Islamic Preacher ‘called on Muslims to murder Hindus, Jews, Americans’
A Muslim preacher accused of inciting murder and fostering racial hatred urged his followers to kill non-believers and told them: “The way forward is the bullet,” a jury at the Old Bailey heard yesterday.
Abdullah el-Faisal, 39, endorsed the use of nuclear and chemical weapons and told audiences that the proper definition of jihad was to wage war on non-Muslims - whom he compared to cockroaches - the court heard.
“It is Islam versus democracy. It is Allah versus Satan. It is Muslims versus unbelievers,” he is alleged to have said in a sermon.
El-Faisal denies five charges of soliciting a person or persons unknown to murder Jews, Hindus, Americans and other non-believers.
He also denies two charges of using threatening or abusive words or behaviour to stir up racial hatred, and one charge each of distributing and possessing recordings of such speeches.
“He was preaching intolerance, but worse than that, preaching murder,” David Perry told the court, opening the prosecution case.
“The message he was conveying is clear: to kill a kaffir [non-believer] is good.”
He added that the prosecution could not say what effect the speeches had on audiences. What mattered was what the defendant said and his aim in saying it.
El-Faisal, a former Salvation Army member, delivered the lectures to groups of young Muslim men and women at venues around the country and distributed the recordings through bookshops, the court heard.
“The way forward can never be the ballot. The way forward is the bullet,” he told listeners.
He urged them to learn how to load missiles, fly planes and drive tanks and said martyrs who died fighting for Allah would feel no pain and go to paradise. He described France, the US and the UK as legitimate targets and urged followers to, “fly into Israel and do whatever you can”.
El-Faisal said chemical weapons could be used, adding that you would spray cockroaches and asking:“Who has more dignity, a cockroach or an unbeliever?”
**
He also said nuclear weapons were acceptable if no Muslims were harmed. He said there would be no harm in bombing India and spoke of incinerating the dead bodies to run power stations.
“You can go to India and if you see a Hindu walking down the road you are allowed to kill him and take his money. Is that clear?” he said. **
On other tapes he claimed Jews practiced black magic and said they would be killed by Muslims very soon, as they had been by Hitler.
El-Faisal, who is Jamaican, converted to Islam at 16, changing his name from William Forest.
In 1983, he moved to South America later studying Islam at a university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He was sent to Britain to preach after his graduation and moved to Stratford, east London in the mid 1990s, where he established “study circles” of up to 150 young men and women.
“He was speaking to people who had come to him for advice, he was speaking to people who had come to him to listen to him …as a spiritual leader,” said Mr Perry.
“What is noticeably absent are expressions of love, hope, charity, compassion or pity.”
The police began their investigation after finding tapes of the sermons in a car they stopped in Dorset in December 2001. They bought similar tapes and videos at Islamic bookshops in London and seized more evidence when they arrested El-Faisal at his home last February.
The case continues.
Preacher ‘called on Muslims to murder Jews’ Islamic Preacher ‘called on Muslims to murder Hindus and Jews’