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February 2, 2007

UK: Muslims Angry After Birmingham Terrorist Arrests

On Wednesday, January 30, police and anti-terror officials arrested eight Muslims in the morning in the city of Birmingham, with a ninth apprehended in the evening. The terror raids at 12 locations in Birmingham were connected with a shocking plot, which had been monitored by about 250 police officers and MI5 agents for about six months, at a cost of £10 million ($19.7 million). This plot had been to kidnap a British Muslim soldier, and in the manner of Zarqawi's operations in Iraq, to keep the soldier prisoner, torturing him and ultimately decapitating him, and posting video of his mistreatment onto the internet.

The planned kidnap and murder had been apparently well-developed. A soldier had already been targeted, and following the raids he was being kept under police protection. As in the case of Zarqawi's kidnappings of people such as Ken Bigley and Eugene "Jack" McCarthy, Al Qaeda was said to be sponsoring the operation. Last summer, the Islamist leader Omar Bakri Mohammed (who lived in Britain from 1985 until August 2005) said from his base in Lebanon that Islamists should kidnap a British soldier in Iraq or Afghanistan.

On Friday, further raids were being made, with a total of 15 properties now being examined. Those behind surveillance had wished to extend the operation for a further two months, but the raids happened at this time because there was evidence that suggested those involved in the plot had decided to "bring forward" their plans.

A total of 25 soldiers had been on the terrorists' "hit list". The British Muslim soldiers on this hitlist lived at addresses from the West Country to Glasgow. There are said to be hopes that no "mole" within the Ministry of Defense provided the alleged terror cell with inside information on the soldiers on the hitlist.

The surveillance had been triggered after a tip-off came from a trusted informant last summer. One of those arrested has been named as Amjad Mahmood, aged 29. His brother complained after the arrests: "The police won't let me know where he is. His wife and kids are very distressed. My mother and father are very distressed." Mahmood's father, a businessman, was also said to be "in shock" to find his son had been arrested.

24-year old Lance Corporal Jabron Hashmi last summer became the first British Muslim soldier to be killed in Afghanistan, and his death had been celebrated by Islamists of the now-banned group Al Ghurabaa. Al Ghurabaa had been a spin-off from Omar Bakri Mohammed's Islamist Al-Muhajiroun group. Disturbingly, considering the raids of Wednesday happened at locations in Birmingham, at Sparkbrook Mosque in Birmingham, Channel 4's Dispatches filmed undercover. Here, an imam said last summer: "There was an individual who was killed in Afghanistan recently. A Muslim name, he came from a Pakistani family. Do you know what they had written in a tabloid newspaper? 'Hero of Islam'. 'Hero of Islam' who went into Muslim Afghanistan to kill Muslims. Why? Because their crime is implementing Islam. The 'Hero of Islam' is the one who separated his head from his shoulders."

The raids took place at Sparkhill in SE Birmingham, Alum Rock in the east, Edgbaston in the SW, and Kingstanding in the north. There raids in Foxton and Jackson Roads in Alum Rock, and Poplar and Stratford Roads in Sparkhill.

In Stratford Road, the Maktabah book store was raided. This store sold Muslim literature. On July 23, 2005 this bookshop had been described by the Times as a purveyor of extremist material. The Times said of one book at the store: "One book, by a British Mujahid describing his guerrilla warfare in Kashmir, says that 'terror works and that is why the believers are commanded to enforce it by Allah'." It is highly likely that this book is that written by Dhiren Barot, who was convicted of terrorist activity in November last year.

Barot's book, entitled "The Army of Madinah in Kashmir", published in 1999, was written under his pseudonym 'Esa al-Hindi and produced by Maktabah Al Ansar publishers, (316, Ladypool Road, Sparkhill, Birmingham B12 6JY). It can de downloaded in pdf format here.

Barot wrote: "Jihad has many great spheres and it would be a misconception to confine it simply to the mountain-tops of foreign countries, as we are so prone to do. Instead we are forced to ask the question, do we put the fear of Allah into the enemies of al Islam?"

In July, the Maktabah bookshop owner justified inclusion of this book amongst his stock thus: "The books you have highlighted are easily available at 90 per cent of Islamic bookshops around the country. We have a duty to sell books that express a variety of viewpoints. All of the publications are legal and have been checked by our barrister and our media specialists."

West Midlands Counter Terrorist Unit raided, as well as the Maktabah bookshop, a grocer's store and the Blade Internet cafe at 161 Reservoir Rd, Birmingham B23 6DN (Edgbaston). The Home Secretary, John Reid, said that the raids constituted a "major national operation", but did not give many details. The suspects will be interrogated beginning probably early on Saturday.

The nature of the supposed plot has been called a "worrying development" by David Hill, a former commander of the National Crime Squad.

Muslims in Birmingham instantly condemned the police for carrying out the raids, and there were the usual stories of how arrested suspects were "good guys, not involved in terrorism", much as Mohammed SIdique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer had been portrayed by their peers as "good guys", even though they were Al Qaeda agents who helped to kill 52 people on 7/7 in 2005. One woman in a burka showed an offensive finger gesture to visiting photographers (pictured).

Some comments were more realistic. Shabir Hussain, chairman of the Ludlow Road Mosque near Jackson Road in Alum Rock, said: "People don't trust their own children any more. It's causing difficulties inside families. You feel like you should challenge your son or daughter: 'Where are you going at night? What are you watching on TV? What are you doing on the internet?' After this kind of thing, 100 per cent of families are worried."

Recenty published research, carried out by Populus for the Policy Exchange Group has highlighted a very real divide between younger and older members of the Muslim communities in Britain. Those of the younger generation (aged 16 to 24) are far more radical in their approach to Islam than their parents' generation.

The Birmingham Post carried two pieces, reflecting local Muslims' concerns. In one article entitled "Muslims being persecuted in Brum", Salma Yaqoob, who is a member of George Galloway's "Respect" party at Sparkbrook and a city councillor said: "The reality is that people are asking why are we being picked on, why are we being persecuted, because that's what it feels like when all they want to do is get on with their day-to-day lives."

"The reason people are so fed up and cynical of the whole process is because the raids are so high profile. The area was full of reporters and television crews yesterday, but they will disappear quickly and when charges are dropped they'll be nowhere to be seen."

On January 20, Salma Yaqoob took part in the Daniel Pipes and David Murray versus Ken Livingstone debate on the "Clash of Civilizations", where her Islamist views denying the reality of Muslim extremism typified her stance. She said of the Birmingham raids that "there would be a huge public outcry if these latest raids fail to turn up anything that results in a successful prosecution."

Adam Mussa, who is local spokesman for the Islamist Muslim Association of Britain made the following claims: "Some of the people arrested are just individuals with loud voices, who are vocal about various neighbourhood issues, but that doesn't make them terrorists. It's not fair. This seems to be happening again and again. This is a form of victimisation and your average 'Mo Public' is feeling very cynical. When you come in and do a job you should make sure you clean up after yourself, and that's what the police need to do here."

Mussa said: "So for a Muslim to kill another Muslim is much worse, it's like killing a member of your own family, because they share the same beliefs as you." However, he seems to ignore the claims by Islamists from Al Ghurabaa and the words of the visiting preacher at Sparkbrook Mosque recordded on Dispatches, which have declared that Muslims who join the army are apostates, deserving of death. Muslim websites are currently denouncing Muslims who become members of the British army.

50,000 leaflets are to be distributed to the communities where the raids took place, to allay fears that Muslims are being "picked upon".

In another Birmingham Post article, Dr Mohammad Naseem, chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque has compared the situation of Muslims in Britain to those of Jews living under Hitler. This same viewpoint has been also recently been promoted by Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain, and Dr Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The irony of such bogus claims is that Jews suffer more physical attacks than Muslims in Britain, and many of the attacks upon Jews are made by Muslims.

83-year old Mohammad Naseem said: "This is a persecuting course of action that the Government has taken. They have invented this perception of a threat. To justify that, they have to maintain incidents to prove something is going on. There is dismay and people feel they are being persecuted unjustly. There is no reason for that. If there is a reason, the process should be open and for everybody to see what is happening."

He demanded that police either charge the nine suspects or release them. Naseem has also claimed that Britain is moving towards a "police state".

After 7/7, Naseem similarly made unhelpful comments. In August 2005, after Yasin Hassan Omar (currently on trial for his part in a terrorist suicide bomb plot which failed on July 21, 2005) had been captured in Birmingham (after fleeing there in a burka), Naseem had been called to make a speech with senior members of the local police. Instead he went on a tirade, he said of the 21/7 bombing suspects: "Some people have been caught but I have not seen any evidence." On the 7/7 killers, he said: "The process of law is not open. DNA can match you, but that does not mean you are going to commit a crime. Thousands of youths are passing by and caught on CCTV, so how do you know it is them?"

He wrote then in Dawn the newsletter of the Birmingham Central Mosque of the 7/7 killers: "Where is the evidence that four youths whose pictures were caught on CCTV cameras... were the perpetrators? How did we reject the possibility they were just innocent victims of this terrible happening? They had bought return train tickets."

In November 2005, Naseem said that he believed he was a target of the security and intelligence services. He said then: "My anxiety comes from my suspicion that the secret services in this country may be beginning to act independently of the political establishment. The CIA has apparently acted independently of the US Government and it worries me that MI5 and MI6 may be taking steps which are not discussed in or approved by Parliament."

Massoud Shadjareh, the terrorism-supporting chairman of the "Islamic Human Rights Commission" claimed that the raid in Birmingham gave a bad image to the public of Muslims. From someone whose group runs the "al Quds" day in Britain, where people call for the destruction of Israel, and a supporter of Hizbollah, his comments are extremely misleading and unhelpful. Individuals like Shadjareh, who are frequently called upon to give their opinions in the UK media, present the worst possible public image of Muslims in Britain.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at February 2, 2007 7:59 PM

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