Posted on 07/16/2005 2:49:30 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
LEEDS, England (AP) -
0716blair-bombings Amear Ali remembers how the film images clicked by in rapid-fire sequence to a soundtrack of pounding drums: dead Iraqi children, Palestinians under siege, Guantanamo prisoners, snippets of President Bush repeating the word "crusade."
"You could see how it could turn someone to raw hate," said Ali, recalling his brush last year with the hard-edged marketing of extremism at an Islamic bookstore operated by his brother-in-law. "It even started working on me. Then I said to myself, `Get out. This stuff is poison.'"
The shop was drawn deeper Saturday into the international investigation of the July 7 London bombings, and Ali's introductions into the militant messages could help explain the possible recruitment tactics used in the neighborhood where the suicide mission apparently took shape.
Attempts to discern the motives and mind-set of the suspected bombers remain among the murkiest parts of the probe. But Ali - a 36-year-old father of four boys - claims hardline Islamists had been quietly making contacts and spreading propaganda for years in the Beeston area, a hillock of one-room stores and red brick row houses dominated by families with roots in Pakistan.
Three of the four alleged bombers came from this seesaw world: born in Britain but influenced by the values and traditions of a motherland they barely know; watching new skyscrapers rise in central Leeds but feeling excluded from the opportunities in this former mill town.
"So someone comes along and says, `Muslim are oppressed, Muslims are being killed by the West,' and so on," said Ali, whose late father emigrated to Britain from Pakistan. "For some young lads who are confused and feel alienated, it's a powerful thing to hear. If it happened with young Muslims here, it's happening everywhere."
Ali said he first noticed outsiders coming into Beeston in the late 1990s speaking about Muslim causes and identity. He said they were always well-spoken, fluent in English and often dressed in the traditional shalwar kameez, a loose tunic-and-trouser outfit common in Pakistan and across South Asia.
Ali said the men were always vague about their affiliations - never mentioning al-Qaida or any of the Muslim groups in Britain - and first offered only generalities about the importance of prayer and following Islamic codes.
"We used to joke that they were like the Muslim version of the Mormons or born-again Christians," said Ali. "They would ask if anyone wanted to attend lectures or just talk further. A few would go, but we didn't pay them much attention."
It began to change shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. His sister's husband, Mohammad Tafazil, 38, opened a corner bookshop with the idea of offering an alternative for young Muslims who were drifting into drug use and a gang culture, said Ali.
Gradually, Tafazil became more radicalized and aloof from his old Western-oriented crowd, said Ali. He grew a beard, became estranged from his wife and began allowing visiting Muslim speakers to use the shop - the Iqra Learning Center - for gatherings. The shelves increasingly included videos, DVDs and books outlining conspiracies against Muslims and denouncing the West.
"I remember telling him once, `This kind of stuff may get you in trouble if the police see it,'" said Ali. "He told me that I was weak."
Ali said Tafazil also had some financial links to a storefront site known as the Hamara Youth Access Point, where the suspected bombers also were known to meet.
Both the bookstore and youth site have been searched and sealed by police.
"They were always talking about the same thing: how the West is out to destroy Islam," said Ali.
Among those who became part of the shop's inner circle was Shahzad Tanweer, 22, one of the suspected London bombers, said Ali. Another suspected attacker, 30-year-old Mohammad Sidique Khan, reportedly used the two sites for diatribes against U.S. and British foreign policies.
It's unclear what - if any - connections were made by the bombers to wider terrorist networks. But senior Pakistani intelligence officials said authorities were looking into a possible links between Tanweer and two al-Qaida-linked militant groups.
On Saturday, meanwhile, police intensified their search of the street-level bookstore. Investigators wearing white protective suits also were seen on second floor, but it was unclear whether it was a residence or part of the bookshop operations. Police covered the shop windows with gray plastic sheeting and the immediate area was cordoned off.
Tafazil was not at his home or answering his cell phone on Saturday. In London, the Metropolitan Police said he was not the one unidentified person from the Leeds area who was being questioned in the British capital about the terrorist attacks. But police declined to say whether Tafazil was being held in Britain for any other reason.
Ali said he was approached by Tafazil last year for discussions about Islam. At first, Ali said he received instructions on proper Muslim prayers, which he never learned when younger. Then came lectures about injustices to Muslims around the world. Finally, on the day Ali and his family returned from their father's funeral, Ali said Tafazil played him a DVD on a laptop computer.
"It started off with scenes of Muslims being killed or persecuted: Iraq, Palestinians, Chechnya. It had Bush saying the word `crusade.' It was slick and really made you feel angry," said Ali. "I know it was propaganda and was made to make you feel this way. But what about young guys who see this material as a call to do something?
"I'm convinced something like this was the first step for the bombers."
The families of Khan and the third suspected bomber from Leeds, Hasid Hussain - the 18-year-old believed to have blown up the double-decker bus - condemned the attacks and claimed they had no idea what they were planning.
Khan's family insisted he must have been "brainwashed" and urged all efforts to "expose the terror networks which target and groom our sons to carry out such evils."
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Not logical, as anytime the West (or even just the US) really decided to destroy Islam, it would take about 30 minutes. As Islam may find out, if it insists on pushing things.
So what videos enraged the Muslims who sacked Spain in the year 711? What was George W. Bush and Israel doing to those poor Muslims then?
< "...how the West is out to destroy Islam," said Ali. >
Before 9/11, 75% of Americans didn't even know there was anything called Islam and another 20% didn't care. Well, they do now. I guess the Islamofacists think any kind of publicity is good.
Sounds like what the black muslims over here are saying...
There are only two possibilities:
These people are the dumbest homo sapiens on earth.
Or it is the traditional muslim lie.
I lean toward the latter.
The world we now live in still seems so surreal to me. Western civilization has never faced a more insidious and cruel enemy. These people’s sense of values and morality are completely alien to anything we in the West believe – not in our most wild imaginings could we have conceived of an enemy whose very religion teaches that commiting suicide and blowing apart women and children is right and virtuous – you can’t get anymore depraved than that. This isn’t an enemy that faces us on a battlefield, this is an enemy that skulks around in the dark and strikes at our most helpless. I’m sick of hearing lefties wringing their hands and saying that it’s all our fault for going into Iraq. These people were blowing us up even before Afghanistan. They’re commiting acts of terrorism for one reason and one reason only – we are not Muslims. It is their religious destiny to convert the entire world to Islam by any means. They view non-muslims as Infidel – less than human. Anyone who is an Infidel is fair game to these human cockroaches – civilians, women, children. Any act of cruelty they can perpetrate is extolled – the more barbaric, the more barbaric, the more horror and carnage and suffering they can cause, the better. This is the enemy – a people whose mentality hasn’t advanced beyond the 11th century.
The Brits are a tough lot. The average Joe-six-pack isn’t taking this lying down, as evidenced by the attacks on Muslims who are plotting within their own country. When our country was attacked on 911, my very blood cried out for vengeance, as in “Remember Pearl Harbor”, or “Remember the Alamo”. I assumed that would be the feeling of most Americans. Unfortunately, we are not the same Americans we were 60 years ago, and I couldn’t believe the simpering and crying of our over-abundance of lefties all wanting to know what we did to bring this on ourselves and what we could do to smooth things over and make everything all right. As far as I’m concerned, when those pieces of shit flew two of our planes into two of our buildings killing 3,000 of our fellow Americans, all bets were off. If those animals ever had any grievances of any kind, it’s all moot now.
I had three nephews who served in the Marines in Iraq. One of them didn’t come back home. Although our loss is great, I know that he didn’t die in vain. We are now engaged in a monumental struggle against any enemy who has no scruples, no boundaries, no morality, no right to share this planet with the rest of us, and we will prevail. We will prevail because there are more Brits and Americans than there are panty-wetters who recognize the evil nature of the enemy and know that this is a war that we must and will win.
You may be right, but consider the other possibility, that the parents of the bombers knew about as much of what was up was the parents of the Colombine High School killers.
What I find interesting is this:
"So someone comes along and says, `Muslim are oppressed, Muslims are being killed by the West,' and so on," said Ali, whose late father emigrated to Britain from Pakistan. "For some young lads who are confused and feel alienated, it's a powerful thing to hear. If it happened with young Muslims here, it's happening everywhere."
... yes, and unfortunately that propoganda is 'validated' by a biased media. Terrorists are the ones killing Iraqi kids, Bush has bent over backwards to call Islam the 'religion of peace', if Islam is so great why do muslims feel the need to escape islamic countries to come to the west, etc. Yet the media emphasizes the negative and ignores the positives in our actions ... CAN ANYONE UNDERSTAND HOW THE MEDIA'S OBSESSION WITH EVERY POSSIBLE CRITICISM OF THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR IS MAKING THE SITUATION WORSE? WILL PEOPLE FINALLY WAKE UP AND HOLD MEN LIKE "TURBAN DURBIN" RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONSEQUENCES OF THEIR EXAGGERATIONS?
Gee, maybe he was showing Ali a Michael Moore film. Moore's garbage is intended to do the same thing as this DVD did, namely recruit anti-American fanatics to aid in the fight against Western civilization, human rights, and human liberty, right?
These clowns are just making excuses. I saw Michael Moore's opus turdus and I haven't bombed anything.
Gee, they left out the part about Muslims slaughtering fellow Muslims.
Go figure.
"We used to joke that they were like the Muslim version of the Mormons or born-again Christians," said Ali. "They would ask if anyone wanted to attend lectures or just talk further. A few would go, but we didn't pay them much attention."
Sounds like the NOI (Nation of Islam) in their white shirts.
It's bound to be the same everywhere, in Australia these islamic bookshops are stocked and kept stocked for free by the wahhabi's - all the material comes from Saudi. Imported clerics who have taken over the mosques, quite often against the wishes of the muslim community, direct the youth to the 'bookshops' which are nothing but wahhabi propaganda centres.
But on the surface, they are bookshops, nothing illegal is going on there...it's a religion, and recruitment to jihad is a valid 'religious' activity, isn't it?
We are utterly stupid. There will be a lot more deaths before we wake up. Law enforcement can't protect us while the law to protect us doesn't exist!
If I may utter a religious statement here........AMEN!
May I express my condolences to you for the loss of your nephew in the Marines in Iraq.
"Before 9/11, 75% of Americans didn't even know there was anything called Islam and another 20% didn't care.
I'd put those numbers at 90% and 97%. Few knew, fewer still cared. And this despite USS Cole, Khobar, WTC I, etc.
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