This Friday the East London Mosque’s London Muslim Centre will welcome the Islamic society (ISOC) of the University of East London (UEL).
One of the scheduled speakers at the event is Uthman Lateef. He has simple instructions for Muslims:
A Muslim is a brother to another Muslim. He does not wrong him. He does not oppress him. He does not look down on him, does not imprison him, does not hand him over to be imprisoned by anyone, does not hold him in contempt as if he is some kind of criminal.
Don’t help the police, brothers and sisters.
Lateef said that at a Ramadan iftar (meal for breaking the fast) held in solidarity with convicted and suspected terrorists in Belmarsh prison. The Belmarsh iftar is an annual event and Lateef is a regular. The events are organised by the extremists of the Muslim Prisoner Support Group, a charity which has had two terrorists for trustees. One tried to burn the would-be publisher of Jewel of Medina and his family to death. The other is an al Qaeda operative on the UN’s Taliban / al Qaeda sanctions list.
For more on Mr Lateef, read on here and here.
A commenter on this blog claiming inside knowledge says Uthman Lateef has actually been barred by the East London Mosque. I have seen no evidence for this.
Even if he has been banned, what on earth is the mosque doing hosting UEL ISOC? Their website tells their story – it is an open celebration of extremists.
On this page you will find:
– Notorious al Qaeda preacher and recruiter Anwar al Awlaki.
– Hate preacher and convicted Taliban recruiter Ali al Timimi.
– Feiz Muhammad, an Australian hate preacher who tells Muslims to love “martyrdom” in jihad and is linked to Australian terrorism cases.
– British preacher Abu Abdissalam, another “don’t help the police” extremist. Last month Tower Hamlets council barred him from a conference at one of its facilities.
On another UEL ISOC webpage, one finds:
– Bilal Philips, a Canadian preacher who supports death for gays, justifies suicide bombings, and was named by the US as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the New York bombing plots of the early 1990s. He has been banned by the UK, the US and Australia.
– Muhammad Hassan, an Egyptian who has called on Muslim youth the world over to rush to jihadi training camps and calls Jews “bloodsuckers”.
– Palestinian Islamist Haitham al Haddad, who lives in the UK, where he is one the country’s most vocal supporters of Hamas. He loved the Gaza war because it “clearly encouraged Muslims to prepare themselves for jihad, all over the world”.
What does one see on UEL ISOC’s Facebook wall? Charming pieces like this straightforward incitement to jihadi violence. The question is asked: “What can we do about the slaughter of Muslims in Palestine and around the world?”. The answers include:
5. Check on one’s own intentions with regard to fighting for the sake of Allaah, and see whether he is applying the hadeeth of the Prophet (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him): “Whoever dies without having fought for the sake of Allaah or having had the intention of doing so, has died following one of the branches of hypocrisy.” (Saheeh Muslim, no. 3533)
6. Pursuing all the means of building up material and moral strength, in preparation for meeting the enemy (in battle).
7. Reminding oneself and others of the virtues of martyrdom for the sake of Allaah and studying the rulings on jihad, and not having an attachment to this world.
Those lines are from a fatwa on islamqa.com, a website recommended by UEL ISOC under the heading “knowledge”. The website is the work of Saudi preacher Saleh al Munajjid. For him, plain old violence just won’t do. No, for the Jews, it must be genocide, as he said in a 2003 fatwa:
The Jews distorted the religion of Allah…murdered the prophets and denied the existence of Allah; they are intriguers, frauds, and traitors…bringing corruption to Muslim communities…set fire to the Al-Aqsa Mosque…desecrated the Quran…committed massacres; so how is it possible for Muslims not to rejoice at murdering the infidel, thieving Jews? Moreover, Allah will satisfy his believers by destroying and exterminating them all. This is our right as Muslims as was promised by our Prophet….Allah will bring us to defeat and master them according to the Islamic tradition: Fight the Jews and defeat them until the rock says: ‘O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!
Over the last five years, the East London Mosque has received public grants totalling £196,000 for “community cohesion” work and a further £28,500 for “preventing violent extremism”.
