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Old 07-22-2005, 11:18 AM
MMMMMM MMMMMM is offline
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Default The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

In the light of recent events, after reading this, I'm left wondering: what of the future? And how fast is the future arriving?


[b]"from the July 22, 2005 edition

The sidewalks where terror breeds
By James Brandon and John Thorne | Contributors to The Christian Science Monitor

GREENWICH, ENGLAND – Outside a small, red-brick mosque, a young Muslim in sneakers and a white robe is lecturing a cluster of young men gathered on the sidewalk.

"The London bombings ... were about striking terror into the heart of the enemy," he thunders, just one week after the 7/7 attacks that killed 56 people and wounded hundreds more.

Muslims around the world are being slaughtered, he tells them. "All we ask them is: 'Remove your troops from Muslim lands and we will stop all of this.' " The men nod in agreement. One glances into the baby stroller he's pushing. Car after car races past.

The preacher, who calls himself Abu Osama ("Father of Osama"), is one of a new breed of British radicals thriving at the margins of London's Muslim community.

Young, independent, and streetwise, they are preaching in urban slang outside the confines of Britain's mosques. They are helping teens and 20-somethings beat drugs and alcohol. And they are inspiring a new pool of impressionable young Muslims to consider killing their fellow Britons.

These radical bands constitute a small fraction of London's 1 million Muslims. But their freewheeling ideology - hardened in the jihadi echo chambers of cliques like Abu Osama's - is creating a new subculture within Britain's Islamic community. So far, the growing influence of these informal, maverick groups has gone largely undetected - and unchecked.

As older, camera-courting, foreign-born extremists like Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza al-Masri recede from relevance, their younger counterparts are striking out quietly and independently with a new brand of do-it-yourself radicalism.

"On the ground level, people like Bakri don't communicate with the youth," says Nadim Shehadi, an analyst at Chatham House, a think tank in London. The fragmentation of British radical groups and their dispersal underground, he adds, is the "worst of all possible options."

"When the Muslim Council of Britain [MCB] said 'We must be vigilant,' this pushed [radical groups] underground," says Abdul-Rehman Malik, contributing editor at the Muslim magazine Q-News, based London. As radicals fled to minor mosques and homes, Britain's security services, and even mainstream Muslims, lost track of them.

Did the 7/7 bombers come from Bakri's circle? "Probably not - it's something far more insidious," says Mr. Malik. "It's beyond the Omar Bakris; it's a low rumble."

Yearning for jihad

Abu Osama, just 30, was born and raised here in East London, amid peeling paint and dingy kebab shops. "I know English. I know Britain. But if I live here, I must speak for Muslims elsewhere," he says, stressing that he belongs first to the ummah, or global Islamic community.

Abu Osama's faith deepened early. Watching his Pakistani immigrant father struggle to support his family of seven, he sought strength in Islam.

"I began praying and studying when I was 16, and since then I've been like this," he says, pointing to his long, curling beard.

Abu Osama first spoke publicly eight years ago; he has since won ardent followers.

Last fall, addressing a meeting of scores of British radicals, he sighed: "At the moment in Britain there is no jihad." Faces fell around the hall.

"Yet!" he exclaimed suddenly, to approving murmurs. The jihad would soon come, Abu Osama predicted, and he urged his listeners to embrace its arrival.

On 7/7, the jihad came. The suicide bombers were aged 18 to 30 - the same age as Abu Osama's cohorts. By portraying militancy as the ultimate expression of piety, Abu Osama and preachers like him are leading young Muslims down the path toward violence.

"Some of the people tell you Islam is a religion of peace because they think that then you'll want to convert," says Dublin-born convert Khalid Kelly, who soaks up Abu Osama's sidewalk sermon. "But you cannot possibly say Islam is a religion of peace; jihad is not an internal struggle."

Armed struggle was the last thing on Mr. Kelly's mind until his conversion several years ago. "I was your average Irish drunkard, partying and so on," he says. Arrested in Saudi Arabia, where he worked as a nurse, for brewing his own alcohol, Kelly found Islam in prison - an increasingly common arena for Muslim conversion and radicalization.

After his return to Britain in 2002, Kelly quickly became a disciple of Bakri, a radical Syrian-born cleric based in Britain, who is most widely known for celebrating 9/11, and more recently, blaming 7/7 on British foreign policy. Through Bakri's circle, which is now largely underground, Kelly met Abu Osama. Now, they gravitate toward obscure mosques that nurture homegrown extremists.

"The imam here" - Kelly nods at the mosque - "said, 'Pray for the victory of the mujahideen in all the world.' He's talking about Osama bin Laden, but he can't say that."

Hard-line mosques are an intoxicating arena for disillusioned young Muslims, Britain's fastest-growing, poorest, and worst-educated minority.

"The pull to Islam in general is not bad," says Malik. "It gives [young people] a sense of identity and spirituality that is important to their lives."

However, the perceived persecution of Muslims worldwide can imbue their faith with a politics of resentment; they see the world divided into two opposing groups: Muslims and others. "The world begins to appear black and white," Malik says.

"When it comes to politics, sometimes I just feel angry," spits Farouq (not his real name), 21, as he scans East London shop-windows for Help Wanted signs. Women in chadors sweep past, steering their baby carriages through discarded fish'n'chips wrappers and cigarette ends.

Farouq has never heard of Abu Osama. "I don't have time to pray any more. But I'd like to get back into it," he muses. "I know definitely [Islam] will help me."

Concerned that radical groups might capitalize on this kind of discontent, mainstream Muslim leaders have deliberately shunned those who advocated violence.

Some say the effort to weed out extremists is a sign of progress. Others say it has backfired, throwing together vulnerable young Muslims and hard-liners.

This week, British Prime Minister Tony Blair met with Muslim leaders to discuss ways to confront this "evil ideology." As Mr. Blair pushed legislation to deport radical clerics, the group announced plans for a task force and clerics pledged greater cooperation with security officials. But analysts say mainstream clerics may struggle to reach young Muslims already committed to radical ideology.

Kelly, evidently, had little use for the summit: "You're either a servant of Tony Blair, or Islam."

Last fall, Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the MCB, told The Christian Science Monitor that the extent of radicals in Britain was being hyped up by the media. "The reality on the ground is that there is almost nothing there," he said. "Islamic terrorism: much of it is a media myth."

Then came the slaughter of 7/7. From café-studded central London, mainstream Muslim organizations declared that such suicide attacks were un-Islamic.

But over in East London, Abu Osama's group argues that attacks on civilians by Palestinian, Kashmiri, and Iraqi militants are seen as legitimate by the majority of the world's Muslims.

"How dare anyone come on television and say suicide bombings are not part of our belief?" scoffs Irish convert Kelly. "These [moderates] are the lunatic fringe!"

Radical Muslims like Kelly consider themselves an embattled vanguard of the "true" Islam.

"We are persecuted for telling the truth, just like Jesus," says Kelly. "They're demonizing us. There's always police. They tell us it's for our own protection, but it's obvious they're here to spy on us," he adds.

"All we want to talk about is how beautiful Islam is," says an Iraqi immigrant, who, like others standing here, mingles lyrical spirituality with a blunt advocacy of violence. "Zarqawi is showing the way," he says, referring to the Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of the radical faction of foreign fighters in Iraq.

Like many, his dedication to Islam arose from a messy flirtation with a Western lifestyle, including drinking and taking drugs. "When reality hits you, you come back to Islam," he says. "If you read the Koran, you see that Allah gave us the right to terrorize the enemy."

His disillusionment with Britain became complete when he was sacked from his IT job "for telling a kafir [unbeliever, or non-Muslim] woman to cover up." Ironically, only Abu Osama dons religious garb. The others wear jeans and shirts. Kelly would look at home in an Irish pub.

Torn between two worlds

They aren't the only British Muslims torn between two worlds. Every year, many young British Muslims visit the Middle East to explore their roots and often to study Arabic and Islam in a traditional environment. Most return to the West, their curiosity satisfied, to continue their lives. A few, by accident or design, return deeply transformed.

Several of the 7/7 suspects, too, are believed to have traveled to Pakistan, where investigators believe they may have hardened their faith. Officials are also exploring whether the four suspects made contact with an Al Qaeda aide linked to Mr. Masri, the radical cleric.

British-born radicals "would have felt a secret excitement of having become the spearhead of a mission that would make them renowned in martyrology," says Magnus Ranstorp, director of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, Scotland.

But despite this bleak outlook, even such conservative Middle Eastern countries as Saudi Arabia and Yemen have successfully defused the anger of Islamic militants through an intensive program of religious dialogue and youth outreach.

At the East London mosque, Abu Osama's street preaching has evolved into a theological debate: Should one defend Islam worldwide by fighting in Britain? For these men, it's not just a philosophical exercise. Their conclusions could tip the balance of security across the country.

"Islam is not just a religion. It is a way of life," insists a young and zealous black American convert initially drawn to Islam by admiration for Malcolm X. "It's specific in the Koran that jihad is about fighting."

"If you're in Iraq," Kelly affirms, "it means physical fighting."

The Iraqi breaks in. "Every day I think of going there. But Allah has to choose me. I pray to Allah that I can go there one day and help them." The others pause, digesting his words.

"We are torn between these two worlds: a love for life, and a love for death," he continues. "I have four children. I can't leave them. My children will be led astray if I leave them."

He may not have to, Kelly suggests: "We can fight wherever, in Iraq, London, Paris, or Berlin. There is no such thing as innocents. The idea of the Islamic state is terror against anyone who doesn't support Islamic ideology."

Abu Osama nods. "If four men can take explosives and rock the whole of Britain, imagine what more could do."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0722/p01s01-woeu.html
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Old 07-22-2005, 03:59 PM
ACPlayer ACPlayer is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

[ QUOTE ]
Muslims around the world are being slaughtered, he tells them. "All we ask them is: 'Remove your troops from Muslim lands and we will stop all of this.' " The men nod in agreement. One glances into the baby stroller he's pushing. Car after car races past.


[/ QUOTE ]

At least a part of the solution.

The moderate and mainstream muslims cannot solve this problem. All they can do is wring their hands and try to defend their religion, their voices swamped by the fear driven bigotry of the neo-con controlled media looking to make the religion the scapegoat.

Fortunately, the future is in our hands. Unfortunately, those who can do, dont recognize the solution. Time is short, very short.
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Old 07-22-2005, 05:00 PM
bobman0330 bobman0330 is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

Hey, you guys have got MSNBC, the Times, and the Post.

Honestly, though, do you really think pulling out of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Saudi Arabia (and maybe Israel), would improve our national security in the long run? I agree that it might help reduce terrorism in the long run, but I always dismissed it as a non-started because it seems so extreme? What's your honest opinion on this?
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Old 07-22-2005, 05:33 PM
ACPlayer ACPlayer is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

[ QUOTE ]
I agree that it might help reduce terrorism in the long run

[/ QUOTE ]

Good, I agree with this too. It is constructive, it can be done by us now. It does not in any way hurt us, except for a short time image issue -- which will need to be managed.

______________________
Note on how we are viewed and why there is so much undercurrent of distrust and hatred of the US:

Even in today's news, I read Rice in Israel suggesting to Sharon that he work with PA to manage the pullout from Gaza and parts of the WB. Sharon then turns around and tells Israel that he plans to take more land for the Ariel settlement and to grab more of Jerusalem.

No wonder the Muslim world sees us as kowtowing and/or powerless to the will of Israel and acting as a biased superpower in suppressing the Muslim/Arab in the middle east.

Rice talks, Sharon ignores

Read the last paragraph of the blog entry for the AQ connection.

It is on the sidewalks of Jerusalem and hovels of refugee camps, in the suppression of Islam in Saudi, the streets of Cairo that the terror is bred. Here the oppression is converted into hysteria by the Mullahs, the sense of injustice is fostered and grown and nurtured until one of them flies a plane into a building or blows a bomb on a bus. The reasons that inflame the mind of the impressionable. These are issues we can control and act upon. They are tough, not easily reduced to sound bites and politically hard to work.

The roots are not on the sidewalks of London, the Islamic state of Iran, the Saddam led Iraq, or Syria. Even the Taliban is not, directly our enemy, they did however give refuge to the enemy and paid the price.

That is where leadership comes in. This is where our present leadership has let us down.
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Old 07-22-2005, 07:29 PM
Exsubmariner Exsubmariner is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

AC,
I don't think you understand something. As long as you breathe, these people will hate you. These kinds of fanatics thrive on having people to hate. Creating the "them" who are unholy and unworthy to live and not as pure or moral as their followers, etc, etc. You will stay the enemy. If you run, they will say look, we have them on the run, lets go after them in their home land. This is not some patriotic attempt to remove a foriegn occupier, this is jihad. A Holy War.
Today a cleric said" I would love to see the muslim flag fly over Parliment if not the world."
Do you see? Do you understand? This is reality calling. If you wait to recognize it until it is 10 feet from you wearing a suicide bomb, it's going to be too late. I really sincerely hope you never have to find out that way.
There is no "peace in our time" like Neville Chamberlain promised with Hitler.
There will be no peace without victory. Us or them. Take your pick.
This has probably been pointed out to you numerous times. Apparently, I have nothing better to do than say it again.
X
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Old 07-22-2005, 07:35 PM
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

Following the last post is an interesting article from the Op-Ed pages of the "liberal media" (NYT):

Why Do They Hate Us? Not Because of Iraq

By OLIVIER ROY
Published: July 22, 2005

Paris

WHILE yesterday's explosions on London's subway and bus lines were thankfully far less serious than those of two weeks ago, they will lead many to raise a troubling question: has Britain (and Spain as well) been "punished" by Al Qaeda for participating in the American-led military interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan? While this is a reasonable line of thinking, it presupposes the answer to a broader and more pertinent question: Are the roots of Islamic terrorism in the Middle Eastern conflicts?

If the answer is yes, the solution is simple to formulate, although not to achieve: leave Afghanistan and Iraq, solve the Israel-Palestine conflict. But if the answer is no, as I suspect it is, we should look deeper into the radicalization of young, Westernized Muslims.

Conflicts in the Middle East have a tremendous impact on Muslim public opinion worldwide. In justifying its terrorist attacks by referring to Iraq, Al Qaeda is looking for popularity or at least legitimacy among Muslims. But many of the terrorist group's statements, actions and non-actions indicate that this is largely propaganda, and that Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine are hardly the motivating factors behind its global jihad.

First, let's consider the chronology. The Americans went to Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, not before. Mohamed Atta and the other pilots were not driven by Iraq or Afghanistan. Were they then driven by the plight of the Palestinians? It seems unlikely. After all, the attack was plotted well before the second intifada began in September 2000, at a time of relative optimism in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

Another motivating factor, we are told, was the presence of "infidel" troops in Islam's holy lands. Yes, Osama Bin Laden was reported to be upset when the Saudi royal family allowed Western troops into the kingdom before the Persian Gulf war. But Mr. bin Laden was by that time a veteran fighter committed to global jihad.

He and the other members of the first generation of Al Qaeda left the Middle East to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in the 1980's. Except for the smallish Egyptian faction led by Ayman al-Zawahiri, now Mr. bin Laden's chief deputy, these militants were not involved in Middle Eastern politics. Abdullah Azzam, Mr. bin Laden's mentor, gave up supporting the Palestinian Liberation Organization long before his death in 1989 because he felt that to fight for a localized political cause was to forsake the real jihad, which he felt should be international and religious in character.

From the beginning, Al Qaeda's fighters were global jihadists, and their favored battlegrounds have been outside the Middle East: Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya and Kashmir. For them, every conflict is simply a part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah, the worldwide community of believers.

Second, if the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine are at the core of the radicalization, why are there virtually no Afghans, Iraqis or Palestinians among the terrorists? Rather, the bombers are mostly from the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa, Egypt and Pakistan - or they are Western-born converts to Islam. Why would a Pakistani or a Spaniard be more angry than an Afghan about American troops in Afghanistan? It is precisely because they do not care about Afghanistan as such, but see the United States involvement there as part of a global phenomenon of cultural domination.

What was true for the first generation of Al Qaeda is also relevant for the present generation: even if these young men are from Middle Eastern or South Asian families, they are for the most part Westernized Muslims living or even born in Europe who turn to radical Islam. Moreover, converts are to be found in almost every Qaeda cell: they did not turn fundamentalist because of Iraq, but because they felt excluded from Western society (this is especially true of the many converts from the Caribbean islands, both in Britain and France). "Born again" or converts, they are rebels looking for a cause. They find it in the dream of a virtual, universal ummah, the same way the ultraleftists of the 1970's (the Baader-Meinhof Gang, the Italian Red Brigades) cast their terrorist actions in the name of the "world proletariat" and "Revolution" without really caring about what would happen after.

It is also interesting to note that none of the Islamic terrorists captured so far had been active in any legitimate antiwar movements or even in organized political support for the people they claim to be fighting for. They don't distribute leaflets or collect money for hospitals and schools. They do not have a rational strategy to push for the interests of the Iraqi or Palestinian people.

Even their calls for the withdrawal of the European troops from Iraq ring false. After all, the Spanish police have foiled terrorist attempts in Madrid even since the government withdrew its forces. Western-based radicals strike where they are living, not where they are instructed to or where it will have the greatest political effect on behalf of their nominal causes.

The Western-based Islamic terrorists are not the militant vanguard of the Muslim community; they are a lost generation, unmoored from traditional societies and cultures, frustrated by a Western society that does not meet their expectations. And their vision of a global ummah is both a mirror of and a form of revenge against the globalization that has made them what they are.

Olivier Roy, a professor at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, is the author of "Globalized Islam."
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Old 07-22-2005, 07:49 PM
Exsubmariner Exsubmariner is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

I think that article supports my position of "this does not stop until someone wins" very well. Thank you for posting it.
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Old 07-22-2005, 07:52 PM
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[ QUOTE ]
I think that article supports my position of "this does not stop until someone wins" very well. Thank you for posting it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes I agree, which is why I posted it, particularly since it appeared in today's NY Times.
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Old 07-22-2005, 08:46 PM
lastchance lastchance is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

That's a very interesting article...
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Old 07-22-2005, 09:38 PM
ACPlayer ACPlayer is offline
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Default Re: The Sidewalks Where Terror Breeds

If the statement is that this wont stup until either Al Qaeda or the West (for want of a better group) wins I agree completely. If the statement is that this wont stop until either Islam or the West wins, I cant agree with that.

The enemy is Al Qaeda.

The way to stop the growth of Al Qaeda and isolate them is to re-think and re-balance our policies. The goal being to bring moderate Islam squarely against the Al Qaeda, reduce the chances that these young men standing outside the mosques can be recruits -- they even offered their reasons, for pete's sake. You have to cut the pathway from moderate Islam to radical Islam -- at the moment the moderate Islam is not motivated as it continues to see the double standards, and the impact of the policies on their neighbours.

The alternative is getting rid of Islam. That is a recipe for a disaster, just given the demographics. This is a lose - lose situation, we have to find a way to help moderate Islam win (note that their winning causes us to win!).
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