Posted on 10/30/2001 5:02:22 PM PST by Pokey78
THE military response to the attacks of September 11 has provided a fertile environment for the inflammatory rhetoric of Islamic pressure groups such as Al-Muhajiroun.
The group, founded in Jeddah in 1983 by a Syrian cleric, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, is dedicated to the re-establishment of the khilafa or world Islamic state which it says was destroyed by imperialist Europe.
Bakri Mohammed, who was expelled from Saudi Arabia and has lived in London since 1986, has thrived on the publicity generated by provocative statements calling for young Muslims to take up arms against the opponents of Islam in Chechnya, Kashmir and Israel.
He spoke in approval of the American embassy bombings in Africa and, in 1990, was interviewed by Special Branch after allegedly calling for the assassination of John Major. He denied this and was never charged.
Mainstream Muslim opinion in Britain has repeatedly dismissed the group as the "lunatic fringe".
Dr Ghuyasuddin Siddiqui, leader of the Muslim Parliament, did so again yesterday, accusing Al-Muhajiroun's leaders of trying to make "political mileage" from the conflict in Afghanistan.
Al-Mujahiroun's British leader, Anjem Choudary, claimed yesterday that the organisation had a worldwide following, with 30 offices across Britain and others in Pakistan, Kuwait, France, South Africa, Lebanon, Bangladesh, Mauritius, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Algeria.
It was "impossible" to determine the organisation's membership, he said, but claimed that Al-Muhajiroun represented a much more mainstream Muslim agenda than groups such as the Muslim Parliament would admit.
"It is they who are sold out and secular. We are the ones who have not compromised our Islamic faith."
The Home Office and security services have long taken a softly, softly attitude towards Al-Muhajiroun - dismissing the group in private as a relatively harmless organisation with more bark than bite.
That did not appear to change even when Al-Muhajiroun leaflets exhorting British Muslims to "kill the Jews" were pasted around London and Birmingham a year ago, with a telephone number for Bakri Mohammed.
Senior members of the Jewish Board of Deputies say appropriate action has not been taken. They wrote to the Attorney General recently to ask why no prosecution had been brought against those behind the leaflets.
Same bad idea. Won't work.
This time there will be no cold war. It will be hot.......very very hot.......
Ah, this Mullah was kicked out of the current Khalifa. If there were a world Islamic State, he wouldn't have a haven in Western Civilization to run to for safety. He'd be dead. He owes his life to Christianity and Western Civilization and he says these other guys "sold out".
When a nuke or a dirty bomb takes out an American city. I thought the WTC was enough to trip the trigger. How many Americans have to die before people understand this is a real war, where winner takes all?
Good point. Strictly speaking, the Khilafa or Caliphate lasted a few decades after Muhammad's death before it was superseded by the Umayyad Dynasty based in Damascus, which was displaced after about a century by the Abbasids based in Baghdad. That last dynasty was destroyed in the thirteenth century by the Mongols, and there has never been a unified "world Islamic state" since---not even the Ottoman Empire had all of the Islamic ulema under its sovereignty, but had Islamic rivals in Morocco, Iran, Central Asia, and Mughal India.
If these jerks want to blame anybody for the breakup of the Khilafa, they should blame Genghis Khan and the Mongol Hordes.
Seems to me things like the inquisition, the thirty years war, "God will know his own" etc. are examples of dissent & a lack of unity within our faith.
there were times when the main current of islam pursued & valued knowledge & progress. While that is not the case now, I don't think "Islam" itself necessarily requires barbarism .
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