Posted on 03/04/2005 12:30:09 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND - The house at 44 St. James St. looks like all the others in a slightly rundown neighborhood of two-story brick homes, except that people seem to flinch a bit when they walk by.
That's probably because they are uncomfortably aware that a young man who lived there kept enough plastic explosives rolled up in his socks to take out a whole city block or blow an airliner out of the sky, which was his plan.
"It was too damn close," said Martin Stephens, who lives on the next block. "It would have killed us all. People are angry. The Muslims say they want to be friendly, but who knows what's going on in the mosques?"
The neighborhood is in shock because Saajid Badat, 25, a quiet man who grew up here, this week became the first British-born Muslim convicted of a terrorist crime in the country. He confessed that he was part of a well-advanced al-Qaida scheme to destroy an airliner bound for the United States. According to prosecutors, Muslim clerics preaching the need for jihad turned Badat against British society.
Badat's case represents the worst collective fear of European leaders: the radicalization of their Muslim populations.
Feelings of alienation run high in Muslim neighborhoods throughout Europe, experts say, fueling a dangerous breach between Muslim and non-Muslim communities and giving al-Qaida's sympathizers room to maneuver.
The militant mood of some younger Muslims has been fed by widespread opposition to the U.S.-led and British-supported wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and by new anti-terrorist laws that have left many feeling they are being targeted.
Their anger deepened this week when the British minister for counterterrorism said Muslims would have to accept that they would be under more surveillance than other citizens.
Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, said that while British Muslims reject violence and have no sympathy for Badat, they now live in a climate of fear.
"In this country we've had rights against arbitrary arrest for 300 years, and now those laws have been set aside and the new ones applied exclusively to Muslims," he said. "It has alienated large segments of Muslim youths, and that is exactly who is needed to combat the terror threat."
In recent months, there has been a marked increase in police raids against militants suspected of planning attacks against civilian targets in Europe, such as the strike against the Madrid rail system that killed nearly 200 people last year.
And several radical British clerics have been taken into custody after allegedly urging their supporters to rise up against the West.
Threat from outside U.S. Nevertheless, Prime Minister Tony Blair warned this week that several hundred terrorists inside Britain are hatching plots similar to Badat's, and a recent spate of arrests in Europe indicates that militants loosely affiliated with al-Qaida have found a toehold here that they have been denied in the United States.
As a result, some analysts warn that the main threat to U.S. security comes not from terrorist cells within America's borders or in the Middle East but from clandestine cells in Europe that are developing plans for attacks inside America or against airliners flying to the United States.
Peter Bergen, a terrorism analyst at the New America Foundation in Washington, said the European arrests, and the lack of discernible terrorist activity in the United States, suggest that Osama bin Laden's network has been able to find recruits among the large, increasing Muslim population in Europe.
"There are no sleeper cells in the USA," Bergen said. "If there were, they would have acted. The threat is from outside. That was true in 9/11, which was unimaginable without the Hamburg cell, and it will become more true in the future."
The root cause, he said, is that some younger Muslims in Europe — from Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries where al-Qaida has been active — are not being accepted into mainstream society or given a chance at economic advancement, leading to hopelessness that makes radical ideas attractive.
"If you look at terrorism cases in the USA, they are not terrorism, they are material support," he said. "But in Britain, Spain, Italy and France, these are real cases of people trying to blow up the U.S. Embassy, experimenting with ricin, trying to blow up the market in Strasbourg.
"It's very active in Europe in a way that it's not in the USA, and this makes Europe an effective platform for attacking the United States."
Motives puzzle neighbors The riddle for those trying to control European terrorism is to understand why someone like Badat — a devout young man from a stable, hardworking family in Gloucester — embraced such a violent cause. His parents moved to the area from East Africa 30 years ago and stayed out of the limelight until November of 2003 when police swooped in to arrest their son.
Neighbors said Badat's father went to each house to apologize for the commotion and inconvenience after his son was arrested. Police evacuated several city blocks as a precaution. Some neighbors said they believed Badat was innocent until his abrupt guilty plea earlier this week.
The evidence against him was overwhelming. Police found plastic explosives in his room, along with a detonator cord that precisely matched the one used by shoe bomber Richard Reid when he tried to blow up a plane heading for Miami. It turned out that both had received al-Qaida training in Afghanistan; Reid was sentenced to life imprisonment by a U.S. court in January 2003.
Prosecutors say that Badat decided against carrying out the mission several days before it was to take place in December 2001, but kept the explosive until he was arrested.
"We must ask how a young British man was transformed from an intelligent, articulate person who was well respected, into a person who has pleaded guilty to one of the most serious crimes that you can think of," said Peter Clarke, chief of Scotland Yard's anti-terror section.
Badat had attracted little attention while he was growing up. He attended demanding Church of England schools where he achieved good grades in several science classes. In a statement released after his conviction, former teacher David Lamper described Badat as "popular and diligent."
Sometime after graduation, prosecutors said, Badat went to Paskistan, ostensibly to study Islam, and he eventually made his way to al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan.
His parents refused to talk to reporters, and Badat's neighbors seemed baffled by his apparent transformation from a well-behaved student to a would-be shoe bomber.
"People say he was such a nice kid, but you just can't tell what goes on in the minds of people," said John Sanders, a neighbor. "Something in the mind snaps. You don't know why. If his father had known, his father would have killed him. I know he feels shame for what the boy has done."
'Deep divisions' Sanders said there were few racial incidents in the diverse neighborhood where many of Gloucester's estimated 4,000 Muslims live. He said some of the young Muslims used to yell "al-Qaida" at him when he walked by the local Masjid-E-Noor Mosque but that he regarded the taunts as nothing more than youthful bravado.
But currents of racism are evident in the neighborhood. An Asian shopkeeper, for example, warned a white visitor to stay away from a coffee shop because mostly black people go there.
The local police have added foot and car patrols to prevent reprisals against the Badats, and city workers have installed security lights outside the mosque.
The schism between Muslims and the rest of society extends beyond Britain. In the Netherlands, mosques and Islamic schools were attacked in November after Muslim militants assassinated Theo van Gogh, a well-known director who made a short film critical of how women are treated under Islam.
In France, legislation prevents Muslim girls from wearing traditional headscarves to school, and young Muslim men complain they are frequently stopped by police for document checks.
Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism specialist with St. Andrew's University in Scotland, said European leaders have been forced to admit in recent months that their social model has broken down with dire consequences.
"We've suddenly discovered, after the Van Gogh murder, that our social integration policies have not worked," he said. "There are deep divisions, and policymakers have to find a way to counter radicalization and recruitment."
gregorykatz2001@yahoo.com
I just wished they and the Dummies would take terrorism more seriously.
Slowly -- one Englishman at a time -- Britain may wake up.
The DUnatics do take terrorism seriously.
And they earnestly want the terrorists to win.
Does this sound like Ted Kennedy of what?!
Nah... he'll go home and watch the BBC and it'll tell him its all America's fault and Israel's too.... I checked out some UK-based 'BBC Watch' blogs and its pretty dang bad...
Does this sound like Ted Kennedy of what?!
Ted Kennedy of Muslim-tussetts
Heck, stories of "radicalized" Muslims living in Europe bring out cries of "bigotry" and "alarmism" from the Left.
if Europe has an attack by Islamists on the scale of 9-11 they'll either surrender or they will way over-do the response and bring back the big ovens... it seems the Europeans just don't think right.
Muslims are Europe's Dr. Kevorkian. Soon Europe will be dead unless it's people get out of their fantasy world and get serious about confronting Islamofacism at it's source.
With the media's political cover up of problems and their twisting of the truth and their attacks on the U.S. and our president coming out, there will be more and more awakening to what's happening to their countries and more and more will know, that the climate and growing problems weren't just all in their mind.
They're all looking the fool now.
"The root cause, he said, is that some younger Muslims in Europe — from Pakistan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries where al-Qaida has been active — are not being accepted into mainstream society or given a chance at economic advancement, leading to hopelessness that makes radical ideas attractive."
The root cause is islam...plain and simple.
They are not being accepted, because islam supports terror.
Take away sugar coating, and it is just that simple.
Oh, one last thing. His parents should have beeen checking his sock drawers. They should have known how and with whom he spent time. They should have learned the true sentiments of their son, and his associates.
But the muslims hide behind the diabolical lie, that they are for peace, when in truth they are not.
"al Taqiyah" is the word for religious justification of lies, to advance islam and muslims.
One has to believe that the New America Foundation is far left.
I can't post this, but this creeps me out.
http://www.indystar.com/articles/6/226516-9516-092.html
That is a remark from one U.S. think tank (in the tank for anti-American and anti-capitalists it would seem). I believe more and more people around the world are seeing terrorists for what they are. I believe a lot of people around the world know them for what they are (and more are learning each day) but their governments and their media control what is presented.
The internet has changed how information is getting out.
Peter Bergen, a terrorism analyst at the New America Foundation in Washington:
"There are no sleeper cells in the USA," Bergen said. "If there were, they would have acted. The threat is from outside. That was true in 9/11, which was unimaginable without the Hamburg cell, and it will become more true in the future."
No sleeper cells in the USA? I hope nobody in the Administration and nobody in local law enforcement makes that assumption. I don't buy it, even as much as I would love for it to be true . . . .
Thank you for the LINK.
It's another eye opener!
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