PERSPECTIVES

Two very interesting articles which should be read all the way through. One is a critique of the other. They take a different line over those who replaced Hamza's posse at Finsbury park. The first in The New Republic:

...In 2003, British police shut the mosque, but Abu Hamza's followers continued to have a strong presence in the area. In February 2005, police helped broker a deal for the mosque to re-open under the leadership of the local chapter of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), a Muslim Brotherhood group. No sooner had the moderates gained control of the Finsbury Park mosque than they were confronted by Abu Hamza's angry followers, led by the pugnacious Atilla Ahmet, who calls himself "the number-one Al Qaeda in Europe" and who, in October, pled guilty to providing British Muslims with terrorist training. "They brought sticks and knives with them," recalls Kamal El Helbawy, spokesman for the new trustees at the mosque.

Undeterred, a few days later Helbawy gave the first Friday sermon, explaining that this was a new start for the mosque and stressing how important it was for Muslims to live in harmony with their neighbors. Detective Inspector Lambert, the Metropolitan police officer who helped broker the takeover, says that, because of its social welfare work and its track record supporting the Palestinian cause, the MAB has "big street cred in the area and [has] made an impact on Abu Hamza's young followers."...

The critique in The Spectator:

...None of this appears to have occurred to the authors of this article. They have instead listened uncritically and uninformedly to certain individuals in Britain’s security establishment who so lamentably fail to grasp the nature and extent of the jihad, as well as to manipulative Islamists who have played the authors (along with that security establishment) like fish on a line. As a result they make gross errors of judgment in hailing certain individuals as moderate when they are anything but. For example, they write:

Kamal el Helbawy, the Muslim Brotherhood leader who helped bring in moderates at the Finsbury Park mosque in London...

This shows a truly lamentable ignorance. After the removal of the notorious abu Hamza from Finsbury Park, the police did not broker the arrival of a moderate regime at the mosque. They brokered instead a new administration dominated by the Muslim Association of Britain, the British arm of the Muslim Brotherhood whose aim is to Islamise Britain and the west, and whose chief spokesman is Dr Azzam Tammimi, the Hamas acolyte who has publicly supported human bomb terrorism in Israel. As for Kamal el Helbawy, who the authors clearly think is the acme of moderation, he is the main Brotherhood man in Britain and Europe -- and thus central to the whole strategy of indoctrination and radicalisation of Britain’s Muslims and the demoralisation with menaces of the indigenous community, which is putting this country at such risk. Because it’s not just terrorism that creates the danger – it’s the ideas that drive the terror....


I remember at the time Jamal told me that that although they said things people didn't like they terrorized no one. He said the new lot would say things people liked to hear but were actually more dangerous behind the scenes. I have no idea. It was such an uphill struggle trying to gain the trust of Hamza's posse that I really couldn't see myself doing the same thing with the "moderates". As for the tone of the articles, its very difficult to read isn't it. Of course Muslims want an Islamic state. Muslims believe in an Islamic state like Christians believe Jesus is coming back no?