Abu Zubair, AKA Saleem Beg, is one of the UK’s worst extremists.
So no wonder Shakeel Begg’s Lewisham Islamic Centre (LIC) has him around to preach.
In a talk at the LIC in 2009, Zubair warned against the perils of “modernism” in Islam. But he urged Muslims to find good in some modernist works as well.
Infamous hate preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi, for example, should not be dismissed. On the contrary, Zubair hails him for his staunch defence of death for apostates:
“Yusuf al-Qaradawi, he is a fierce anti-secularist, fierce anti-secularist. He’s been at the forefront, despite him being a modernist, he’s been at the forefront of this ideological battle between the Islamists on one hand and secularists on the other.
I certainly benefitted from some of the works he’s written against the Arab secularists and the way they explain, you know, the way he perhaps defends certain aspects of Islam that often come under attack by the secularists. Such as, for instance, death penalty for apostasy. He is a defender of the traditional opinion that apostasy is a criminal offence which deserves death penalty. And he defends that in his book against the secularists. So to his credit, he has written a lot.”
In fact, apostasy is so important to Zubair that he issued the most thinly veiled of death threats to Usama Hasan of the Quilliam Foundation in 2011. Hasan had given a talk in a London mosque about evolution. This was Zubair’s response:
The call to evolution is a call to kufr (disbelief) and apostasy from Islam.
…
Ibn al-Uthaymeen in particular, he was asked this question about a teacher who comes into the classroom and teaches evolution. He said that not only this person, who is in a position of a teacher at school, should be expelled, but even outside of school he should be monitored in terms of his activities and his contacts to make sure he is not misguiding others. And he should be stopped by any means necessary even if it means his execution.Upon that Ibn al-Uthaymeen was asked “do you mean that it is permissible to execute him?”. Ibn al-Uthaymeen says “yes, if there is absolutely no other way of stopping this person except execution, then this person should be executed because he is an apostate and apostates are executed.”
Abu Zubair is a perfect man for the Lewisham Islamic Centre.
Not least because the LIC itself hates Usama Hasan with great passion. Look at this short promotional video for an event at the mosque in 2011. It brackets Tommy Robinson of the EDL and loony Qur’an burner Pastor Jones with Usama Hasan. It is a disgusting and dangerous slur.
That event featured Salih al-Munajjid. He is an off the charts Saudi hate preacher. He too is perfect for the LIC.
But don’t worry, folks. The Met is on the case.
