Next Stop, Londonistan

By Patricia Zengerle, TomPaine.com. Posted March 21, 2002.

It's Friday evening and the faithful stream from the city's mosques, a few whose famous imams draw thousands to hear fiery speeches condemning Americans and Jews.

As an American woman abroad, with fresh memories of the events of September 11, it is somewhat chilling to be caught unexpectedly in the sea of white-clad worshippers, all of them, apparently, male.

Not even one other woman -- in western garb or wearing a headscarf -- is in sight as the crowds jostle, heads down as they rush through the dusk to home and dinner.

The streets are lined with restaurants and small businesses, among them Islamic bookshops selling tapes made by some of the better-known imams, or Muslim religious leaders.

One local Muslim cleric, Abdullah el-Faisal, was arrested by anti-terrorist police on charges he made race-hate speeches urging followers to kill Jews and non-believers. Tapes of his sermons -- one title is "No Peace with the Jews" -- are sold openly in Islamic bookshops for the equivalent of about $2.80 each.

Newer tapes, released since September 11, instruct Muslim males to train for battle, promising 72 virgins in Paradise to those who die in holy war.

At another mosque complex near the city is a training ground said to be the site where dozens of Muslim men have learned how to assemble AK-47s and other military tricks before heading to Afghanistan to fight with the Taliban.

These crowded streets are not in Karachi or Kabul. They are nowhere near President George W. Bush's "axis of evil". They are in a city some anti-terrorism investigators have dubbed 'Londonistan,' the thriving militant Islamic community in and around the capital of Tony Blair's Britain, Washington's closest ally in its war on terrorism.

Experts on international terrorism say the heartland of violent Islamic extremism is now none of the official fronts of the war on terror. They say its center is Western Europe -- mainly, but not exclusively, Britain, which granted asylum to a stream of Muslim militants during the 1990s and where the tradition of freedom of expression that once sheltered Karl Marx has now extended to the widespread, and very open, cause of jihad.

Islam is the fastest-growing religion here -- with 1.5 million to 2.5 million adherents -- many of them immigrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh and many critical of extremism. But experts say there are two groups of Britons particularly drawn to militant Islam. One is young, generally single Muslim men of Asian descent who are angry over unemployment and racism and who put religion above country. Society here remains wary of foreigners, with newspapers and pub conversation filled with talk of "asylum-seekers" -- many of them Muslims -- blamed for a litany of social and economic problems.

"Politicians should really take note," said Barnie Choudhury, a commentator on the BBC's Radio Four, recounting how young Muslims in Britain expressed envy of those who have died in Afghanistan.

"One thing you cannot take away from, what appear to be ordinary Muslims, is their right to believe. And this, along with their anger, is their common and driving force. Remember the old soldiering wish for volunteers rather than conscripts.

"These young men assure me they are not members of any radical groups. They do not see themselves as supporting terrorism. They see themselves as fighting for their religious freedom."

The others most drawn to Islam are western converts who, in a nation where attendance at Christian churches has dropped dramatically, look to Islam for direction in their lives and offer recruiters an easily exploited mix of zeal and ignorance, experts said. One of these converts was Richard Reid, also known as Abdul Ra'uff, a former small-time crook now infamous as the "shoe bomber" who tried to blow up an American Airlines flight to Miami. Reid had converted to Islam in prison.

Reid belonged to the U.K.-based militant group al-Muhajiroun, which seeks to make Britain an Islamic state. "Al-Muhajiroun has one goal," Anjam Choudry, its U.K. chairman, told the Observer newspaper. "We would like to see the implementation of the sharia law in the U.K. Under our rule this country would be known as the Islamic Republic of Great Britain." Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, founder of al-Muhajiroun, sparked outrage after September 11 by urging young Muslims to go fight for the Taliban. Some senior politicians responded by saying that any Britain who fought against the country's troops should be prosecuted for treason.

Al-Muhajiroun also described Blair as a "legitimate target" because of his support for the U.S. campaign to oust the Taliban.

Militant Islamists who have spent significant time in London include Zacarias Moussauoi, a Frenchman detained in Minnesota and charged with complicity in the September 11 attacks, Djamel Beghal, another Frenchman held for his alleged role in a plot to blow up the U.S. embassy in Paris, and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, commonly known as Sheikh Omar, the prime suspect in the kidnapping and murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl.

Sheikh Omar was born and educated in London. He had been indicted in the United States in connection with the 1994 kidnapping of four Westerners, including an American, in India, even before Pearl's death.

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