Studying Europe's Muslim terrorists

Protestants think Catholics are wrong
Catholics think Jews are wrong
Jews think Muslims are wrong
Muslims think the rest are wrong

I agree with them all.

(Please indulge me in my unhelpful post)

Please can someone speak very slowly and explain to an art student who knows absolutely nothing of politics/world affairs these few questions:

Why do Muslims extremists hate British/american peoples?
What do they hope to achieve by bombing us?

Many Muslims may or may not agree with secularism but at the moment, formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion. There is no 'rendering unto Caesar' in Islamic theology because state and religion are considered to be one and the same. The centuries-old reasoning of Islamic jurists also extends to the world stage where the rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) have been set down to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

What radicals and extremists do is to take these premises two steps further. Their first step has been to reason that since there is no Islamic state in existence, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr. Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world. Many of my former peers, myself included, were taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief. In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

My doctor recently retired.

I dont mind if his replacement is male or female, African Asian European N or S American Australian or Chinese. But if it turns out he prays 5 times a day towards Mecca, I think I might have a problem with that.

I'll be ill somewhere else.

The Nazis offered here - some time ago - small cards "I don't want to be looked after by a Muslim medical personal"

According to documentation from the Nuremberg and Eichmann trials, the Nazi Germany SS helped finance al-Husseini's efforts in the 1936-39 revolt in Palestine. Adolf Eichmann actually visited Palestine and met with al-Husseini at that time and subsequently maintained regular contact with him later in Berlin.

Gordon Brown: Don't say the terrorists are Muslim

And there's no "war on terror". FYI

HokieBird wrote:

Gordon Brown: Don't say the terrorists are Muslim

And there's no "war on terror". FYI

Well if I was in govt. I would take exactly the same line as Gordon Brown. They are terrified of civil strife on our streets. But its best not to show it. I bet round the cabinet table they talk of little else sometimes but Muslim this Islamic that etc etc. But not in public.

The Islamists may bomb the public because they cant get at govt. but its the govt. not the public who are terrified.

Hey, steve thank you very much for your post. I haven't got much time atm, but I shall be back!

From Finding Radical Islam to Losing an Ideology

11 September
New York Times

For four years, Maajid Nawaz, a British Pakistani student who went to study Arabic in Egypt, was imprisoned, enduring months of solitary confinement and the screams of those being tortured. He was sentenced for spreading the beliefs of Hizb ut-Tahrir, a radical Islamic group that is legal in Britain but banned in Arabic countries.

Now, more than a year after his return, Nawaz has defected from Hizb ut-Tahrir, saying that he learned from scholars he met in jail that the ideology he so fervently espoused ran counter to the true meaning of his religion. His defection, which he announced on his blog and in a BBC interview, is considered significant because he was one of a handful of men on its executive committee in Britain.

Before being imprisoned in Egypt, Nawaz played a central role in recruiting new members for Hizb ut-Tahrir at home and abroad, spreading the belief that the dictatorships of the Muslim world must be replaced by a caliphate similar to that which held sway after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. "I gave talks in Pakistan, Britain and Denmark," he says now. "Wherever I've been I've left people who joined Hizb ut-Tahrir. I have to make amends. What I did was damaging to British society and the world at large."

But though he would like to help diminish its influence, he does not think the group should be banned.

Nawaz is the product of a third-generation British Pakistani family. His father is a retired oil engineer, his mother works in a bank. They live in Essex. When he was growing up, Islam seemed like an irrelevant, "backward village religion," he said. But that attitude changed on a rare visit to a mosque when he was 16. He met a member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, who he said preyed on his confusion about his British Pakistani identity.

One of the basic texts by the group's founder said it was obligatory for Muslims to militarily overthrow "every single Muslim government, then forcibly unite them into one military state even if it means killing millions of people," Nawaz said. But so far, the group has refrained from attacking him.

"I say I haven't lost my religion," Nawaz said. "I've lost my ideology."

Converts To Islam Move Up In Cells

Washington Post
September 15, 2007

Religious converts are playing an increasingly influential role in Islamic militant networks, having transformed themselves in recent years from curiosities to key players in terrorist cells in Europe, according to counterterrorism officials and analysts.

The arrests this month of two German converts to Islam -- Fritz Gelowicz and Daniel Schneider -- on suspicions that they were plotting to bomb American targets are just one example of terrorism cases in Europe in which converts to Islam have figured prominently.

In Copenhagen, a convert is among four defendants who went on trial this month for plotting to blow up political targets. In Sweden, a webmaster who changed his name from Ralf Wadman to Abu Usama el-Swede was arrested last year on suspicion of recruiting fighters on the Internet. In Britain, three converts -- including the son of a British politician -- are awaiting trial on charges of participating in last year's transatlantic airline plot.

The trend is not limited to Europe. In Florida, U.S. citizen and convert Jose Padilla was convicted last month on conspiracy charges for participating in an al-Qaeda support cell. In March, David M. Hicks, an Australian convert, became the first prisoner at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to be convicted on terrorism charges.

Religious converts are sometimes more prone to radicalization because of their zeal to prove their newfound faith, analysts said. They are also less likely to attract police scrutiny in Europe, where investigators often rely on outdated demographic profiles in terrorism cases.

Counterterrorist analysts said that militant groups, which used to eye converts suspiciously as potential infiltrators, are now encouraging them to join. In May, al-Qaeda deputy chief Ayman al-Zawahiri released a videotape in which he repeatedly praised Muslim leader Malcolm X and urged African American soldiers to stop fighting in Iraq and embrace Islam.

Converts are a tiny subset of the Muslim population in Europe, but their numbers are growing in some countries. In Germany, government officials estimated that 4,000 people converted to Islam last year, compared with an annual average of 300 in the late 1990s. Less than 1 percent of Germany's 3.3 million Muslims are converts.

Analysts said European converts sometimes are drawn to mosques or organizations at home that have a radical bent but profess nonviolence. After spending time in those circles, however, some seek to deepen their involvement by attending religious schools, or madrassas, in Islamic countries such as Pakistan, Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

Once there, it is easy for spotters from al-Qaeda and other militant groups to recruit potential followers, said Ashraf Ali, a researcher at the University of Peshawar.

One fundamentalist network that has attracted hundreds of converts in Europe is Tablighi Jamaat, a missionary sect based in Pakistan that characterizes itself as peaceful but is criticized by some authorities as a training ground for extremists. Another is al-Muhajiroun, a movement founded by a radical cleric in London that officially disbanded in 2004 but reorganized into an assortment of splinter groups.

In Germany, investigators are still trying to determine how the three men arrested Sept. 4 became radicalized and how they came into contact with the Islamic Jihad Union, a South Asian network that has asserted responsibility for the plot to attack American targets in Germany.

Gelowicz, whom investigators have identified as the ringleader of the cell, struggled academically in high school and converted to Islam when he was 18. He was active in radical circles in the southern city of Ulm, home to an Islamic cultural center and other institutions that have long been under police surveillance.

Religious leaders meanwhile said they were trying to counter what they described as a public backlash against converts. Gerhard Isa Moldenhauer, a board member at the Central Institute of the Islam Archive, blamed panicky lawmakers for stirring up distrust. "The German politicians tell us almost daily that all converts are terrorists," said Moldenhauer, himself a convert.