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December 13, 2006

UK: Muslim Brotherhood's Association Of Britain?

The following is an article which appears in FAMILY SECURITY MATTERS today. It asks the serious question - should the Muslim Association of Britain be trusted as a "moderate" group?

Although many Americans have an idealized vision of Britain's famous security agency MI5, it is apparent in this thoroughly researched and documented article by FSM Contributing Editor Adrian Morgan that MI5's sterling reputation may be a bit tarnished. Read this truly shocking report of how Britain has a "a laissez-faire approach to dealing with extremists who promote terror". If the West is going to win this war against Muslim extremists, we will have to get an awful lot smarter...fast.

Do Leopards Change Their Spots?

Britain has a laissez-faire approach to dealing with extremists who promote terror. Finsbury Park Mosque became notorious when the hook handed-cleric Abu Hamza took up residence there, intimidating the mosque trustees with threats of violence. Hamza lost both his hands and one eye. He claimed that he lost these while clearing landmines in Afghanistan. The reality is that he fudged one of his lessons in bomb-making while at the Al Qaeda-run Darunta training camp near Jalalabad, eastern Afghanistan, and blew himself up with his own bomb.

Hamza preached jihad at the Finsbury Park mosque for years, saying that it was acceptable to kill unbelievers, but particularly to kill Jews, whom he described as "the first monkey and the first ape". He said to followers: "Killing an adulterer, even if he is a Muslim is OK. Killing a Kaffir who is fighting you is OK. Killing a Kaffir for any reason you can say it is OK even if there is no reason for it."

He had eventually been ousted from the mosque, where he had been one of its trustees. His replacement as mosque imam was his friend Abu Abdullah (Attila Ahmet), who also justified armed jihad. Abdullah told PBS Broadcasting in October 2004: "Allah mentioned jihad in the Quran 26 times, and Allah mentioned quital 79 times. Quital is fighting by a physical fighting -- 79 times."

Hamza's rule at Finsbury Park ended a month after a raid took place at the mosque on Monday, January 30, 2003. Abu Abdallah's reign came to a close on February 8, 2005, when a newly appointed Board of Trustees arrived with police and changed the locks.

On February 7 this year, Abu Hamza was finally jailed for soliciting murder. Only then were the full findings of the 2003 raid made public. Three starting pistols, which could easily be reassigned to firing live rounds, a stun gun, knives, CS gas and chemical and nuclear warfare protective suits were found in the mosque. Also, hidden behind ceiling tiles, dozens of forged documents were discovered, including driving licenses and passports

On September 1 this year, Abu Abdallah was also arrested and taken into custody. He is charged with eight counts, including encouraging the murder of non-Muslims (soliciting to murder), and publishing a statement encouraging the public to commit acts of terrorism.

The new Board of Trustees for Finsbury Park Mosque had been appointed on February 1, 2006. The media hailed the new management. Where Hamza's so-called "mosqueteers" had earlier hung a banner from the mosque stating "Islam: Britain's Future", a new banner was placed, stating: "A new beginning for the mosque". The BBC hailed the change in management as "a fresh start."

It was widely touted that the new Board of Trustees was representing the "moderate" Islamic community. It has been renamed the North London Mosque. But the mosque's trustees were co-ordinated by the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), who placed one of their senior members, Mohammed Sawalha (pictured) as one of the trustees.

The Muslim Association of Britain claims that it is "moderate", but its leading figures are associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. MAB was founded in 1997 by Kamal Tawfik el-Helbawy, who was then the Brotherhood's European spokesman. MAB's current spokesperson is Azzam al-Tamimi, who was also a former Muslim Brotherhood activist in Jordan. Tamimi, who also runs the pretentiously-titled "Institue for Political Thought" has openly condemned the suicide bombings which took place in London on July 7, 2005.

Despite publicly condemning the London attacks which killed 52 people, Tamimi supports suicide attacks against Israel. He said on BBC TV in November 2004 that such an act would be a "noble cause" and said that he would do it himself "if I had the opportunity."

Tamimi is sensitive to criticism. He threatened to sue Jewish member of parliament for Liverpool Riverside, Louise Ellman, if she repeated comments she had made in parliament. Ms. Ellman had launched into a spirited attack on MAB and Tamimi on December 18, 2003. No quivering lily, Ellman responded to Tamimi's threats and reiterated her accusations outside parliament. Tamimi never sued her, as the evidence of his support for terrorism against Israel is widely documented.

Ellman said in parliament: "It is time that the spotlight fell on the Muslim Association of Britain, particularly the key figures, such as Azzam Tamimi, Kamal el Helbawy, Anas Al-Tikriti and Mohammed Sawalha. All of them are connected to the terrorist organiaation Hamas. The Muslim Association of Britain itself is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood - an extremist fundamentalist organization founded in Egypt in 1928, and the spiritual ideologue of all Islamic terror organizations. It is militantly anti-Semitic and always has been."

Louise Ellman also noted that MAB had invited American imam Anwar Al Awlaki to talk in Britain in June 2003. Awlaki was the spiritual adviser of two of the 9/11 attackers, Khalid Almihdar and Nawaf Alhazmi,. Twice busted for soliciting prostitutes in San Diego, Awlaki is still regarded by many Muslim websites as a "pure voice" of Islam. He fled to Yemen, and on August 31 this year, he was arrested in the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, suspected of involvement in terror networks.

But the most interesting figure in MAB is Mohammed Kassem Sawalha, one of the Board of Trustees at the mosque in Finsbury Park. He had come to Britain in 1990 from the West Bank, and for reasons that defy belief, he has been granted residence in Britain. Not only is Sawalha linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, but also he is directly linked to the Brotherhood's bastard offspring, the terror group Hamas.

Hamas was not designated as a terrorist entity by the US Treasury until August 22, 2003, but its notorious "charter" explains clearly its aims to destroy Israel by force.

Even after Sawalha entered the United Kingdom and set up a comfortable house here, he continued to collect funds to send to Hamas' military wing. The military wing of Hamas began attacking Israeli soldiers in 1989, two years after its foundation. It later moved towards attacks against Jewish citizens, with its first suicide bombing carried out in April 1994.

Sawalha maintains that he has helped Hamas' social wing, but Israeli and other analysts have shown that funds for the social wing get diverted into "military" operations. In the West Bank, Sawalha went under the code-name Abu Abada. Even the BBC, via its journalist John Ware, has confirmed that in 1992, Sawalha received a Hamas operative into his house and gave him funds to distribute to the terror group in the Palestinian territories. This man, Mohammed Salah, had arrived from the US, and was en route to the Palestinian territories.

According to John Ware: "With Sawalha's agreement Salah began distributing about a quarter of a million dollars to local Hamas operatives. Some was ear marked for military activities. Some for missionary dawah. More money was in the pipe line from his bank in Chicago."

Mohammed Salah was arrested by the Israeli authorities in March 1993 and was jailed. He was interrogated extensively. An extradition request by Israel, made in a New York court in May 1996 against Abu Marzook, then the leader of Hamas political wing, refers to Mohammed Salah and his testimony. He said: "After Abu Abada left the West Bank for the West, he called me through Musa Abu Marzook and I met both of them. The following came up during the meeting: The military situation in the West Bank is frozen and it has to be revived by means of the following people, whom Abu Abada knows: (names deleted)."

"They [Israeli interrogators] asked me about the charity associations who gave me the money and I told them the money was deposited by Abu Abada. I don’t know what the source is exactly, but there are 31 charity institutions collecting funds for the Islamic world. The mosques also collected funds for the deportees during the Friday prayers, immediately after the deportation."

John Ware states that although Sawalha (aka Abu Abada) was known by MI5, Britain's Homeland Security intelligence service, the authorities let him operate freely here. According to Dr Reuven Paz, former head of the Research Division, Israel General Security Service: "Maybe even in London, I would say, he (Sawalha) became more important for Hamas than during the period he was in the territories."

The newly re-named Finsbury Park Mosque is now under the influence of the Muslim Association of Britain. This group, described as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood, organized protests in February 11, condemning the Jyllands-Posten cartoons of Mohammed. When the mosque was attacked by vandals in September this year, a spokesman for MAB, Haris Bokhari, said the attack "smacks of extremism and is reminiscent of the infamous "wars of religion" that plagued Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, now seen as the historical pinnacle of religious intolerance."

In July, while other people were commemorating the first anniversary of the 7/7 attacks of 2005, Mohammed Sawalha organized a celebration of Islam, called the "Islam Expo". This event was held at Alexandra Palace, on a hill overlooking most of London. The "Islam Expo" claimed to be promoting an image of the "real Islam". With its organizer being a former Hamas commander, it is no wonder that among the proposed speakers to the "Expo" were individuals accused of supporting terrorism, such as Tariq Ramadan, Azzam al-Tamimi, and also the head of the Islamist coalition in Pakistan, Qazi Hussein Ahmad.

Ahmad is leader of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Ama (MMA), a coalition of Islamist parties, which opposed reforms to the dire rape laws in Pakistan. These laws stated that a woman who claimed to be raped and did not provide four male Muslim witnesses was accused of adultery. Many rape victims have been jailed under these laws. Qazi Hussain Ahmad has advocated suicide bombings in Iraq, Israel, Chechnya and Kashmir. His party, Jamaat-e-Islami, boasts of its close ties to Hamas. He himself has praised al-Qaeda members as heroes.

In the end, Ahmad could not appear at the Islam Expo, but the fact that he was even invited to "promote real Islam" says a lot about what Mohammed Sawalha and the Muslim Association of Britain consider to be the "real Islam."

Finsbury Park Mosque, now the North London Mosque, claims to be in the hands of "moderate" Muslims. With Mohammed Sawalha on its Board of Trustees, perhaps we should start to redefine what the word "moderate" actually means.

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Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at December 13, 2006 10:35 AM

Comments

Posted by: Celsius at December 13, 2006 1:07 PM

Posted by: bowen at December 13, 2006 5:24 PM

Posted by: Giraldus Cambrensis at December 13, 2006 6:07 PM

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