Posted on 09/10/2007 8:07:07 AM PDT by pacelvi
Muslim group behind ‘mega-mosque’ seeks to convert all Britain
Andrew Norfolk
A Muslim group that wants to open a giant £100 million mosque in London has set its sights on “winning the whole of Britain to Islam”.
Tablighi Jamaat aims to build an Islamic complex near to the site of the 2012 Olympic stadium, with a mosque for 12,000 people, by far the largest religious building in Britain.
The organisation, which has millions of followers worldwide, insists that it is a peaceful, apolitical revivalist movement that promotes Islamic consciousness among individual Muslims. However, intelligence agencies have cautioned that the group’s ability to fire young men with a zeal for Islam acts as a staging post, for some, along a path that leads to jihadist terrorism.
Kafeel Ahmed, the Indian doctor who died from burns last month after trying to set off a car bomb at Glasgow Airport, is the latest in a line of terrorists for whose initial radicalisation Tablighi Jamaat has been blamed. The group (literally, the preaching party) belongs to the ultra-conservative Deobandi school of thought within Sunni Islam, whose adherents run more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques.
In recent days The Times has exposed the virulently anti-Western creed of some British Deobandis who preach that non-Muslims are an evil and corrupting influence. Their defensive, isolationist approach to life in Britain is shared by many British supporters of Tablighi Jamaat.
One leading advocate, Ebrahim Rangooni, has said that the movement seeks to “rescue the ummah [the global Muslim community] from the culture and civilisation of the Jews, the Christians and [other] enemies of Islam”. Its aim, he wrote, is to “create such hatred for their ways as human beings have for urine and excreta”.
Mr Rangooni has also given warning to parents that non-Muslim schools “turn humans into animals” and that sending a Muslim child to a British college “is as dangerous as throwing them into hell with your own hands”.
Representatives of Tablighi Jamaat refused to attend a public meeting on Friday to discuss plans for the “mega mosque” in West Ham, even though the debate was organised by a Muslim group.
Tablighi Jamaat was founded in 1926, in India, by a Deobandi scholar, Muhammad Ilyas, who wanted to raise Islamic awareness among rural Muslims in south Asia. He promised them that by obeying Islamic laws and following the example of the Prophet Muhammad in their personal lives they would one day “dominate over non-believers” and become “masters of everything on this earth”.
Ishaq Patel, Tablighi Jamaat’s first amir (leader) in Britain, is said to have been on pilgrimage in Mecca when Ilyas’s successor gave him a long-term mission to win “the whole of Britain to Islam”.
Yoginder Sikand, a Muslim expert on the movement, says that its ethos of “social and cultural separatism and insularity” seeks “to minimise contacts with people of other faiths”.
The self-segregation that this encourages is evident in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, where the group has its European headquarters. The Tablighi Jamaat complex – housing its large Markazi mosque and a Deobandi seminary called the Islamic Institute of Education - is based in the Savile Town area, which has an 88 per cent Asian population. The overwhelming majority of its 5,000 residents are Muslims from Pakistan or the Gujarat region of India and some, at home and at work, have little contact with nonMuslims.
It was on the advice of a Tablighi Jamaat scholar that Aishah Azmi, a Dewsbury teaching assistant, refused to remove her full-face veil in the class-room while helping young children who were learning to speak English.
Mr Sikand says: “There is little doubt that the sense of cultural separatism and heightened [Islamic] identity consciousness fostered by Tablighi Jamaat can be taken advantage of by more assertive Islamist groups that have a more explicit political agenda.”
One of the suicide bombers who attacked London in July 2005, Shehzad Tanweer, studied at the Deobandi seminary in Dewsbury and Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the 7/7 terror plot, was a regular worshipper at the adjoining mosque. Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, was said to have been influenced by Tablighi Jamaat, several of whose adherents were also among those arrested last year over an alleged plot to blow up transatlantic airliners.
Shabbir Daji, a trustee and secretary of the Tablighi Jamaat mosque in Dewsbury, told The Times that the movement’s aim was “unity among all humanity”. He said that it had no hidden agenda. “We never come out on demonstrations against the Government,” he said. “Our aim is to make each and everyone . . . a better Muslim.”
More than 250,000 people have signed a Downing Street petition against the London mosque. Local opposition is being led by Alan Craig, a Christian Peoples Alliance member of Newham council. He accuses Tablight Jamaat of being “a separatist sect that preaches a them-and-us approach to relations with the nonMuslim community” and encourages the creation of “Islamic enclaves” in Britain.
“There are many moderate Muslims who object to the teachings of Tablighi Jamaat. They know that it preaches hostility to non-Muslims. Some have friends and family members who have been radicalised by this movement.”
Irfan al Alawi, international director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, says the missionary work of Tablighi Jamaat acts as “a recruitment agency for jihad” in Afghanistan, the occupied territories and Iraq. “They go around deprived areas of British towns and cities, knocking on doors and urging young Muslims to come to their gatherings,” he said.
“The mega-mosque complex would become a flagship for Tablighi Jamaat’s mission to indoctrinate Muslims with a hatred of the West and the kuffar [non-Mulims].”
Tabligh Jamaat is expected to submit a formal planning application for the West Ham mosque before the end of the year.
Do not the titles of the Prince of Wales include one in particular, “The Defender of the Faith”?
Elizabeth, Charles, et al better get busy.
Target of opportunity for the Brit flyboys.
this is a fight for their own survival as well. They may not win this time around.
Vernon Richards wrote:
“The true Islamic concept of peace goes something like this: “Peace comes through submission to Muhammad and his concept of Allah” (i.e. Islam). As such the Islamic concept of peace, meaning making the whole world Muslim, is actually a mandate for war. It was inevitable and unavoidable that the conflict would eventually reach our borders, and so it has.”
Before long we will be dealing with the same thing in the US, probably in Detroit, first. Of course, by then, the Muslims will want tax payer money to build and in order to keep them from being unhappy, the US gov’t will give it to them.
Every foothold they gain will be used against us. The big question is will we, the free-Western-civilized world, collectively understand we are at war in time to even put up a REAL fight. Until we are ready to see Islam as we see Communisim and facisim and NOT as a religion....until we are willing to suffer the pain caused by getting off M.E. oil....until we can agree that Islam is NOT welcome in the US....until we can stomach the idea of dropping a nuclear weapon on Mecca.... then Islam will continue to march toward its goals.
Charles has stated on more than one occasion that he admires Islam , and will defend that faith as well as the Church of England. “The term Islam means peace.” He declared in 1990. “It is time someone in the Establishment stood up to protect this ancient and noble faith”.
The way some of us Nationalists see it , is an unconstitutional remark. The Monarch takes the Coronation Oath to defend the official faith of our nation , not that of some Alien malcontents.
If Chuck the Hippy cannot be relied on to do this , perhaps the Crown should be offered to Will.
Maybe they should offer the Crown to the other one. You know, the one who isn’t Charles’ son.
Islam will defeat us by immigration and out-breeding us, if we let it happen. Seems rather silly to have our troops stationed all over the world, when the real threat is right here at home.
The only way we can be overcome is from the inside. Islam does not have a state sponsor that is bold or well armed enough to take us on, and while terrorist acts can kill many, they’re not sufficient to make the US fall. The only thing that can do that is burrowing from within: Muslims in the army, police and strategic places, and the extension of the priveleging of Islam through our courts.
BTW, did anybody else here receive an e-mail from “Ali the Assassin,” threatening to kill you unless you contacted a UK yahoo address (where they would presumably ask for money). The e-mail ends with “Allah have mercy” or “Praise to Allah,” or some such thing. I didn’t get one, but a friend of mine just received one yesterday.
The only thing that can do that is burrowing from within: Muslims in the army, police and strategic places, and the extension of the priveleging of Islam through our courts.
Isn’t that exactly what they are doing in the UK right now? I never said they were stupid....they are simply picking off a few smaller fish first, all the while doing EXACTLY what you described right here in the US.
Personally, I think he's gone insane.
Charles is rumored to already be a muslim. Diana liked the muslim men to. Does’nt bode well for the UK. Thank god we have an ocean between us.
I do believe we need to start treating this "faith" differently than Christian sects, Jewish sects, Buddism, Hindus, etc.
They don't seek to peacefully and respectfully coexist, they seek to overtake using the western desire for fairness, and then push their intolerance once they have total power in numbers.
We cannot tolerate the intolerable. Multiculturalism is a crock. I'm sure the Feminists and Gays will enjoy Sharia Law when they are getting stoned for being themselves in the future.
If the monster mosque were going to be financed by the muslims living in England, it might be tolerable, if they can be kept "honest" about where the money comes from; all £ 100 million of it.
If, for instance the money were coming from the Soviet Union, and the year was 1965, how welcome might it have been, if the aim was to subvert British culture to Communism?
There is no functional difference here. Islam is no more a religion than Communism is and financing of subversion by a foreign power is still a no-no in every country of the world that I am aware of.
Of course, if you believe that islam is a "religion", just like yours, and nothing else, don't worry about it....
As an underscore, how popular would the proposal be if the new place of worship and secular propaganda were to be funded by the Vatican?
Wait until the damned muzz monstrosity is built, however, before "converting" it.
That way, the "before and after" contrast will be all the more striking...
cultural jihad bump
Unfortunately, Britain just may do it, and convert!
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