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Traitors
or Martyrs
By
H.
Gibson
To 40 year-Old
British Lawyer Anjum Choudary, a British passport means very
little. “For a true
Muslim,” he says, “a British passport is no more
then a travel document.“ Abu Yahya, a 26 years old Londoner
and veteran of military training camps in Afghanistan, agrees:
“ our allegiance is solely to
Allah and his Messenger, not to the queen and country. Nationality….
means nothing.”
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Choudary
and Yahya belong to the extremist Islamic group Al- Muhajiroun,
and though they speak for only a tiny fraction of British’s
2 million Muslims, their views received a grim publicity
with the news that three British born Muslims had been
killed in Kabul allegedly in a U.S. bombing raid on a
Taliban, after volunteering for the Jihad.
The deaths of the three young men shocked their families.
In Crawly, an industrial town 53 Km south of London, the
mother of Yasir Khan, 28, insisted her son had gone to
Pakistan for humanitarian work. In Luton, 55 Km north
of London, the parents of computer engineering student
Afzal Munir and taxi driver Aftab Manzoor, both 25, weren’t
aware the two had joined up. Both lived with their parents
in modest, semidetached suburban houses in this quite
town that is home to 22,000 Muslims.
At Luton’s Central Mosque, the talk was all about
the deaths of the two unassuming young men. Retried shopkeeper
Muhammad Sulaiman, president of the Mosque, disapproved
of their act “ I live in Britain. If we fight, we
fight for Britain”. He said that his religion insisted
on permission from a men’s wife or parents before
joining a jihad. But younger men like taxi driver shaukat
Malik, 29, reserved their criticism for the Americans:
“They didn’t bomb Northern Ireland over the
terrorists there, so why Afghanistan?”
The idea of Britons fighting for the Taliban has hit a
national nerve. Many Muslims in the U.K. are loudly anti-American
and highly critical of the bombing in Afghanistan. In
a poll of 500 London Muslims of Pakistani origin aged
20 to 45, the Asian radio station sunrise found that 79%
did not support Britain’s participation in the war,
98% say that they would not fight for the country, but
48% said that they would take up arms for Islam.
Al-Muhajiroun is capitalizing on this anger. The organization’s
leaders claim it is not a recruiting agency, but they
don’t discourage anyone from joining the jihad. True
Muslims “love death [for the cause] more then we
love our life,” says Yahya. The group had been saying
that Britons were flocking to the Bin Laden cause, much
as Jewish youths went to Tel Aviv in 1967 to fight in
the Arab- Israeli war. In Lahore a spokesmen, British
University graduate Abu Ibrahim, put the numbers at between
600 and 700. Few, however, believed such claims. British
authorities speculated that volunteers probably amounted
to a few dozen. Conservative peer Norman Tebbit suggested
that it would be treason for British citizens to take
up arms against Anglo- American force. Defence security
Geoff Hoon warned that those who did fight for the Taliban
might face prosecution should they return.
What could motivate these young men, born and bred in
British, to leave their comfortable lives to become”martyrs,”
as Al- Muhajiroun describes them? The jihad volunteers
are part of a generation who feel “they are not fully
accepted by wider society,” says Haifa Jawad, lecturer
in Islamic Studies at Birmingham University. “They
feel vulnerable and in-secure.” Disaffection among
young British Muslims is nothing new. Last summer racial
tensions exploded into rioting in some northern cities,
such as Oldham, where there is high unemployment.
The jihad volunteers are mostly from first generation
British families and feel oppressed by the stresses of
biculturalism, suggest Mounir Daymi, executive director
of Britain’s Muslim students society. This alienation
is felt most deeply in the poorer communities. That’s
where you’ll find “Some people who want the
clash of civilization to happen, “ Daymi says. But
Al-Muhajiroun’s Choudary insists that it’s not
just the unemployed who are rallying to the Taliban cause.
“ Poverty or housing problems are not going to motivate
you to give your life in Afghanistan,” he says. Only
a strong belief in Islam will do that.
Adam Armstrong, 35 - year - old Luton teacher who converted
to Islam in 1989 because he felt “something was missing”
in his life, endorses that view. The volunteers, however
few, are “devout Muslims, often university students,”
he says, the sort of idealists who used to go to Chechnya
and now to Afghanistan. Asked why mostly Britons seem
to have volunteered so far, he said that Muslims are better
organized in the U.K., often have families in Pakistan
and Kashmir and enjoy greater freedom of movement. There
are no national identity cards, giving authorities less
control over their movements, and many Muslims of Pakistan
origin hold dual nationalities anyway.
Most British Muslims reject Al Muhajiroun’s militant
campaigning even as Scotland Yard continued its investigation
of the group. Fellow Muslims in Luton have been giving
the hard-liners a rough time. Al Muhajiroun leaflets have
been banned from Luton’s central Mosque and two weeks
ago the local Al Muhajiroun leader, known simply as shahid,
was attacked in the street after he staged a noisy demonstration
in support of the Taliban.
According to a report in the Times, it was Al Mahajiroun
that influenced London resident Abu Mindar, 26, to join
the jihad, an impulse Mindar bitterly regrets. “
it was the recklessness of the Taliban and its complete
disregard for the lives of those fighting for it.”
He added that he wanted to warn others about the recruiters
but had decided to remain in hiding for fear of British
prosecution- and Taliban retribution for his desertion.
Although Daymi of the Muslim students society rejects
Al Muhajiroun’s message, he does believe that now
is the time for jihad – though not the kind others
are pursuing. “ In these day of war, our jihad is
to show the peaceful face of Islam, “ he says. “
retaliation and revenge will just lead to more retaliation
and revenge. You can defend your religion peacefully.
“ That may be the kind of jihad worth joining.
- Courtsy Time |
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