Posted on 07/22/2005 6:58:51 AM PDT by robowombat
The aim: Muslim state from Spain to Indonesia By Nick Meo July 18, 2005
Page Tools Email to a friend Printer format The accents were from the north of England. It was hard to know whether the scruffy, earnest and clearly hostile young men crowded into a smelly flat in Lahore were really dangerous, or whether they were just playing at being jihadis.
They didn't look like ruthless terrorists. Some were only old enough to grow wispy beards. It was pretty clear they wouldn't fit in at home, if they still considered Britain home. Most seemed to be running away from life in Britain.
The young men - all members of an extreme Islamic group al-Muhajiroun (The Migrants) - would have applauded last week's London bombings.
They told me in 2003 they hated Britain, and they clearly felt left out of white society. They loathed everything about the West. The values of the infidels were sick, corrupt and empty, they said.
Pornography, booze, exploitation. They couldn't see anything in British society that was positive.
The young men, mostly from Manchester or Yorkshire, were united by their cause - a pure Islamic state.
Advertisement AdvertisementSajeel Shahid, their emir, explained that al-Muhajiroun had sent them out to Pakistan because it was ripe for an Islamic revolution. If Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf fell, other apostate rulers would follow, he believed.
Pakistan is the strongest military power in the Islamic world, the only Muslim nation to possess nuclear weapons, which the faithful badly want to get their hands on.
Sajeel's eyes were shining as he set out his ambition of achieving the Khalifat, a pure Islamic state stretching from Spain to Indonesia. His young acolytes looked on admiringly. Spain was Muslim once and must be again, he said.
The previous day Sajeel had spoken at a political rally in Lahore. He was charismatic and well received.
"Pakistanis respect us because we have given up the comforts of life in Britain to struggle for Islam," he said afterwards.
In 2001, the group's spokesman, Hassan Butt, boasted about the group's contribution to al-Qaeda's war effort and the battle they would fight one day on British streets against military and political targets.
"Our father's generation has been soft for too long. Too many of them sell alcohol and pornography," he said.
"It is time they made some sacrifices for Islam. The young generation is ready."
In 2001 Butt surrendered to British police after he had fallen out with al-Muhajiroun.
His wealthy businessman father, a pillar of Manchester society, had been horrified by his wayward son.
The organisation al-Muhajiroun was founded in 1986 by Omar Bakri Mohammed, a notorious Syrian-born cleric based in North London and nicknamed the Ayatollah of Tottenham. In universities and mosques it recruits an odd mix of intellectuals and misfits. Most of the boys in Lahore were graduates.
"I could have made a lot of money in computers, but what is that compared to serving Islam?" one of them told me. Its ideology is Islamist and supremacist.
One former member, Ali Qureshi, left because he likened the organisation to a cult. He claimed that during the 2001 Afghan war Bakri sent thousands of dollars for the Taliban - collected in British mosques - as well as hundreds of young recruits to Afghanistan. Many died.
He decided to leave when the father of a British teenager begged him for news of his son.
Al-Muhajiroun had ordered him to say nothing about the 15-year-old.
"They catch these young guys and do brainwashing on them," he said.
They need to go. All of them.
They've stated their goals over and over again.
When are we going to listen and stop with this "It's all about Palestine and Iraq" rubbish????
Hassan Butt????
The name is an homage to their Grabassticism..
Solution=airbus
To Antarctica..
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