British jihadis comment on the Charlie Hebdo murders

By now every political blog worth its salt will have commented on the Charlie Hebdo terrorist attack, in which twelve people were murdered because someone drew a cheeky picture of a rather popular religious leader. Anjem Choudary popped his head out to make some typically moronic statements; you will almost certainly have seen all that already, so I'll be looking a little further afield with this post...

Islamic Awakening is a British forum inhabited primarily by al-Qaeda supporters. First, let's see how the forum responded to the (non-lethal) bomb attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in 2011 over the magazine's first Muhammad cover:

According to some members circa 2011, the people behind Charlie Hebdo were being pursued by "angels of death" and would someday face "the fire of the hereafter":

This should not surprise us, as the forum is awfully quick to prescribe the death penalty for everything from mocking Muhammad to drinking tipple.

Now, moving on to the Islamic Awakening discussion about the most recent attack:

The initial response from the members was that the attack was "fishy". Bear in mind that these people consider 9/11 to have been an inside job; their default position when faced with an atrocity carried out by Islamic extremists in the West appears to be "it was a false flag operation!"

Rather oddly, the conspiratorial side of the discussion didn't make it past the first page. After a while, the members began taking it at face value that, yes, the murders were carried out by Muslims.

The last post above points out that Holocaust denial is illegal in certain European countries. This is true, and I personally do not agree with such laws - I think that Holocaust denial should be frowned upon by society, certainly, but not banned outright. However, what this fellow fails to grasp is that temporarily incarcerating someone for denying the Holocaust is a much lesser sin than murdering people for drawing a cartoon.

The crude analogies regarding free speech continued:

Well, if Roy Chubby Brown wants to run for parliament, then why not? Overtly racist parties such as the BNP have done it, so I don't see why a blue comedian should be barred.

This person argues that it is "liberal idiots" who think that it is okay to make fun of Islam, which is an interesting inversion of the norm:

Finally, and inevitably, the Islamic Awakening members began discussing the $64,000,000 question: were the attacks justified?

For at least some posters, the answer would appear to be "yes":

London Metropolitan University Islamic Society: extremist connections

The London Metropolitan University Islamic Society, or London Met ISoc for short, has attracted controversy a few times. Like when it promoted material on its Facebook page claiming that Lee Rigby's murder was a hoax, for example. Or when it organised an event that was to have featured Haitham Al-Haddad, a hate preacher who has condemned homosexuality, endorsed wife-beating and called for ex-Muslims to be executed. Or when it promoted speeches by Abu Bushra, a man who is so misogynistic that he has justified marital rape.

Or when its former president, Waheed Zaman, was convicted of a terrorism attempt.

I took a look through the topics "liked" by the official London Met ISoc page on Facebook. Now, this was a pretty hefty list, one that included several humanitarian organisations and a bewildering amount of food products. It is entirely possible that the page's admins are in the habit of clicking "like" on anything that looks vaguely appealing, without thinking too hard about what it is they're endorsing. Even so, it is worth noting just how many bigots and extremists can be found in the list:

Khalid Yasin has made a number of extremely dodgy comments. Some are covered here:

'“The Koran gives a clear position regarding homosexuality lesbianism and bestiality,” says Yasin. “They are aberrations punishable by death … We can’t walk around society slandering them because there is legislation against doing that but we don’t have to like them we don’t have to promote them and we have the right to say that that’s a moral aberration.”

Yasin has “not seen any irrefutable documentation to link Osama Bin Laden or the so-called Al Qaeda" with being responsible for that action. Instead, he says, “we now know the way those buildings fell, they fell from internal explosive charges the same way it’s done on a building site.”

It was “missionaries from the World Health Organisation and Christian groups”, according to Yasin who “went into Africa and inoculated people for diphtheria, malaria, yellow fever and they put in the medicine the AIDS virus”.'

Also note his views on capital punishment:

'Another speech, this time by Sheikh Khalid Yasin, who learned Arabic in Saudi Arabia, praised the deterrent effect of sharia law: "Then people can see, people without hands, people can see in public heads rolling down the street, people got [sic] their hands and feet from opposite sides chopped off and they see them crucified…they see people put up against the pole and see them get lashed in public they see it, and because they see it, it acts as a deterrent for them because they say I don't want that to happen to me."'

Islamic Awakening is almost certainly the biggest Jihadi forum in Britain: just look at the quotes collected at FSTDT and RationalWiki. Its owner, Abuz Zubair, believes that ex-Muslims, Muslims who teach the theory of evolution and people of any religious background who poke fun Allah or Mohammed should be executed.

Wikipedia's article on Zakir Naik draws from a Time piece that is behind a paywall:

'Naik's views and statements on terrorism have at times been criticised in the media. In a YouTube video, speaking of Osama bin Laden, Naik said that he would not criticise bin Laden because he had not met him and did not know him personally. He added that, "If bin Laden is fighting enemies of Islam, I am for him," and that "If he is terrorizing America – the terrorist, biggest terrorist – I am with him. Every Muslim should be a terrorist. The thing is that if he is terrorizing the terrorist, he is following Islam. Whether he is or not, I don’t know, but you as Muslims know that, without checking up, laying allegations is also wrong." When Time hinted that this remark could have inspired Najibullah Zazi's terrorist activities, Naik insisted: "I have always condemned terrorism, because according to the glorious Koran, if you kill one innocent person, then you have killed the whole of humanity".'

Also note this article's summary of Naik's comments on apostasy:

"Naik said that according to Prophetic traditions, every child is born as a Muslim and that a Muslim is one who submits his/her will to God. In Islam, death penalty should not necessarily be evoked on every person who leaves Islam, but to those who propagate the non-Islamic faith and speak against Islam, he added."

These people really like Babar Ahmed. They've liked him three times, in fact. Despite the fact that he has pleaded guilty to terrorism charges.

The fact that ISoc approves of Answering Christianity suggests that conversation and understanding between faiths is not high on its agenda:

Abdullah Hakim Quick is a hate preacher who has referred to Jews as "filth" and advocated the execution of homosexuals.

This would be the same East London Mosque that has a track record of hosting hate preachers, even after promising to stop.

Bilal Philips, barred from Britain and a few other countries for his extremist views, says that suicide bombing is compatible with Islam's prohibition of suicide ("this is not really considered to be suicide in the true sense. This is a military action and human lives are sacrificed in that military action") and that there is no such thing as marital rape. He also advocates the death penalty for homosexuals and adulterers. He has been named by the US government as a co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing, but remains unindicted.

Finally, we come to the bizarre Diaries of an Exorcist, which I wrote about here. Here is a fairly typical sample of the kind of thing that gets posted on this page:

In short, the London Metropolitan University Islamic Society clearly has some explaining to do.