Category Archives: Terrorism

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:

Much time has been understandably spent in recent weeks exposing the links between Anwar al-Awlaki and international jihadi terrorism. Of considerable interest then should be the extensive links that can also be shown to exist between al-Awlaki and the Muslim Brotherhood – an organisation that likes to dub itself a “moderate Islamist” group, committed to exclusively democratic and peaceful political reform, far removed from the terrorism and extremism of other Islamists.

It is public knowledge that the Brotherhood’s British arms, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Young Muslim Organisation, have previously promoted al-Awlaki. He was the main speaker at the latter organisation’s “Remaking of a Great Nation” fundraiser for “the people of Iraq” back in June, 2003. The MAB website address being prominently displayed on the posters for the same.

However, the connections between al-Awlaki and the Muslim Brotherhood are far deeper than his speaking at their events in the UK. Writing in the Washington Post, Susan Schmidt commented that:

Mawdudi's Legacy

Abdulla Ahmed Ali 28, Tanvir Hussain 28 and Assad Sarwar 29 were arrested in August 2006. They were each accused of two charges of conspiracy to murder using home-made explosives.

All three were found guilty in an earlier trial of conspiracy to murder involving liquid bombs – but that jury could not decide whether their plans extended to detonating the devices on planes.

A Woolwich Crown Court jury has convicted them on the basis that a terror plot did exist.

Here’s Abdulla Ahmed Ali, the ringleader of the plot, regurgitating the Islamist doctrine of armed Jihad:

I’m doing this coz of the rewards, the big rewards that Allah promises those who step from this path and, inshallah, become martyrs. And the best of those rewards for me is the guarantee of Jannah [paradise] for myself, my family, and those who are close to me.