The British capital has been the international headquarters for Islamic groups like Takfir-wal-Hijra, Hizb-ut-Tahrir, The Movement for Islamic Reforms in Arabia, Bahrain Freedom Movement, Algerian Armed Islamic Group… the list is long. While on the surface it’s business as usual, there has been a subtle but significant shift after the London bomb attacks or 7/7.

London has been in focus since July this year when four suicide bombers struck. And are similarities between the 7/7 and 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 investigations led FBI and CIA agents to Pakistan (a major ally of the United States in its “war against terror”) as many of the 19 suicide bombers were of Pakistani origin or had visited that country. Investigations into the 7/7 attacks revealed that three of the four London suicide bombers went to Pakistan last year and visited some madrasas there. The role of two Pakistan-based terrorists groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed (Army of the Prophet) and Lashkar-e-Taiyaba (Army of the Pure), is also being probed in these attacks. Though experts had been warning that a terrorist attack on London was “inevitable”, 7/7 wasn’t the first time that British Muslims were involved in “global jihad”. In fact, there is evidence that they have been taking part in this global jihad since as early as 1990. Though British radical Islam, which has seen a rise in recent years, has links to many other countries, it is the Pakistan linkage that is the most dominant. Islam is one of the fastest growing religions in Britain with the Muslim population at 1.6 million. There are more than 1,000 mosques and 1400 Muslim organisations in the UK. Of these 1.6 million Muslims in Britain, 750,000 are Pakistani, mostly from Mirpur in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir with almost half of the population below 16 years of age. These young Mirpuris are concentrated in and around London, Birmingham, Bradford, Manchester and Glasgow. Bradford, in particular, has a very large number of British/Pakistani/Kashmiri Muslims, and some critics have pointed to the problems emanating from the “ghettos of "‘Bradistan’”. Birmingham, on he other hand, was home to three of the eight Britons jailed in Yemen in 1998 for a terrorist bomb plot. Another 24-year-old Muslim from Birmingham was reportedly killed in a US missile attack on Osama Bin Laden’s Afghanistan base. Interestingly, this is the same city where parties such as Justice for Kashmir and Tehreek-e-Kashmir had won five council seats on the “Kashmir issue” a few years back. In fact, ever since turned violent, the Pakistani-Kashmiri Muslims, the largest ethnic minority in Britain, has been supporting and justifying the terrorist violence in Kashmir along the “freedom fighters” line. Since the early 1990s, British Muslims have also been found in waging jihad in West Asia, Chechnya, Bosnia and, of course, Kashmir.

Omar Sheikh, a British-Muslim born and brought up in Leytonstone area of London, enrolled himself at the London School of Economics but left the UK in pursuit of jihad in 1992. Arrested and jailed in India, he was released along with Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Maulana Masood Azhar in exchange for the hostages of the Indian airliner IC-814 hijacked by terrorists who had taken the aircraft to Kandhar in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Sheikh, who killed journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, is now in a Pakistani prison. He belonged to the first group of British radical Muslims in of early 1990s vintage. Bilal Ahmed, the Birmingham-born suicide bomber who drove his explosive-laden car into the Badamibagh army cantonment in Kashmir in December 2000 killing six Indian soldiers, belonged to the group that followed Omar Sheikh. Ahmed who went to Pakistan in 1994 and joined Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, was born into a Pakistani family in Birmingham and was a “nightclub-going lad” until he became a born-again Muslim at 18 after reportedly seeing the Prophet Mohammed in a dream. Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Hanif, two other British-Muslims who carried out suicide attacks in Tel Aviv in March 2003, were post-9/11 converts to radical Islam. Lord Nazir Ahmed, a British parliamentarian of Pakistani origin (born in Mirpur) believes that there is a growing alienation among Muslim youngsters in Britain. British society does present challenges for young Muslims and it is for the government to address to those challenges, he says.

On the other hand, one of the main reasons for the growth of radical Islam is a growing sense of alienation and helplessness, both real and imagined, among second and third generation British Muslims, points out Dr Suba Chandra, Assistant Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi, who researched the growth of British radical Islam at the University of Bradford earlier this year. He also believes that the emergence of violent movements in the 1990s in Palestine, Chechnya and Kashmir had a dramatic impact on Muslim society in UK and the spread of simplistic hate literature in Britain only added to making radical Islam acceptable. This hate literature, it has now emerged, was distributed within educational institutions and also through the nearly 800 madrasas in the UK where working class Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants sent their children to study.

A British Pakistani-Kashmiri Muslim academician Zafar Khan, who taught socio-ethnic studies at Luton University, believes that the growth of radical Islam is not only a threat for Britain but also for Muslims; not only in terms of its physical effects but also its social, cultural, ideological effects. “Though it is a fringe, it is quite dangerous,” says Khan, adding that anti-Islam forces have gained strength due to incidents such as 7/7. Though he feels such terror acts do not enjoy the support of majority of British Muslims, yet he does seem to concede that there is some support for such action within the British Islamic community.

Thronged by hundreds of devout British Muslims, the Finsbury Park mosque in London built in 1990 to serve the large Muslim population in the area not only became a centre for sermons and speeches by clerics but also became synonymous with radical Islam. By the year 2000, and thanks in part to its association with Abu Hamza al-Masri, the imam of the mosque, it had gained notoriety. The mosque was raided by British police in 2003 and Abu Hamza removed as imam when the Charity Commission expressed concerns about the management of the mosque and its apparent use for political activities.

This was the mosque attended by Richard Reid, the failed shoe-bomber, and Algeria-born British citizens Kamel Rabat Bouralha, Osman Larussi and Yacine Benalia, who were loyal to Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev (responsible for taking hostage and then killing school children in Beslan). Reports indicate that the Regent Park mosque in London and the Stratford Street mosque in Birmingham, too, have been used as recruitment centers for global jihad. But Pakistani-Kashmiri separatists based in London refuse to accept that the mosques have been misused.

“No, I don’t think mosques in Britain have been misused for jihad or recruitment of young Muslims for terrorism,” says Professor Nazir Ahmed Shawl, chairman, Justice Foundation ~ Kashmir Centre. Professor Shawl, who also heads an organisation “fighting for Kashmiri freedom” earlier headed by Dr Ayub Thakur (whose charity organisation Mercy International was accused of sending funds to Kashmiri terrorists), believes that there is no link between British radical Islam and Kashmir. The same sentiment is echoed by Zafar Khan, chief of the diplomatic affairs department of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), UK. “Madrasas and mosques in Britain have not played a role in fermenting jihad whether in Kashmir or globally. They have only been providing religious services to Muslims,” said Khan. He, however, agreed that mosques in Britain could have played a more constructive role in helping their congregations integrate into British society. Political observers such as Graham Walker of Chatham House, though, believe that UK mosques have undoubtedly played a role in promoting extremism.

The British Home Office recently drafted a report on Islamic Radicals in Britain – who they are, to which section of society they belong, from which economic strata they hail, what their education levels are, and why they take part in jihad. The report brought into sharp focus many issues related to extremism and young Muslims in Britain. The report said that terrorist-recruits include immigrants from North Africa and West Asia now naturalised and resident in the UK, and second and third generation British citizens of Pakistani and Kashmiri origin. Radicalised youth, the report said, are either well-educated professionals with degrees and technical qualifications, or under-achievers with few or no qualifications and often a criminal background. Lastly, it noted, British Muslims actively engaged in terrorist activity, whether at home or abroad, are estimated to be not more than one per cent of the total population of British Muslims (approximately 16,000 of the total 1.6 million). So why has this fringe element become the topic of such heated debate? In part, because terrorism experts attribute the growth of British radical Islam to groups like Al Muhajiroon (AM) and Hizb-ut-Tahrir (HuT). Al Muhajiroon was founded in 1996 by Syrian-born Omar Bakri Mohammad who was educated in Cairo and expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1986. He took asylum in the UK, formed the British branch of HuT, split from it in 1996, and then formed the AM. Radical imams such as Abu Hamza and Omar Bakri have played a crucial role in encouraging fundamentalism through their speeches and sermons both inside and outside mosques. AM and HuT are suspected to have close links with other radical groups such as the Supporters of Sharia (SOS) founded by Abu Hamza. Both the HuT and AM believe in jihad and war against non-believers, and want to create a united Islamic Caliphate with no national boundaries governed by Sharia law. Irrespective of the bans imposed on them, both outfits are active in various colleges and universities in the UK and recruit cadre regularly. Indeed, more than 30 colleges and universities in Britain are reported to have active extremist groups. (The Guardian, 16 September 2005).

The 9/11 and 7/7 suicide attacks have been glorified by OBM, AM and Abu Hamza. Omar Bakri Mohammad called the 9/11 attackers the “Magnificent 19” and the 7/7 bombers the “Fantastic Four”. In the past, Omar Bakri has proudly admitted that Omar Khan Sharif and Asif Hanif, the Tel Aviv suicide bombers, were his students. So were the eight arrested in March 2004 in connection with the half-a-ton of ammonium nitrate found in the UK. Bakri, who is prone to bombastic statements, left London for Beirut a few months ago.

The fact that the asylum seekers who were embraced by Britain and lived here for many years (Bakri left UK after two decades) were using their freedoms and liberties to encourage Islamic extremism doesn’t, of course, bother British – non-Islamic – radicals. Lord Eric Avebury, the human rights activist who founded and later headed the British Parliamentary Human Rights Group, believes that 7/7 should be seen as a “recognition of the fact that we haven’t done much to address the problems of Islam-phobia.” Despite the uproar in mainstream British politics and media about the abuse of the country’s asylum policy, Lord Avebury sticks to his radical guns: “When you say we have a liberal asylum policy, I would agree that we have admitted a few people who are not welcome. But that was just an unintended consequence of having a very large system.”

As for the Kashmir connection, AM leader Anjem Choudhry, who believes “it is the duty of Muslims to fight against the oppression of their Muslim brothers in Kashmir, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Palestine and liberate these countries,” is considered close to many in the Pakistani-Kashmiri “movement”. Reports suggest that 900 British Muslims are trained annually in Pakistan by radical groups active in Kashmir like the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiyaba. MJ Gohel, director of the London-based Asia-Pacific Foundation that monitors terrorism, points out the Pakistan connection – all six of the senior Al-Qaida leaders captured worldwide till today were found to have been living in Pakistan. A top Al-Qaida operative in Pakistan, Osama Nazir, arrested in Faisalabad last year, told investigators that over 300 British Muslims of Pakistani origin had signed up with the Al-Qaida since the 9/11 attacks and received training at JeM and Harkat-ul-Mujahideen camps for suicide missions. Moha-mmed Ghalib, president of the Birmingham-based Tehreek-e-Kashmir, defends Muslims fighting in Kashmir. “Even if there are outsiders in Kashmir, so what? In Bosnia, too, we had outsiders. Once the Kashmir issue is resolved they will all go back.”

For years, now, Indian officials have been demanding that Britain take stronger action to stop recruitment and fundraising aimed at providing a fillip to terrorism in Kashmir. JKLF’s Zafar Khan argues that what is exported from Britain into Kashmir is “not money but activism and support for the freedom struggle.” Anjem Choudhry, on the other hand, said after attempts were made to clamp down on fundraising via legislation: “Do you think the 1,300 mosques around the country will stop collecting money for jihad? If anything, they will be more determined now.”

The author is The Statesman’s Jammu-based Special Representative, currently in London on a British Chevening scholarship for journalists.

Courtesy : The Statesman

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