Police raid mosque to silence Muslim opposition to colonial plan for Iraq

Society Religion & Philosophy
1

Why was the thread deleted?.. it didnt break any rules

“And We will most certainly try you with somewhat of fear and hunger and loss of property and lives and fruits; and give good news to the patient” [TMQ Al-Baqarah: 155]

In the early hours of Monday morning, police raided Finsbury Park Mosque as part of “extensive investigations into terror activities in the UK”. The raid involved the use of helicopters, battering rams, dozens of police vans and some 150 police officers, some of whom were armed. Seven people were held by anti-terrorist officers after the night operation at the mosque and Scotland Yard said the “intelligence-led” raid was linked to the discovery of the poison ricin in nearby Wood Green earlier this month. Police continued to search the premises late on Monday morning, and could be seen removing computer equipment and bags of files. A stun gun, blank-firing replica firearm and CS gas canister were among the items allegedly seized in the raid.

However, the disproportionate and thuggish assault on the mosque was not only intended to investigate “alleged terrorist activity in London and elsewhere in the UK”, as suggested by the Metropolitan Police Service, but rather to silence any opposition from Muslims to the impending military action against Iraq, whether authorised by the UN or not, and to the use of Muslim countries as a base for the attacks. The raid seems to mimic moves undertaken by the US government including the mass internment of Muslims and the incarceration without trial of ‘unlawful combatants’ in Guantanamo Bay. Metropolitan Police Commissioner John Stevens had earlier tried to stoke up fear amongst Muslims in the UK by saying, “There’s still a large number of people we’re watching, there’s still a number of people who still have yet to be arrested.”

The overwhelming majority of Muslims in Britain remain opposed to military action against Iraq and the ‘war on terror’ which they see as a pretext employed by Britain and America to re-colonise the Muslim world and prevent the emergence of an independent powerful Islamic state.

Over the last week tens of thousands of Muslims across the UK have signed a petition rejecting Western inspired solutions for Iraq, including UN intervention, and criticising the acquiescence of corrupt Muslim rulers in the butchery of the Muslims of Iraq. The petition is part of a mass Islamic mobilisation campaign to account corrupt Muslim rulers for their treachery, expose the plans of the Western colonial states for Iraq and expose the UN as a tool of British and American colonialism

Assaults on mosques and attempts to stoke fear in the Muslim community will not make Muslims in Britain bow down to the political will of the British Government, accept Western inspired solutions for Iraq or tolerate the acquiescence of corrupt Muslim rulers in the butchery of Iraqi Muslims.

“And remember when you were few and were reckoned weak in the land, and were afraid that men might kidnap you, but He provided a safe place for you, strengthened you with His Help, and provided you with good things so that you might be grateful.” [TMQ Al-Anfal: 26]

It is obligatory on the Muslims at this time to stand shoulder to shoulder in one line facing the challenges that confront them. It is not allowed for the Muslim to disown his brother or snub him so as to remove the suspicion from himself and gain the love of the disbelievers. It is also not allowed for the Muslims to forsake their brothers even if their opinions, schools of thought, trends of thinking and movements are different - we should not forget that the attack is directed against the Muslims; no Muslim is safe from it and no group is safe.

Islamic politics, unlike non-Islamic politics practiced in the West, demands that Muslims enjoin the good and forbid the evil - this means accounting the corrupt Muslim rulers for their treachery, exposing the plans of the Western colonial states for Iraq, exposing the UN as a tool of British and American colonialism, opposing the attack on the Islamic identity under the guise of ‘integration’ and presenting Islam as an alternative ideology to Capitalism.

Islam obliges Muslims everywhere, including those in Britain, to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Muslims of Iraq in any upcoming conflict. The true solution to the problems the people of the world face, Muslims and non-Muslims, is to re-establish the Islamic State [Khilafah], which will be ideologically and politically independent of the West and her agents.

The nationwide mass Islamic mobilisation campaign is organised by Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain. If you would like more information about this campaign or would like to participate please contact us and we will send you a campaign pack.

Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain
20th January 2003
17 Dhul Qadah 1423 A.H.

2

That opposition to "colonial plan" required storing poison gas? It is amazing how so many fundos will support anything, even if it gives Islam a bad name.

3

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Kareem: *
That opposition to "colonial plan" required storing poison gas? It is amazing how so many fundos will support anything, even if it gives Islam a bad name.
[/QUOTE]

Please read the following article published in the Guardian.

Faisal Bodi
Tuesday January 21, 2003
The Guardian

Under normal circumstances, yesterday's raid on the Finsbury Park Mosque in north London would have evoked little sympathy in the Muslim community for its unpopular and somewhat embarrassing residents, led by Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri.
But with poll after poll showing the Muslim community in open disagreement with government claims that the war on terror is not a war on Islam, it is a sure bet that the swoop on a place of worship will be viewed as an escalation of hostilities. And not without justification. Police have violated the sanctity of a mosque to silence a preacher in a way that would be inconceivable for any other faith.

Since the alleged discovery of ricin traces a fortnight ago, the gloves have come off in the government's dirty war against Britain's Muslims. Last week David Blunkett said he would support police in whatever steps they deemed necessary to flush out the "terrorists". The message came as the home secretary announced an inquiry into the events surrounding the tragic death of DC Stephen Oake, stabbed allegedly by an absconded asylum seeker in Manchester.

While the inquiry will identify the operational failures in last week's botched arrest, what it will avoid is an investigation of where the political culpability lies for his death. That must surely rest in parliament, and its enactment of latitudinous anti-terrorism legislation, which has positioned the police on the frontline of a war against the Muslim community.

For all the hysterical headlines warning of a Bin Laden in our backyard, the reality is a picture of political repression of Muslims that is starting to resemble the experience of Northern Ireland's Catholics throughout the Troubles. While they were in force, two laws - the Emergency Provisions Act of 1973, and the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1974 - were used to drag an estimated 60,000 overwhelmingly innocent people from their beds.

Comparisons with the two most recent terrorism statutes are not misplaced. Just as no further action resulted from the majority of arrests under the Northern Ireland laws, so too are the Terrorism Act 2000 and the anti-terrorism crime and security bill simply proving to be instruments of victimisation and criminalisation.

Shortly before Christmas an acquaintance was stopped as he drove past Chelsea Barracks. Three police vans surrounded his vehicle. At least six armed policeman charged out, screaming at him not to move and to raise his hands. For 20 minutes they stood the 49-year-old father of five up against a wall in full view of passing traffic - much of it hooting in approval - while they combed his people carrier, their guns cocked. My Pakistan-born friend has no doubt he was apprehended because his beard and north African-style identify him as a Muslim.

On the same day as the Manchester arrests, anti-terrorist police swooped on addresses in a north-west town to detain five south Asian Muslim men linked to a charity working in Afghanistan. Once in custody, police asked them to sign a document waiving their right to consult a solicitor. When this failed they denied the men permission to speak to a London-based lawyer on the grounds that she was too far away. When eventually a local solicitor was contacted, the police refused to furnish him with the reasons for the arrests. While the men were being held, officers ransacked their homes and offices, the net result of which was a big blank, at least on the terrorism front. Not to be defeated, the police bailed the five to reappear on suspicion of a theft charge relating to the charity's assets, which they suggest is a ploy designed to discredit them in the Muslim community.

Their treatment falls into a pattern of repressive activity against Muslim organisations that does not stop at show-raids on Finsbury Park. The mosque has been under MI5 surveillance for years and if there was so much as a crumb of cannabis, let alone ricin, it would have been snuffed out long ago. The discovery of a stun gun, an imitation gun and a CS gas canister doesn't justify the scale or nature of this highly politicised raid. And it doesn't alter the fact that the authorities havefailed to link Abu Hamza with everything from alleged terrorist plots involving his family in Yemen in 1998 to being a recruitment agent for al-Qaida.

The raid comes as the charity commission's anxiety about British mosques has intensified. It has written to mosques, telling them to avoid allowing their premises to be used for political activities - an attitude that attacks the principle of the inseparability of faith and politics in Islam. Last April, in a move certain to be contested by his lawyers, the charity commission suspended Abu Hamza from preaching, overruling a 1998 court order which had granted him permission to lead Friday prayers. Last week the commission made that ban permanent.

Even banks appear to have been asked to keep an eye on mosque accounts. One London branch referred a cheque for £30,000 - payment to a building contractor - to the police.

The type of draconian legislation that produces such abuses is not so much designed to tackle terrorism as to manufacture an illusion of it for propagandist purposes. The recent wave of arrests under terrorism legislation, nearly all of them of Muslims, follows a relative lull since September, a fact that is surely related to the government's intention to exaggerate an internal terrorist threat in an effort to persuade an unconvinced public of the need to wage war against Iraq.

Whatever the motive, it is clear the response is incommensurate with the threat, the alleged discovery of ricin traces and a stun gun notwithstanding - it mustn't be forgotten that in their zeal to secure terrorism convictions, British police have not been beyond tampering with evidence, as in the case of the Birmingham Six.

In a reply to the Lords last May on the effect of anti-terrorism legislation, Lord Rooker said: "One hundred and forty-four persons have been arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, of which 46 have been charged with offences. There have been no convictions for terrorist offences to date but 10 people are undergoing or awaiting trial for such offences." The current figure is closer to 200 and the fact still remains that there has yet to be a single conviction. What is more, most of those charged have been hit with section 57 of the Terrorism Act 2000, a trawling net of a provision if ever there was one: "A person commits an offence if he possesses an article in circumstances which give rise to a reasonable suspicion that his possession is for a purpose connected with the commission, preparation or instigation of an act of terrorism." Well that pretty much covers everything, including this computer I'm using - and since the killing of DC Oake, even the cross-channel trucker who unwittingly smuggles in a desperate asylum seeker. The inordinate fear planted in our minds, which first asked us to make an imaginary connection between 9/11 and Saddam Hussein, now demands that we invent more mental dots to connect terrorists with asylum seekers. Seeing a political opportunity, the right has fused the less popular xenophobia with the more popular Islamophobia. It should alert us all to the fact that both have a common wellspring in hatred of the other.

If you're in any doubt read the following excerpt from the Daily Mail of August 20 1938: "The way stateless Jews from Germany are pouring in from every port of this country is becoming an outrage." There are some things even a holocaust can't change.