remained stunned by the radicals' attitudes. One young man denied bullying Muslim women about the way they dressed, saying he "merely explained what will happen to them in the afterlife if they continue to dress inappropriately", she said.

This weekend, the Sunday Times reported that at least four British universities have been infiltrated by Islamic extremists. Sheikh Musa Admani is a Muslim chaplain at London Metropolitan University, who runs a charity which tries to turn young Muslims away from radical groups. The charity he heads is the Luqman Institute of Education and Development.

He claims that the extremists manage to get around university bans by forming societies with alternative names, or by presenting themselves as "ordinary Muslims". He sends volunteers to different universities, and has had reports of radicals operating at Brunel University, Bedfordshire University in Luton, Sheffield Hallam University.

Unfortunately for Admani's vigilance on other campuses, he failed to recognize what was happening in his own college. The Islamic Society at London Metropolitan University was run by Waheed Zaman, a member of the Tablighi Jamaat. The Telegraph reported that inside the two portable cabins used by the Islamic Society, their reporters found audi cassettes produced by Al Muhajiroun, and other extremist, ati-Western propaganda. Zaman, a biochemistry student, was arrested on August 10 for his alleged involvement with the air terror plot, which would have seen transatlantic aircraft brought down by liquid explosives.

At Kingston University in southwest London, a Muslim cleric called Shakeel Begg had recently urged students to wage jihad in Palestine. In a clandestinely recorded speech, Begg said to students: "You want to make jihad? Very good...Take some money and go to Palestine and fight, fight the terrorists, fight the Zionists."

Asif Hanif, who blew himself up at Mike's Bar in Tel Aviv in 2003, had attended Kingston University.

Shakeel Begg is himself a Muslim Chaplain at Goldsmiths College, London University. At Staffordshire University, a discussion claiming to be about "God's Word" transpired to be a lecture by a former member of Al-Muhajiroun.

Spokespeople for the colleges listed by the Luqman Institute have said that they will act to prevent extremism being preached on their campuses. In practice, when groups change their names and re-brand themselves, it is hard to keep track of all that goes on on a busy campus.

Musa Admani said: "We are dealing with people filled with hatred. It's hatred for the white man and the West in particular, because they have read the works of Qutb and Maududi who set Muslims apart from everyone else."

Dhiren Barot was recently sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 40 years behind bars for plotting terror attacks, had used a forged pass to do research at Brunel University.

Last week, Dame Eliza Manningham-Uller, the head of the intelligence agency MI5 made a speech about the UK terror threat, in which she said that young people are particularly vulnerable to the influences of extremist Islam. She claimed: "It is the youth who are being actively targeted, groomed, radicalized and set on a path that frighteningly quickly could end in their involvement in mass murder of their fellow citizens or their early death in a suicide attack or on a foreign battlefield."

Paul WIlkinson is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St Andrews University, Scotland. He echoes Dame Eliza's sentiments. He says that security agencies are concerned "that there are considerable efforts being made by the extremist organizations to recruit further young people into the groups that are being trained and indoctrinated to carry out terrorist attacks. I think that in the long term the most important thing we can do is to make sure that young people are not being lured into this."

Bob Ayers, a terror analyst from Chatham House, says that with a population of 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, it is not hard for extremists to recruit for their own ends. He said: "Out of a population that large, it's easy to identify a hundred or a thousand or two thousand people that have extremist tendencies, extremist sentiments."

There is no doubt that Muslim radicalism is flourishing on Britain's university campuses, as it flourishes in the communities from which Muslim students hail from. Last year, on July 7, this radicalism found its natural outlet. Four young British Muslims attacked London Transport and killed 52 people. The events of 7/7 sounded alarm bells and analysts rushed to examine where such hatred had originated.

This virulent antipathy towards Western values has been nurtured over a long period. Where 7/7 was seen as a "wake-up" call, the signs had been there for more than a decade, but nothing had been done.

When supporters of Hizb-ut Tahrir knifed Ayotunde Obanubi through the heart in February 1995, all signs were pointing to the negative influence of Islamists upon the young. Yet the extremists were not taken seriously. Before I left London in 1998, Channel 4 did a feature documentary on Omar Bakri Mohammed, where the Islamist sheikh was portrayed as a buffoon, a figure of fun. The sheikh, shown going on a fishing trip with his acolytes, played along with the charade.

The young men who followed Bakri like fawning whelps have matured. Now aged 49, Anjem Choudary is free to announce his own death fatwas against people who insult Islam, including Pope Benedict XVI. In 1995, Obanubi was the first person in Britain to be executed for "insulting Islam", but no-one took notice. The event was seen as an aberration, not the first blood in a war that will eventually engulf the hearts and minds of British subjects, Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Hizb-ut Tahrir has been in existence since 1952, when it was founded in Jerusalem by an Islamic jurist, Taqiuddin al-Nabhani. It is banned in most Middle Eastern countries, and is proscribed in all Central Asian states, in the Netherlands, in Germany, and it has been outlawed in Russia since 2002. It is even banned in Pakistan. Omar Bakri Mohammed may be caricatured as a buffoon, but he is no such thing. He started Hizb ut Tahrir in Britain with a reason - as a means to overthrow the government. A decade ago, people laughed at his pretension, instead of taking him seriously, as a threat.

In April 2004, he said: "We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity."

Even today in Lebanon, where he fled to last summer, fearing prosecution, Omar Bakri Mohammed is still taking part in web forums where he eulogizes acts of terror carried out in the name of jihad. Hizb ut Tahrir followers are to be shown on BBC Newsnight this evening (November 14), engaged in a acts of mugging and intimidation in south London. The official organization denies responsibility for these Muslim gangsters who claim to be Hizb ut Tahrir.

But the indoctrination which Omar Bakri Mohammed brought to his young followers never involved condemnation of acts of violence. Bakri was "spiritual leader" to the Saviour Sect and Al Ghurabaa. A month after 7/7, the Sunday Times reported that one of its undercover reporters had witnessed seven members of the Saviour Sect beating up a young Muslim on a street in East London, for "insulting" their version of Islam. The victim was described by the sect as a "Kaffir" (unbeliever). The group was taught to live off state benefits, as the prophet Mohammed had lived off the state while simultaneously attacking it.

Hizb ut-Tahrir's spokesman, Dr Imran Waheed, has said that the can be "no possibility of harmonious co-existence between Islam and the West. Ultimately, one has to prevail."

It is easy to say that Hizb ut Tahrir are "extremists" which they undoubtedly are. But all that they, or the former Al Muhajiroun members in Al Ghurabaa, the Saved Sect and now Ahl ul-Sunnah Wa al-Jamma believe in, ultimately derives from the Koran and the Hadiths. To label groups within Islam as "extremists", "radicals" or "fundamentalists" is to subscribe tacitly to the notion that these are an aberration, that they do not represent "true" Islam.

On Friday the head of the BNP, Nick Griffin, was cleared by a jury of 12 people of "inciting racial hatred" for calling Islam a "wicked, vicious faith". Within hours of the jury's verdict (in a retrial), Gordon Brown the chancellor, and Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, were talking of amending the law to make it easier to prosecute people who make similar statements. Islam is a religion, but it is also a political ideology. Its ethos is to dominate. To ignore that, is to deny the truth of our predicament.

Laboring under the illusion that Islam is a religion like Christianity, Buddhism or Judaism, and inherently peaceful at heart, politicians like Gordon Brown are upholding a falsehood. Most Muslims are peaceful law-abiding citizens. But this is in spite of, and not because of Islam.

As Hizb ut Tahrir states on its own website, the formation of a Caliphate is only a first step to global domination. "It (Hizb ut Tahrir) also aims to bring back the Islamic guidance for mankind and to lead the Ummah into a struggle with Kufr, its systems and its thoughts so that Islam encapsulates the world."

Eleven years ago, when Ayotunde Obanubi was stabbed and beaten to death by angry young Muslims influenced by Omar Bakri Mohammed and Hizb ut Tahrir, something could have been done to have countered the proliferation of jihadist ideology. But Bakri was allowed to preach, as was Abdullah el-Faisal, as was Omar Bakri Mohammed. As their sermons became more threatening of Western values, they became more popular among the young. And those who had listened to them, such as Richard Reid, the four bombers of 7/7, went on to commit acts of terror.

A new young generation of Muslims is being reared for slaughter and the promise of a few virgins in Jannah (Heaven). There is nothing in place now to stop the domino effect of militancy, spreading through the young of Britain's Muslim communities. There is no such thing as "moderate Islam". "Moderate" Islam is a dream, clung to by the desperate. Moderate Islam is heretical Islam. The guardians of the true words of Islam, the inheritors of the mission set out by the "prophet" who declared "I am made victorious through terror", are those who are now being portrayed as being on the outside edge of Islam. Unlike the nominal "moderate"" Muslims who may go to mosque once a week, these "outsiders" know the Koran implicitly, they know the Hadiths, they know what they represent. They stand at the heart of Islam, the ideology whose very name means "Submission."

As long as we delude ourselves that the Islam preached by extremists and potential terrorists is not a pure and undiluted form of Islam we will be subsumed, and forced to submit to its rule faster than we may think.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 14, 2006 4:12 PM

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Posted by: Sir Henry Morgan at November 14, 2006 8:07 PM

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