The New Statesman has seen fit to publish a very silly piece by Robert Lambert, the former Met copper who promotes Islamists from his berth at the University of Exeter.
Mr Lambert thinks the EDL just needs a bit of education about Islam. Who better to provide it than the Salafis of the Luton Islamic Centre?
When members and supporters of the English Defence League demonstrate in Luton on Saturday they will display their genuine but misplaced fears about Islam as a source of violence, extremism and disloyalty to the UK. Sadly, and merely because they wear distinctive “Islamic” clothing, some of Luton’s most loyal and effective opponents of terrorism, extremism and subversion will be targets of EDL hatred and violent intimidation. Not only is this grossly unjust it is also increases the risk of further violence and intimidation of Muslims in Luton – a town the EDL dubs the hub of militant Islam in the UK. Shortly after an earlier EDL demonstration in the town the Luton Islamic Centre was firebombed and several Muslims were attacked in the street. Of particular concern was the fact that the attackers used an accelerant which increased the petrol bomb’s capacity to cause harm and damage.
Even in the face of such provocation the managers at the Luton Islamic Centre have been prepared to engage with their violent opponents and to provide education about Islam and Muslims to help disabuse young local EDL supporters of their misplaced fears.
The Luton Islamic Centre must be quite pleased. They have republished Lambert’s article on their website.
The firebombing was hideous and so is the EDL.
The same is true of Mr Lambert’s thesis. He might as well fire RPGs at his own feet.
The Luton Islamic Centre promotes horrific preaching about “kaffirs” in general, Jews, gays, and the wrong kinds of Muslim too (most of them), as this blog has shown before. Were EDL louts to delve into its messages, their rage would only increase.
Moreover, while it is true that the mosque follows a standard Saudi line of these times (no bombings at home, whether that is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia or the UK), seeing it as some kind of bulwark against terrorism is supremely foolish.
First of all, for the mosque, jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan is just fine, as Haras Rafiq noted earlier today. The jihadis in both countries are terrorists who slaughter civilians as well as soldiers in a horrible fight against democratically elected governments.
Should mosques whose preachers want British soldiers dead on top of spreading socially divisive hatred ever be promoted? Of course not. They should be challenged.
Now let’s take a look at the domestic “bulwark” thesis by reviewing quotes from a talk by one of the mosque’s preachers, Abu Saifillaah Abdul-Qaadir, which is available on the mosque’s website.
It was delivered in February 2005, when jihadis were unleashing mayhem on Iraq and the 7/7 plot was advancing.
Is this a mosque which is helping on the security front? Read the quotes and judge for yourself.
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Jihadis as “freedom fighters”:
What right has America got to force democracy on a people that may not want it in the first place? Isn’t that a bit like those Orientalists or those opposed to Islam and Muslims saying that those people, or mujahideen, those freedom fighters in Afghanistan or wherever they were in Kashmir, or wherever they were in Palestine, they want to implement the sharia, the Islamic sharia, and so they call them fundamentalists and extremists.
…
There is defensive jihad which is what I spoke about earlier, which is what is happening in Iraq, like in Iraq, they are defending themselves by (sic) aggressors.
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One may see those people, like in Afghanistan or in Iraq, one may see them as defending oppression by the aggressors, the aggressor Americans, or one may see it, as in Afghanistan, the Taliban and those who are with them, were preventing aggression from the Americans.
Al Qaeda does not exist
And they [the media] use as evidence, for their distorted version of jihad, a group called al Qaeda. And this group al Qaeda, just to let you know, doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. It doesn’t exist. It’s a name which the politicians have pumped up themselves, or got from somewhere unauthentic. And then they put fear in the people’s hearts and minds, telling them that these al Qaeda have sleeper cells in every country, in America, in England, in Europe, everywhere, and they’re about to take action at any time. I ask you, in England, since this scare from 2001 up to now, have we had any terrorist attack from al Qaeda? We’ve had no terrorist attack from al Qaeda but what we have had is over 18, over 20, many Muslims being imprisoned under the terrorist law and the media pumping it up as if these are sleeper cells that have been quashed before they are able to do anything to harm the public, but then we find maybe 80% or 90% of them free walking the streets a few days later. …
If anyone really is interested, give me your e-mail, I will e-mail you a link to that programme. It really, really does demolish the whole argument of al Qaeda. It shows that al Qaeda just does not exist. It’s amazing.
9/11 was not the work of al Qaeda
There is not adequate evidence to show that Osama bin Laden was behind this.
…
After September 11, the Americans, the politicians blamed a group called al Qaeda. There was a reason for this. They wanted to blame al Qaeda because they knew that Osama bin Laden had a base in Afghanistan where he would train mujahideen to fight against the Russians and any aggressive force. But their real aim or objective was not Osama bin Laden. That was just a convenient tool at the right time and the right place. But their objective was to crush a growing Islamic state, the Islamic state of the Taliban.
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I don’t think they [the Americans] want him [Osama bin Laden] because they knew he wasn’t behind September 11.
The Taliban just wanted security and education
The systems of education were just being built by the Taliban but on every front they were securing, they were at war on every front, on every side of their country, so for them it was preserving life before educating their people. Not that they denied educating the people, but they saw a priority in defending and saving their lives first and getting themselves to eat and drink, like you, so they could survive as a human race. And then after that education would have come. But then obviously the Americans would have to say no, they have to keep the people ignorant, not educate them, not allow the women to educate themselves, and so on and so forth, which are all lies, untrue, and all said to justify their attack on Afghanistan.
UK counter-terrorism operations are like Saddam and Hitler
This [terrorism] law is the complete opposite to democracy. The politicians and the government are allowed to take someone from his home, do house raids, tap phones, open mail, and they send spies, do whatever they want, take away people’s privileges, just out of suspicion with no concrete evidence. And then after that imprison them, eternally, for however long they want, no fixed sentence, they’re in prison forever, under suspicion, not having to provide the evidence to any law, to any court or order or anything. Not having to go through all that, just pick someone up in his home and put him in prison. What difference is that from what Saddam Hussein himself done? From what Ghedaffi done? And what many of the known tyrants have done? See, this is what we have, we have tyrannical leaders in this country. Blair is a tyrant as far as I am concerned.
…
Adolf Hitler, he said “what a good fortune it is for governments that people do not think”.
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Abdul-Qaadir has not moved on since 2005. Here is a quote from a speech in November 2010, posted on the Luton Islamic Centre’s website after the Stockholm bombing. It’s paranoid and separatist “war on Islam” talk in defence of extremists that is typical of the mosque and identifies British Muslims’ situation today with jihadis in Iraq and Afghanistan:
Do not disagree with one another. Do not differ, lest your strength will go and leave you. But we don’t take heed of these things. We don’t understand that Islam is under attack today. All of us saw Panorama. All of us saw the Dispatches. All of us saw and we see what this country and the West are doing to Islam and the Muslims, specifically pointing out why. Brothers, the war is in Iraq, not here. The battle is in Afghanistan, not here. But we have an ideological war here! We have a fight and we must stand up to that fight! And that fight is dawah.
…
[Abdul-Qaadir beseeches Allah] to make us realise and understand that there is an ideological war going on in front of our faces and each and every one of us should be counted to fight this war.
As we know, the Stockholm bomber frequented the mosque. The mosque says he was challenged but he was not reported to the poilce. No wonder:
‘The reason we didn’t take the Government money for the Preventing Violent Extremism scheme is that it requires us to inform on fellow Muslims. If we had taken the money our members would have seen us as working for the Government. The young men with radical views would not have listened to us.’
The Luton Salafis are useless on security issues at best and a serious problem for society.
That Robert Lambert continues to promote them and the New Statesman and the University of Exeter think his idiocy is worth disseminating is a telling picture of the mess Britain is in today.
