Of Qadhi and Detroit 253

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Detroit 253 bomber, has come under understandable scrutiny of late both here on The Spittoon and on Harry’s Place, as elsewhere.  Here, on The Spittoon, Effendi has written of Adbdulmutallab’s links to the East London Mosque. On Harry’s Place, Habibi has drawn our attention to Abdulmutallab’s previously made public declarations on an Islamist forum of support for jihadi violence and his desire to engage in the same. Most recently, bloggers on Harry’s Place and The Spittoon have begun to scrutinise the role of UCL’s Islamic Society (of which Abdulmutallab served at one time as president) in the radicalisation of this young man.

On the last day of 2009 came the news that US authorities were reporting direct contacts between Abdulmutallab and Anwar al-Awlaki and were actively investigating the same (this is further explored in the excellent cross-post, here).  At the very same time, CNN reported that:

The man accused of trying to blow up a U.S.-bound airliner on Christmas Day attended an Islamic ‘Knowledge Fest’ in Houston, Texas, in 2008, according to one of the organizers of the event.

Yasir Qadhi, who was an instructor at ‘Ilm Fest,’ said the 16-day conference organized by the Al Maghrib Institute was a series of courses and workshops to teach young Muslims ‘the nuts and bolts of Islam.’

Yasir Qadhi should be well known to readers of The Spittoon and Harry’s Place and more widely to Islamist-watchers everywhere as a loathsome individual of violently bigoted opinions. Back in 2001, Qadhi revealed himself to be a Holocaust denier:

All of these Polish Jews which Hitler was supposedly trying to exterminate, that’s another point, by the way, Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews. There are a number of books out on this written by Christians, you should read them. The Hoax of the Holocaust, I advise you to read this book and write this down, the Hoax of the Holocaust, a very good book. All of this is false propaganda and I know it sounds so far-fetched, but read it. The evidences are very strong. And they’re talking about newspaper articles, clippings, everything and look up yourself what Hitler really wanted to do. We’re not defending Hitler, by the way, but the Jews, the way that they portray him, also is not correct.

Warming to his theme, Qadhi continued:

You can use this against them [Jews] so easily. … You go to America, you find that 95 percent of the Islamic Studies professors are Jews, you know that? 95 percent of Islamic Studies are Jews. And 0 percent of Judaic Studies are Muslims. I am not advising any Muslim to waste his time studying Judaism but I’m saying, why are Jews studying Islam? There is a reason, not that they want to help us, they want to destroy us … they want to bring about doubts, look at the doubts that exist, look at the divisions, the discord, look at the disunity, look at all these ideologies that are being spread. Know that the Yahood [Jews] and the Kuffar [Infidels] like this type of thing.

It’s not just Jews that Qadhi hates:  all non-Muslims are a “spiritually filthy substance” whose lives and property hold no value and are forfeit to Muslims during Jihad. That goes for Shi’a Muslims too. In a lecture posted on Youtube, Qadhi states that the Shi’a are “the most lying sect in Islam” and that “the Shias are allowed to lie and it is their religion to lie.” However, one will be hard pressed to view that video, as Qadhi has now forced YouTube to remove the item because of his “copyright claim”. A convenient device to cover-up the evidence of his bigotry – and odd, given the Wahhabi general disdain for copyright as an invention of the infidel.

Qadhi is, of course, no stranger to UCL’s ISOC. He has spoken a number of times at UCL. One such being a course, held in 2008 on sihr, black magic. A course organised by the UCL ISOC, whose president at the time was one Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, later to become infamous as the Detroit 253 bomber.

Qadhi taught Abdulmutallab on the former’s “IlmFest” courses for “advanced” students in Houston, later that same year. Qadhi, who had previously taught Abdulmutallab at courses run at the UCL ISOC, now claims that he knew fairly little about the young Nigerian – despite the fact that the IlmFest courses are specifically for students that have previously been acknowledged as advanced by Qadhi himself. Qadhi claimed:

“He was a very quiet individual, tight-lipped and shy, and he did not ask a single question during the discussions,” Qadhi said in an exclusive interview with CNN. “He barely interacted with the other students at the conference.”

AbdulMutallab was not a visible presence during the conference and did not attend all the sessions, recalled Qadhi.

Qadhi recalls speaking to AbdulMutallab and remembers that he was “very reserved in his responses.”

AbdulMutallab also attended two seminars organized by the Al Maghrib Institute in London in the months before the event in Houston, Qadhi said.

One of the events was on the life of the Prophet Mohammed, and the other course was on the first chapter of the Koran.

“This was mainstream Islamic stuff,” said Qadhi.

Qadhi has good reason to cover his tracks, of course. Apart from preaching anti-Semitism and hatred of non-Muslims to UCL’s Muslim student body, Qadhi has embedded himself on the liberal circuit in the US as a spokesman for “conservative” Islam, having been involved in de-radicalisation efforts in the United States and was a leading participant in the U.S. Counter-Radicalization Strategy conference organized by the National Counterterrorism Center in the summer of 2008.

When are the great and good going to wake up to the fact that Islamism, regardless of its spokesmen’s claims, is irremediably opposed to liberal, secular and democratic values and is everywhere linked to the violent, authoritarian practices of clerical fascist terror?