Armed police surrounded a mosque in Glasgow early this morning to deal with a suspect car. Onlookers talked of seeing at least 15 armed officers amongst dozens of police who had converged on the Masjid Noor mosque in Forth Street, Pollokshields at around 1.30am.
Police last night confirmed that Explosive Ordnance Disposal had been called and that they would examine the vehicle. "We're checking out the vehicle in the car park of the mosque," said a spokesman. "This is just a precautionary measure, there is nothing to say at this stage that there are any dangerous materials."
Afra Sehab, an eyewitness, said he believed there was still a congregation being kept inside the mosque.
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.1514180.0.0.php
Australia ‘a home for radical Islam’
Tuesday, 3 July, 2007
CANBERRA: Australia has a bigger portion of Muslim youths at risk of turning to radical Islam than any other Western nation, with up to 3,000 in “ideological sleeper cells” in Sydney alone, a government-backed study said yesterday.
Between 2,000 and 3,000 youths, or about 1% of Sydney’s 200,000-strong Muslim population, had already been targeted by radical Islamic teachers, with some at risk of making the jump to militancy, the research said. “The radical teaching base here is relatively stronger than you might expect it to be in the UK, the Middle East or the US,” said study author Mustapha Kara-Ali. “The youth community here is vulnerable and could be acted upon for recruitment and further radicalisation.”
Australia has around 340,000 Muslims, or around 1.6% of the 21mn population. But the percentage of radicalised Muslim youths was bigger than the US or the UK, where the ideological pool was of similar size, but off a 1.6mn base, Kara-Ali said. Kara-Ali, a member of Prime Minister John Howard’s Muslim advisory board, said it was far harder for radicals to spread an extremist message in other countries, where moderate groups were well placed to resist their message. “The Muslim community is relatively new in Australia. Given that, there isn’t an established moderate Islamic order with deep roots in the community and the extremists are exploiting this,” he said.
Excerpted
Australia and the “youths.”
Thanks Oorang.