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In yesterday’s Sunday Times, CagePrisoners (CP) was criticised for promoting al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki on their site. The group’s head, Moazzam Begg, responded by saying that ‘I don’t consider anybody a terrorist until they have been charged and convicted of terrorism.’ The only problem with this is that his organisation’s website is replete with profiles and sympathetic interviews with convicted terrorists. Rightly, Begg follows the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ line, but when they are convicted, CP seem to give the terrorists a lot of sympathy.

CP’s website, for example, reproduces and publishes letters and poems written by people who have been convicted on terrorism charges in the UK. What is the justification for this? Begg has never addressed this issue, and it is about time that he did. I have already covered the materials on the CP site in previous blogs.

One organisation, which CP has some links with, addresses this issue much more clearly. Prisoners of Faith (PoF) is a group similar to CagePrisoners, except they are much more frank about what they think of Islamist terrorists behind bars:

Prisoners of Faith has been set up to inform the ummah about our current Muslim prisoners. The reason for implementing a penal system is to punish criminals so that they re-enter life rehabilitated or duly punished. How can it be a crime to only believe in ‘La ilaha illallah’ [there is no god but Allah] and to only want His rule to govern?

The incarceration of Muslims may seem like a relatively new phenomenon, since 2000 approximately 1000 Muslims have been arrested, many jailed without charge, and this is a fraction compared to other parts of the world where the atrocities are worse, yet how many of us actually remember them? How many of us take out time to find out what is happening to our brothers and sisters? Whether they are detained without charge, with charge or even convicted? Do we just believe what we see on the TV? Or should we make excuses for our brothers and sisters and give them the benefit of the doubt?

… So the role of Prisoners of Faith is to inform you about the prisoners and to help them to be remembered in your du’aas [prayers] constantly inshaAllah

The part I have put in bold is the most relevant here as indeed all Islamist terrorist are fighting primarily because they wish to establish the rule of God throughout the world, and for PoF striving toward this simply cannot be a crime. It’s also nice to see them doing their part to lionise terrorists by asking for Muslims to pray for them on a purely sectarian basis.

CP have reproduced PoF articles on their site and also include on their Facebook page this video produced by PoF:

The hooligan shouting at the police in the beginning of the video is Abu Hamza’s right hand man, Abu Abdullah (aka Atilla Ahmet). He is now serving a seven year sentence for soliciting to murder. Here he is praising ‘the honourable Sheikh’ Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri and 9/11:

The PoF video then goes on to show pictures of numerous convicted and suspected terrorists, including Anwar al-Awlaki (3.47 mins) and it makes no effort to present these men and their actions as wrong or un-Islamic, instead telling viewers: ‘Do not forsake them! Remember your Brothers and Sisters in your du’as (prayers) this Ramadan’.

It is strange that an organisation like CP, which condemns convicted terrorists and the killing of civilians, would publish the poetry of a convicted terrorist on their site, and would have a video on their Facebook page telling people to pray for a man who praised 9/11, an event that claimed thousands of civilian lives. Talk about mixed messages!

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It is now clear US Army Major Nidal Hasan had a series of connections to the Islamist cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki . For those of us who have studied, with increasing concern, the extreme teachings of this cleric, this tragedy is the inevitable consequence of un-checked Islamist radicalisation. This situation has been made all the more distressing by the apparent lack of concern shown by the US Intelligence and Military authorities in taking Awlaki’s influence seriously.

Even before Major Nidal had fired a single bullet in Fort Hood, the US authorities knew about his increasingly vocal radicalisation and that he had attended the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Virgina at the time Awlaki was its head Imam. Nidal had also been the subject of an FBI investigation after it was discovered that he made communication with Awlaki by email. There was certainly no lack of overt clues.

Inayat Bunglawala is right to say that most Islamic scholars, particularly in Britain, are opponents of the extremist fighting talk that is replete in Awlaki’s sermons. Even within political Islam, Awlaki’s teachings fall within the most extreme, Al Qaeda-aligned territory. Indeed, according to Charles E. Allen, the US Under Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis and Chief Intelligence Officer, Awlaki is the former spiritual leader to three of the 9/11 hijackers. He was also identified by the 9/11 Commission report as having provided advice to two of the 9/11 hijackers, Khaled Almihdar and Nawaf Alhazmi.

What should concern us most, however, is this. Awlaki has a huge internet following amongst Muslims, all over the world. His sermons, delivered in word perfect English and Arabic, are downloaded and shared by vast numbers of people in the Middle East and in the West. On his blog, which has now been taken down, his articles together with the stories of his scrapes with the FBI and his incarceration in Yemen, have earned him the status as the pre-eminent crossover Arabic-speaking theoretician of armed Jihad. 

Most disturbingly of all, Awlaki has been actively promoted by some of the United Kingdom’s most prominent Islamist organisations. Inayat Bunglawala’s description of Awlaki’s relationship with these organisations is an understatement of the seriousness of the problem. There are two points that are central to Bunglawala’s discussion of Awlaki’s connection in the UK. The first is that when Islamic organisations began inviting Awlaki to this country in the late 1990s, Awlaki was then still a mainstream, moderate imam with sensible views and showed “no hint of his later extremism”. The second, that Awlaki only became radicalised due to the US war against Iraq in 2003, and is therefore somehow the product of Western foreign policy. However, under greater scrutiny, neither of these claims stand up, even from the data available in the public domain on Awlaki.

A Washington Post report examined tax records from as early as 1998, which showed that Awlaki served as vice president of a charity (CSSW) founded by his then patron Abdul Majeed al-Zindani, a Yemeni politician who is named as an associate of Al-Qaeda. The CSSW has been described a “front organization to funnel money to terrorists”. The FBI also know that he was paid a visit in 2000 by an associate of Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the blind sheikh, who was convicted in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The report also states that in 1999, Awlaki was investigdated by the FBI “when it learnt that he may have been visited by a “procurement agent” for bin Laden”.

In late 2002, Awlaki made a trip back to the USA, where he visited Ali al-Timimi, who was the time was accused by US prosecutors of recruiting Muslims to fight against US troops in Afghanistan. Timimi was convicted in 2005 and is now serving a life sentence for inciting followers to fight with the Taliban against Americans.

Inayat Bunglawala refers to an interview of Awlaki in the National Geographic from 2001, in which Awlaki’s responses are portrayed as reasonable and moderate. But what the interview doesn’t tell us is that in reality Awlaki had already been investigated twice by the FBI for his connections with Al-Qaeda. He was on his best behaviour. When Awlaki conducted another interview with IslamOnline – the website founded by the Muslim Brotherhood’s spiritual leader, Yusuf al-Qaradawi – he suggested that Mossad were behind the 9/11 attacks.

Therefore, by the time Awlaki was first invited to the UK by British Islamic organisations, he was, even by the Islamist standards, no moderate scholar. His actions show that he was a well known activist with a highly confrontational message for the cause of violent Jihad, long before the second Gulf War.

But it is what happened from 2002 onwards that is more important in the UK context. Since that date, Awlaki has been invited to speak in person, or via video link-up, by a large number of private Muslim organisations, university Islamic societies and registered charities which have benefited from government funding. They have promoted him, in spite of or perhaps because of, Awlaki’s track record and his increasingly explicit message exhorting Muslims to support violent Jihad.

Timeline

In June 2003, the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), referred to as the official arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK, organised a series of meetings with Awalki as guest speaker. 

Later that year, at an event organised by the East London Mosque (ELM) in December 2003, Awlaki addressed Muslims on the subject of terrorism arrests in the UK and urged them to never report on or turn over their fellow Muslims, under any circumstances. Two months prior in October 2003, the Islamic Forum Europe (IFE), an organisation closely associated with the ELM, invited Awlaki to speak at its ‘expoislamia’ event. In January 2009, the same ELM hosted  another event, entitled ‘The End of Time’, with Awlaki this time as delivering a video message. In spite of the fact that Awlaki’s “presence” at the event was reported in the national press, ELM refused to condemn Awlaki’s ideology or even cancel the meeting.

As late as 2005 Inayat Bunglawala and Awlaki were both listed as co- supporter of an organisation called ‘Stop Political Terror’ (SPT) which aimed to protect the civil rights of Muslims charged with extremism. One of individuals that SPT campaigned for was Babar Ahmad, who ran Azzam Publications, a pro-jihad website which, according to his indictment was “used to recruit individuals to be mujahideen and to solicit and raise funds and assistance for jihad”.

Osama Saeed, who now is poised to represent the Scottish National Party (SNP) for Glasgow Central in Parliament, wrote in his blog in 2006:

“Imam Anwar Al-Awlaki was originally hounded in the US because two of the 9/11 bombers happened to pray at his mosque. Many of my Muslim readers will either know him personally or have heard his lectures. He preached nothing but peace, and I pray he will be able to do so again.”

Saeed continues to cling on to the falsehood that Awlaki was a moderate when he praised his message of “nothing but peace” three years ago. He also references the National Geographic interview as proof of Awlaki’s moderateness, the citation of which is fast becoming the favoured get-out route for Islamists who want to justify their support of Awlaki.

Azad Ali is a civil servant in HM Treasury. He is the President of the Civil Service Islamic Society and sits on the council of Liberty. In January 2009, the Mail on Sunday reported Mr Ali’s extreme Islamist views in entries he had written on the IFE’s blog, ‘Between the Lines’ on which he has gushed about his “love” for the “Sheikh”, and then went on to justify Awlaki’s view that American Muslims who voted in elections were people who had “humiliated themselves by voting for candidates who have no serious concern for their issues”.

One of the directors of the MAB, Anas Altikriti, is now with the Cordoba Foundation which sponsored an event this summer in the Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall called ‘Beyond Guantanamo’ that was to feature an online video address by Awlaki.

Cage Prisoners (CP) is a successor organisation to Stop Political Terror, which also campaigns for Muslims who have been detained or imprisoned. They are also the most active supporters of Awlaki in the UK today. The CP website contains an extensive and friendly interview between Awlaki and Moazzam Begg, one of its directors and a former Guantanamo detainee. In August 2009, CP were the organisers of an event in the Kensington and Chelsea Town Hall in which guests were promised the treat of a live video link-up with Awlaki, who the CP regard as an “Inspirational Imam”. In the weeks before the event, CP were informed by the local council that their event could only go ahead if they cancelled the video address by Awlaki. CP complied with this, although they issued a statement on their site which refused to acknowledge Awlaki’s extremist nature.

The notion that Awlaki was previously a moderate imam whose public and personal journey to the extremes of violent Islamism happened relatively recently and long after British organisations endorsed and supported him is a false one. There are a host of organisations and individuals who operate within the Islamist landscape in this country who have, at one point or another, praised or defended Awlaki. I have listed only some of the British organisations which will have been aware of Awlaki’s views. Many of their leaders will have pored over every word and inflection he made in his articles and sermons. They will have been supporters of Awlaki’s rhetoric because of his message of violent Jihad and not in spite of it.

The US authorities are not the only ones who have been slow in responding to their own intelligence on Awlaki. British institutions have been equally lethargic, sometimes even supportive, in responding to organisations and individuals who have embraced and endorsed the ideology of Awlaki in their campaigns, seminars, public meetings and broadcasts. Whereas people who have pointed out the dangerous potential of Awlaki have been allowed to be defamed as Muslim-haters or self-loathing Muslim hypocrites.

Although the leadership of the Awlaki-supporting organisations cannot have mistaken him for a moderate, the same does not necessarily hold true for their rank and file. Ordinary Muslims, turning up at events at which Awlaki was promoted, may well have taken on trust the assertion that he is a religious authority with prodigious qualifications and a sincere and important message. It is these ordinary members who have been imperilled, by being exposed to jihadi theology in its purest form. They have been betrayed by their leadership.

The supporters of these organisations need to think long and hard about how their leadership came to champion Awlaki. We must also give serious consideration to the question on whether the leadership of these organisations should be trusted in the future.

You will remember that, back in August, it was Cageprisoners who tried to organise an event at Kensington Town Hall involving a video message from jihadist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki (and a speech by Reprieve employee Ahmed Ghappour). Fortunately, these plans were over-ruled by Kensington Council and Anwar al-Awlaki’s message was not broadcast. Cageprisoners is led by Moazzem Begg, who said of hate preacher Ali al-Tamimi.

He cannot be regarded as an extremist, fundamentalist, lunatic type terrorist scholar that they claim abound. He is one of the most reasonable and middle of the path scholars that I have come across, who not only make sense in everything that they say, but they back it up with evidence from the Qur’an. [8:45 onwards]

But even this seems rather tame when compared with what his (soon to be former) colleague Asim Qureshi said whilst speaking on a Hizb ut-Tahrir platform a few years ago.

QURESHI: We embrace the mercy. We embrace every single thing that is set upon us and we deal with it because we have no fear.  So when we see the example of our brothers and sisters fighting in Chechnya, Iraq, Palestine, Kashmir, Afghanistan then we know where the example lies. When we see Hezbollah defeating the armies of Israel, we know what the solution is and where the victory lies. We know that it is incumbent upon all of us to support the jihad of our brothers and sisters in these countries when they are facing the oppression of the west.

VOICE IN CROWD: Takbir!

CROWD: Allahu Akbar!

VOICE IN CROWD: Takbir!

CROWD + QURESHI: Allahu Akbar!

VOICE IN CROWD: Takbir!

CROWD + QURESHI: Allahu Akbar!

You could be charitable and say that Reprieve are just naive, but they have a long relationship with Cageprisoners. In March 2007 they produced a joint report (pdf) on ‘Mass rendition, incommunicado detention and possible torture of foreign nationals in Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia’ and Reprieve’s 2007 Annual Report (pdf) includes Cageprisoners on a list of ‘Partners and Supporters’ (as does its 2008 Annual Report). Reprieve was even a “supporting organisation” for a rally staged by Cageprisoners in Trafalgar Square back in July 2006.

It will be interesting to see what influence Asim has at Reprieve. Will they now share platforms with Hizb ut-Tahrir and issue statements in support of jihad against “western oppression” in Iraq and Afghanistan?

Takbir!

On his website, Awlaki publishes a leaflet called 44 Ways of Supporting Jihad. Awlaki tells his readers that, in the current day and age, it is compulsory for them to get arms training then to go and fight jihad. And, before any apologists pop up to say I’m misrepresenting the concept of jihad in Islam, no, he is not talking about jihad  al-nafs. If it entails arms training then what Awlaki is talking about is religiously justified warfare.

This is a point Awlaki makes clear when he tells readers of his website to fight against government armies in the Muslim world.

They stand against those who want to establish Islam through Jihad and they even stand in front of those who seek to reach government through peaceful means as what happened in Algeria in the past.

In other words, there can be no Islam with the presence of these armies. The Islamic rule states that whatever is needed to establish an obligation becomes an obligation. Establishing Islamic sharia is an obligation, and fighting in the cause of Allah is an obligation, and if that cannot be achieved except by fighting against these armies then that becomes an obligation.

[...]

These armies are the number one enemy of the ummah. They are the worst of creation. Blessed are those who fight against them and blessed are those shuhada who are killed by them.

It’s not just Muslim majority countries that Awlaki wants Muslims to fight, it’s also America.

In this recording Awlaki suggests that America is at war with Islam and therefore all Muslims should fight against America. What Awlaki says here is no different to al-Qaeda’s ideology.

Which probably explains why Awlaki is such a fan of the al-Qaeda linked Somali Islamists al-Shabab connected to recent terrorism arrests in Australia. In December 2008, Awlaki sent salutations to al-Shabab of Somalia.

We are following your recent news and it fills our hearts with immense joy. We would like to congratulate you for your victories and achievements.

Al-Shabab not only have succeeded in expanding the areas that fall under their rule but they have succeeded in implementing the sharia and giving us a living example of how we as Muslims should proceed to change our situation. The ballot has failed us but the bullet has not.

al-Shabab who are with limited resources in an impoverished country are a manifestation of what tawakul on Allah means. We see in them the meaning of “And whoever has taqwa, Allah will make a way out for him. And will provide for him from where he does not expect.” [al-Talaaq 2-3]

Heart warming stuff. And it gets sweeter, al-Shabab sent him a response.

Reply to the Greeting and Advice of Sheikh Anwar

O beloved Sheikh Anwar,

We ask Allah to reward you for your encouragement and words of advice. Your words have reached us and, by the will of Allah, we will benefit from your recommendations [...]

Sheikh, we look to you as one of the very few scholars who stand firm upon the truth and defend the honor of the Mujahideen

It seems that Awlaki is so keen on al-Shabab that he has even been acting as their recruitment sergeant. In America, young Somali Americans began disappearing off to Somalia to fight with al-Shabab – it turned out that they had been watching lectures recorded by Awlaki and distributed online.

He even says that Muslims must not side with non-Muslims against perpetrators of terrorist attacks.

The ones who are behind bombings in the West that kill civilians. This is an issue that cannot go beyond the boundaries of fiqh. Whether the author agrees with such operations or doesn’t this issue can never be an issue of aqeedah. So even if he believes that the perpetrators of such acts are wrong and have no basis in sharia, the most he can say about them is that they have followed an invalid ijtihad. But under no circumstances is he allowed to side with the disbelievers against these Muslims. If a Muslim kills each and every civilian disbeliever on the face of the earth he is still a Muslim and we cannot side with the disbelievers against him.

Which makes it all the more disturbing when you discover that Cageprisoners has invited Awlaki to deliver a video message at Kensington Town Hall in West London on 30th August.

At first I thought this was just a horrendous mistake, an oversight which would swiftly be corrected. But then I read this report in Counter Terrorism News.

CTN spoke to the Community Safety Officer at Kensington and Chelsea Council who confirmed that the Home Office’s Office for Security and Counter Terrorism (OSCT) and the Metropolitan Police had given their approval for this event to go ahead without any changes to the advertised speakers.

How can Kensington and Chelsea Council reconcile providing a platform for a preacher of violent extremism with its own Crime and Community Safety Plan‘s (pdf) commitment of “working to minimise opportunities for radicalisation to flourish”.  It is astounding that the local council, Metropolitan police and the Home Office all fail to appreciate that when Kensington Town Hall (a council run venue) hosts a man whose personal ideology differs little from al-Qaeda’s then this provides an appallingly convenient opportunity for radicalisation of the very worst kind.

Will they only realise the danger of such speakers when, like their American peers, groups of young British Somalis – with Awlaki’s pro-Shabab rhetoric ringing in their ears – start signing up to fight in Somalia?

UPDATE:

And this is what Awlaki thinks about killing innocent Jewish women and children.

My opinion which I have stated in past recordings and is still my opinion now is that non-combatant women and children cannot be targeted. However if the type of war forced on us to fight is one in which non-combatants would end up being killed in order to reach to the fighting force then it is allowed in this case. Examples of this are the striking of al Taif by the catapult during the time of Rasulullah(saaws). Parallels of this today are the two methods that our brothers in Palestine have adopted: martyrdom operations and the firing of rockets into the occupied territories. Both of these methods inevitably do kill women and children. The current case of Gaza adds another dimension and that is that the Jews are targeting the entire community in Gaza by siege and indiscriminate bombing and this is why I am inclined to the view of Shaykh Ibn Uthaymeen in this particular situation.

In the current situation of Palestine I must say that I agree with the methods adopted by the mujahideen and I agree with them when they state that they would not stop targeting civilians until the Israeli’s do the same.

For those who asked that I reconsider my view on this, I promise I will review it again and would be happy if you could send me textual references pertinent to the discussion.