Apart from a long article in the Daily Mail and some good coverage on the local news sections of the BBC website, the conviction of Shasta and Sajid Khan for plotting a terrorist attack on Manchester’s Jewish community has not, so far, attracted much media attention – there appears to be no coverage of the story in today’s broadsheets, although the initial arrests were reported back in June. (It is possible that they are waiting for the sentence to be announced.)
It would seem that this couple became radicalised through exposure to extremist preachers on the internet. They watched beheadings and calls to Jihad. This led to them researching how to make home-made explosive devices using a downloaded document with the surreal title, ‘Make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom’, and driving round Manchester looking for likely targets:
Mrs Khan told police that she had driven her husband to a Prestwich synagogue, and twice they had sat in its car park watching Jewish people enter, while her husband said a Koranic-inspired verse calling Jews “dirty” and said “we must kill them all” …
Thankfully the plot was revealed following a tip off to the police from a family member. It has been condemned by Afzal Khan, of the Muslim Jewish Forum of Greater Manchester:
“Everyone was shocked, both Muslims and Jews, and we all need to be alert.
Given what might have happened if the Khans hadn’t been arrested in time, it’s frustrating to reflect on the attitude towards extremism displayed by some. Those working against extremists are seen as a nuisance, or worse. On the recent cross post from Student Rights we read how a student tweeted ‘can you drop me some stuff about preventing prevent? They’ve emailed us…as well as the horrible student rights people’. And a reader who complained about this event was accused by the venue’s organisers of being against all things Muslim. Here is Danios wriggling around on the subject of Qaradawi – though I will at least give him credit for being sounder on this topic than Bob Pitt and just about everyone I encountered on a protracted discussion of Qaradawi over at Socialist Unity once.
Qaradawi has definitely said things that raise some eyebrows, and we certainly do not endorse those views or opinions, in fact where his opinions infringe on core values of rights and freedoms we condemn that just as we condemn the Islamophobes. His speech against Zionist Jews was definitely way out there. But taken into the context of all his views, it seems that his views towards everything other than everything Israel related is pretty moderate and in line with the “reformist trend” amongst clerics and that is according to the experts.
I suppose, compared to Anders Behring Breivik, Nick Griffin is ‘pretty moderate’.
Now it is true that some critics of Muslim groups or individuals may indeed have an unpleasant agenda – but it’s just as bad to dismiss all such criticisms as to blindly accept them even when they are obviously bigoted or hysterical.
The Khans will be sentenced this afternoon.
