[Vision2020] The folly and danger of unscrutinizable religious belief: News Article from NY Times

Mon, 26 Apr 2004 10:02:42 -0700

Operative words, Ms. Kraut.  "Small group."  All religions, all causes, have 
"small groups" of extremists who do not represent the religion or cause as a 
whole.  Including extremist Christian groups, Pat.                           

                      Carl Westberg Jr.

>From: "Pat Kraut" <pkraut@moscow.com>
>To: "vision2020" <vision2020@moscow.com>
>Subject: Re: [Vision2020] The folly and danger of unscrutinizable religious 
>belief:  News Article from NY Times
>Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 09:37:20 -0700
>
>Explain to me one more time how this is a religion of peace...
>PK
>   ----- Original Message -----
>   From: Art Deco aka W. Fox
>   To: Vision 2020
>   Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 7:16 AM
>   Subject: [Vision2020] The folly and danger of unscrutinizable religious 
>belief: News Article from NY Times
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>         April 26, 2004
>         Militants in Europe Openly Call for Jihad and the Rule of Islam
>         By PATRICK E. TYLER
>         and DON VAN NATTA Jr.
>
>         UTON, England, April 24 - The call to jihad is rising in the 
>streets of Europe, and is being answered, counterterrorism officials say.
>
>         In this former industrial town north of London, a small group of 
>young Britons whose parents emigrated from Pakistan after World War II have 
>turned against their families' new home. They say they would like to see 
>Prime Minister Tony Blair dead or deposed and an Islamic flag hanging 
>outside No. 10 Downing Street.
>
>         They swear allegiance to Osama bin Laden and his goal of toppling 
>Western democracies to establish an Islamic superstate under Shariah law, 
>like Afghanistan under the Taliban. They call the Sept. 11 hijackers the 
>"Magnificent 19" and regard the Madrid train bombings as a clever way to 
>drive a wedge into Europe.
>
>         On Thursday evening, at a tennis center community hall in Slough, 
>west of London, their leader, Sheik Omar Bakri Mohammad, spoke of his 
>adherence to Osama bin Laden. If Europe fails to heed Mr. bin Laden's offer 
>of a truce - provided that all foreign troops are withdrawn from Iraq in 
>three months - Muslims will no longer be restrained from attacking the 
>Western countries that play host to them, the sheik said.
>
>         "All Muslims of the West will be obliged," he said, to "become his 
>sword" in a new battle. Europeans take heed, he added, saying, "It is 
>foolish to fight people who want death - that is what they are looking 
>for."
>
>         On working-class streets of old industrial towns like Crawley, 
>Luton, Birmingham and Manchester, and in the Arab enclaves of Germany, 
>France, Switzerland and other parts of Europe, intelligence officials say a 
>fervor for militancy is intensifying and becoming more open.
>
>         In Hamburg, Dr. Mustafa Yoldas, the director of the Council of 
>Islamic Communities, saw a correlation to the discord in Iraq. "This is a 
>very dangerous situation at the moment," Dr. Yoldas said. "My impression is 
>that Muslims have become more and more angry against the United States."
>
>         Hundreds of young Muslim men are answering the call of militant 
>groups affiliated or aligned with Al Qaeda, intelligence and 
>counterterrorism officials in the region say.
>
>         Even more worrying, said a senior counterterrorism official, is 
>that the level of "chatter" - communications among people suspected of 
>terrorism and their supporters - has markedly increased since Mr. bin 
>Laden's warning to Europe this month. The spike in chatter has given rise 
>to acute worries that planning for another strike in Europe is advanced.
>
>         "Iraq dramatically strengthened their recruitment efforts," one 
>counterterrorism official said. He added that some mosques now display 
>photos of American soldiers fighting in Iraq alongside bloody scenes of 
>bombed out Iraqi neighborhoods. Detecting actual recruitments is almost 
>impossible, he said, because it is typically done face to face.
>
>         And recruitment is paired with a compelling new strategy to bring 
>the fight to Europe.
>
>         Members of Al Qaeda have "proven themselves to be extremely 
>opportunistic, and they have decided to try to split the Western alliance," 
>the official continued. "They are focusing their energies on attacking the 
>big countries" - the United States, Britain and Spain - so as to "scare" 
>the smaller states.
>
>         Some Muslim recruits are going to Iraq, counterterrorism officials 
>in Europe say, but more are remaining home, possibly joining cells that 
>could help with terror logistics or begin operations like the one that came 
>to notice when the British police seized 1,200 pounds of ammonium nitrate, 
>a key bomb ingredient, in late March, and arrested nine Pakistani-Britons, 
>five of whom have been charged with trying to build a terrorist bomb.
>
>         Stoking that anger are some of the same fiery Islamic clerics who 
>preached violence and martyrdom before the Sept. 11 attacks.
>
>         On Friday, Abu Hamza, the cleric accused of tutoring Richard Reid 
>before he tried to blow up a Paris-to-Miami jetliner with explosives hidden 
>in his shoe, urged a crowd of 200 outside his former Finsbury Park mosque 
>to embrace death and the "culture of martyrdom."
>
>         Though the British home secretary, David Blunkett, has sought to 
>strip Abu Hamza of his British citizenship and deport him, the legal battle 
>has dragged on for years while Abu Hamza keeps calling down the wrath of 
>God.
>
>         Also this week, over Mr. Blunkett's vigorous objection, a 
>35-year-old Algerian held under emergency laws passed after Sept. 11 was 
>released from Belmarsh Prison. The man, identified only as "G," suffered 
>from severe mental illness, his lawyers told a special immigration appeals 
>panel, which let him out of prison and put him under house arrest.
>
>         Mr. Blunkett insisted that that should not be the final judgment 
>on a man already found by one court "to be a threat to life and liberty."
>
>         In an interview on the BBC over the weekend, Mr. Blunkett 
>advocated a stronger deportation policy, initially focused on 12 foreign 
>terror suspects held without charge since the Sept. 11 attacks.
>
>         Despite tougher antiterrorism laws, the police, prosecutors and 
>intelligence chiefs across Europe say they are struggling to contain the 
>openly seditious speech of Islamic extremists, some of whom, they say, have 
>been inciting young men to suicidal violence since the 1990's.
>
>         One chapter in Sheik Omar's lectures these days is "The Psyche of 
>Muslims for Suicide Bombing."
>
>         The authorities say that laws to protect religious expression and 
>civil liberties have the result of limiting what they can do to stop 
>hateful speech. In the case of foreigners, they say they are often left to 
>seek deportation, a lengthy and uncertain process subject to legal appeals, 
>when the suspect can keep inciting attacks.
>
>         That leaves the authorities to resort to less effective means, 
>such as mouse-trapping Islamic radicals with immigration violations in 
>hopes of making a deportation case stick. "In many countries, the laws are 
>liberal and it's not easy," an official said.
>
>         At a mosque in Geneva, an imam recently exhorted his followers to 
>"impose the will of Islam on the godless society of the West."
>
>         "It was quite virulent," said a senior official with knowledge of 
>the sermon. "The imam was encouraging his followers to take over the 
>godless society."
>
>         While such a sermon may be incitement, recruitment takes a more 
>shadowy course, and is hard to detect, a senior antiterrorism official 
>said. "Believers are appealed to in the mosques, but the real conversations 
>take place in restaurants or cafes or private apartments," the official 
>said.
>
>         While some clerics, like Abu Qatada - said to be the spiritual 
>counselor of Mohamed Atta, who led the Sept. 11 hijacking team - remain in 
>prison in Britain without charge, others like Sheik Omar, leader of a 
>movement called Al Muhajiroun, carry on a robust ideological campaign.
>
>         "There is no case against me," Sheik Omar said in an interview. 
>Referring to calls by members of Parliament that he be deported, he added, 
>"but they are Jewish" and "they have been calling for that for years."
>
>         Among his ardent followers is Ishtiaq Alamgir, 24, who heads Al 
>Muhajiroun in Luton and calls himself Sayful Islam, the sword of Islam. He 
>says there are about 50 members here but exact numbers are secret.
>
>         Most days, he and a handful of his followers run a recruitment 
>stand on Dunstable Road much to the chagrin of the Muslim elders of Luton.
>
>         Mainstream Muslims are outraged by the situation, saying the 
>actions of a few are causing their communities to be singled out for 
>surveillance and making the larger population distrustful of them.
>
>         Muhammad Sulaiman, a stalwart of the mainstream Central Mosque 
>here, was penniless when he arrived from the Kashmiri frontier of Pakistan 
>in 1956. He raised money to build the Central Mosque here and now leads a 
>campaign to ban Al Muhajiroun radicals from the city's 10 mosques.
>
>         "This is show-off business," he says in accented English. "I don't 
>want these kids in my mosque."
>
>         Other community leaders look to the government to do something, if 
>only to help prevent the demonization of British Muslims, or 
>"Islamophobia," as some here call it.
>
>         "I think these kids are being brainwashed by a few radical 
>clerics," said Akhbar Dad Khan, another elder of the Central Mosque. He 
>wants them prosecuted or deported. "We should be able to control this 
>negativity," he said.
>
>         In Slough, Sheik Omar spent much of his time Thursday night 
>regaling his young followers with the erotic delights of paradise - sweet 
>kisses and the pleasures of bathing with scores of women - while he also 
>preached the virtues of death in Islamic struggle as a ticket to paradise.
>
>         He spoke of terrorism as the new norm of cultural conflict, "the 
>fashion of the 21st century," practiced as much by Tony Blair as by Al 
>Qaeda.
>
>         "We may be caught up in the target as the people of Manhattan 
>were," he told them.
>
>         And he warned Western leaders, "You may kill bin Laden, but the 
>phenomenon, you cannot kill it - you cannot destroy it."
>
>         "Our Muslim brothers from abroad will come one day and conquer 
>here and then we will live under Islam in dignity," he said.
>
>
>         Patrick E. Tyler reported from Luton, Slough and London and Don 
>Van Natta Jr. from London. Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from 
>Germany.
>
>
>
>         Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy 
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