A shortened version of this article has been published on Comment is Free
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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.
On his blog, Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Glasgow Central, Osama Saeed, seems to have taken issue with a pamphlet I wrote last week, which cites his 2006 support for pro al-Qaeda preacher Anwar al-Awlaki. Firstly, this should be put into some kind of perspective: if a PPC who defined himself as a Christian wrote in support of a promoter of the Ku Klux Klan who had extensive links with white supremacist terrorists, it would rightly prompt national outrage. Mr. Saeed will be subject to the same standards as any other potential MP, and he had better get used to it.
Brett on Harry’s Place has noticed yet another scandal from Osama Saeed – on his blog back in 2006 he recommended the unpleasant anti-gay site Eye on ‘Gay Muslims’ as a blog “[w]ell worth checking out”.
Eye on ‘Gay Muslims’ (I am repelled as I type those scare quotes) is a site written by a chap called Rashid Eldin who tells gay Muslims that there is no place for them in Islam, calls the estimable organisation Imaan’s ‘Europride‘ event a “parade of perversion” and also recomends lectures by Yasir Qadhi.
Here is Qadhi talking about homosexuality.
It’s a long video and mainly it is concerned with Qadhi’s backwards views on women, but scroll through to 32 minutes where Qadhi starts to reminisce about the good old 80s when it was OK to abuse gays – and how society has “regressed” since then as you can’t attack homosexuality without being thought a homophobe. Funny that.