Beyond bin Laden – Britain’s fight against violent Islamist radicalism
In a community centre in the British Midlands, 12 teenage boys — all of south Asian descent — watch intently as Jahan Mahmood unzips a canvas bag and pulls out the dark, angular shape of a World War Two machine gun. He unfolds the tripod, places the unloaded weapon on a table and pulls back the cocking handle. The boys crane forward. Mahmood pulls the trigger; a sharp snap rings out.
It’s two days since the killing of Osama bin Laden, and Mahmood, a local historian, is taking his own stand against global militancy. His show comes with a dose of education: a lesson in how Muslim and British soldiers fought together to defeat the Nazis. His methods are unconventional, but Mahmood believes they help address a weakness at the core of British counter-terrorism policy.
The U.S. operation to kill bin Laden may have marked “a strike at the heart” of international terrorism, as Prime Minister David Cameron put it, but in the broader fight against terror, the al Qaeda leader’s death was largely irrelevant.
In deprived British inner-city districts like Alum Rock — a huddle of redbrick homes, fabric shops, Urdu-language DVD stores and fruit stalls — the Saudi-born militant is almost an afterthought. Young men’s beliefs here are driven more by their own sense of alienation, racial abuse and what they see as a deeply anti-Muslim foreign policy.
On the frontline of the war against terrorism — and Britain is undoubtedly a frontline — private initiatives like Mahmood’s hint at the failure of state-sponsored efforts to counter jihad. Almost six years on from a massive coordinated terror attack on London’s transport system, the main nationwide programme to deter young men from extremism still hasn’t moved past mistrust and suspicion. The one-year-old Conservative-led government now wants to tweak the policy. For some Muslims, the question is whether the state should even try.
“There’s still a basic inability to get the idea that, actually, as government, you might not know best,” says Rachel Briggs, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. “There’s a very difficult balance between where government can be involved, and be effective, and where actually government involvement negates the whole process.”
Read the full story by Michael Holden, Stefano Ambrogi and William Maclean here.
Even without bin Laden, Pakistan’s Islamist militants strike fear
The death of Osama bin Laden has robbed Islamist militants of their biggest inspiration and al Qaeda itself has dwindled to a few hundred fighters in the region, but Pakistan remains a haven for militants with both ambition and means to strike overseas. Worse, there are signs that groups such as the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure), nurtured by Pakistan’s spy agency to advance strategic interests in India and Afghanistan, are no longer entirely under the agency’s control.
Even if the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), under intense pressure following the discovery of bin Laden in a Pakistani garrison town, sought to roll up the groups, it may not be able to do so without provoking a major backlash. In Lashkar’s case, according to experts, it is not even certain if it is under the control of its own leadership, with many within pushing for greater global jihad. Several others are spinning off into independent operatives which makes it harder for security agencies to track down.
“Lashkar has become international, and no more a Pakistani outfit, per se. It has got its claws sunk in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Arabia, if not in the Maghreb (north Africa) nations. So, Pakistanis may not condone them any longer,” said a U.S.-based South Asia expert with ties to the intelligence community.
“Lashkar’s jihadi appetite cannot be whetted with Kashmir alone. They are now for the Caliphate (theocratic Islamic state) — thanks to the Saudi and other Arabian money. The question is will Pakistan’s tainted security apparatus be able to quell an organization like that? I hope they will, but I doubt it.”
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From what I know, Bin Laden was just an icon. The same thing will go on even if he is not there!
Islamist militants hold prayers for bin Laden in Pakistan
The founder one of Pakistan’s most violent Islamist militant groups has told Muslims to be heartened by the death of Osama bin Laden, as his “martyrdom” would not be in vain, a spokesman for the group said on Tuesday.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (Let), the militant group blamed for the 2008 terror attacks on Mumbai, has been holding special prayers for bin Laden in several cities and towns since he was killed in an operation by U.S. forces in Pakistan’s northwestern garrison town of Abbottabad on Monday.
A spokesman for LeT founder Hafiz Mohammad Saeed said he had told followers in the eastern city of Lahore that the “great person” of Osama bin Laden would continue to be a source of strength and encouragement for Muslims around the world.
“Osama bin Laden was a great person who awakened the Muslim world,” Saeed’s spokesman Yahya Mujahid quoted him as saying during prayers at the headquarters of the LeT’s charity in Lahore on Monday. “Martyrdoms are not losses, but are a matter of pride for Muslims,” Saeed said. “Osama bin Laden has rendered great sacrifices for Islam and Muslims, and these will always be remembered.”
Amidst shouts of “Down with America” and “Down with Obama,” around 1,000 of Saeed’s followers held prayers in Pakistan’s largest city of Karachi. “May Allah accept the sacrifice of Osama bin Laden,” local leader of Let’s charity, Naveed Qamar, said at the prayers.
LeT, one of the largest and best-funded Islamist militant organizations in South Asia, is blamed for the November 2008 assault on Mumbai, which killed 166 people in India’s commercial hub. Its founder, Saeed, now heads an Islamic charity, a group the United Nations says is a front for the militant group. Western security analysts believe that LeT is linked to al Qaeda, though LeT officials deny this.
learn USA strategic interest in region . then u will know why these people don’t spend money on the quality of life.
Bin Laden sea burial not in line with Islam, Muslim clerics say
Clerics in Saudi Arabia, a staunch U.S. ally and the country of Osama bin Laden’s birth, dismissed Washington’s assertions it observed Islamic rites in disposing of the al Qaeda leader’s body in the Arabian Sea. Bin Laden, shot dead by U.S. forces in a raid on a compound in Pakistan on Monday, was placed in a weighted bag and dropped into the north Arabian Sea from the deck of a U.S. aircraft carrier, the Carl Vinson, the U.S. military said.
But many Muslims in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Gulf Arab region, including opponents to bin Laden’s militant ideology, said the fact funeral rites were read for him did not diminish their shock at the way his body was disposed of.
“That is not the Islamic way. The Islamic way is to bury the person in land like all other people,” said Saudi Sheikh Abdul Mohsen Al-Obaikan, an adviser to the Saudi Royal Court.
Washington said bin Laden’s body was treated with respect. He was reported to have been washed and covered in a white shroud in burial preparations that lasted nearly an hour, and religious remarks were recited before his body went underwater.
Issa al-Ghaith, a Saudi cleric and judge, said he believed Washington had made a mistake by burying bin Laden at sea, which he said was un-Islamic, adding it showed Americans “fear him even after his death.”
In Yemen, the 54-year-old militant leader’s ancestral homeland that is home to an active al Qaeda arm, critics said bin Laden’s body should have been turned over to his family. “It is not enough to do prayers over bin Laden so as to lessen the anger of his supporters or even ordinary Muslims,” said Mohammed al-Ahmedi, a Yemeni journalist.
Read the full story by Asma Alsharif and Cynthia Johnston here.
Well, it wasn’t the American Way for all of those people who were buried under the Trade Center rubble when bin Laden ordered the destruction of the Twin Towers either.
Bin Laden ‘eased’ into sea in contentious burial
He may have been America’s enemy number one, but after U.S. forces killed him, Osama bin Laden was afforded Islamic religious rites by the U.S. military as part of his surprise at-sea burial on Monday.
The U.S. military said preparations for the al-Qaida leader’s burial lasted nearly an hour. His body was washed before being covered in a white sheet and religious remarks translated into Arabic by a native speaker were read over bin Laden’s corpse.
“The burial of bin Laden’s remains was done in strict conformance with Islamist precepts and practices,” said John Brennan, U.S. President Barack Obama’s top counter-terrorism adviser.
Washington said bin Laden was buried at sea after U.S. forces killed him at a compound near the Pakistani capital Islamabad because it was the best option, given tight time constraints.
Under Islamic tradition Muslims need to be buried within 24 hours. Transferring the body to another country for interment could have taken too long, officials said.
A prominent imam in Egypt, Dr Ahmed El-Tayeb, said the U.S. violated Islamic custom by not burying bin Laden on land, a move seen as a U.S. attempt to prevent his resting place from becoming a shrine for extremist followers.
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U.S. Muslims hope for better days after bin Laden
Many U.S. Muslims were as relieved as most Americans to hear of Osama bin Laden’s death, though they feared the stigma attached to their community since the September 11 attacks will not disappear so quickly. U.S. Muslims have grown frustrated that their condemnations of bin Laden and al Qaeda have gone unheard as some Americans associate Islam with his message of violent jihad.
“It has been a nightmare to try to constantly explain to ordinary Americans that we are not associated with bin Laden. We have tried very hard to convince people that Muslims are not one monolithic group standing behind this monster,” said Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida. “We were also victims of bin Laden’s ideology of hate,” he said. “The man hijacked our religion, committed crimes in the name of our religion and caused the greatest damage to the American Muslim community and Islam.”
Musri and some other Muslim leaders said bin Laden’s killing Monday by U.S. forces in Pakistan gave American Muslims and other Americans an opportunity to correct misunderstandings and bridge differences. “Muslims … continue to be victims in the growth of Islamophobia here, so the taking out of bin Laden, certainly at a symbolic level, in the short-term, takes the pressure off,” said John Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University.
There are up to 7 million Muslims in the United States and many have felt the sting of being unfairly lumped in with Arab Muslims who plotted and carried out the deadly 2011 attacks.
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Mgr. Nidal Hassan IS an american born Muslim who swore a legion to the US flag and Constitution, got promoted to a rank of major, and than one day went and killed 15 of his unarmed coworkers.
US born imam Anwar al-Awlaki is one of Osama bin Laden’s top lieutenants.
How about young Somalis from Minneapolis who got admitted to the US with their families as refugees fattened up on US chow and went back to Afghanistan to fight against us??
I just don’t understand why so many devout Muslims from all over the world come here?? We drink alcohol, we fornicate we separated religion from the state, so what’s the attraction??
I AM YET TO MEET A MUSLIM WHO CAME TO THIS COUNTRY TO EXPRESS ANY LOVE FOR AMERICA. Stop writing these bullshit articles and face the truth; Muslims hate US and hate our way of life.
NO MORE MUSLIM IMMIGRANTS SHOULD BE ALLOWED INTO THIS COUNTRY BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE!
Osama’s Islam-violence link weighs heavy on Muslims
Osama bin Laden’s radical Islamism has had a devastating impact on Muslims around the world by linking their faith with violence and using religious texts to justify mass killings. His “jihadist” strategy has claimed the lives of many thousands of Muslims in Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as in the United States, Europe and Africa. It has also tarred Muslims with suspicion and helped feed prejudice against them. Especially in the West, many Muslims felt pressured to denounce a man they never identified with.
“The link he made between violence and Islam made people think this was a religion of terrorists,” said Dalil Boubakeur, rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris. “In Western countries, we’ve had to show on a daily basis that Islam is not violent and Osama bin Laden does not represent Muslims,” he said. France is home to Europe’s largest Muslim minority of about five million people.
Muslim leaders have issued many denunciations of the radical Islamist violence championed by bin Laden. Mainstream scholars have drawn up declarations and fatwas to counter his arguments with opposing views from the Koran. While these may have influenced some undecided Muslims, they had little apparent success in shaking a view that bin Laden represented an important current within Islam.
The recent wave of pro-democracy uprisings in the Arab world has gone some way to weakening the perceived link between Islam and violence. The world’s media have shown pictures of young Muslims campaigning for civil rights without resorting to religious violence.
“In public and private discussion on the main issues facing the Muslim world, violence through radical religious means used to be quite prominent,” said H.A. Hellyer, a fellow at Warwick University in Britain. “That has disappeared in recent months.”
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Timeline: Life and Death of Osama bin Laden
Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and his body was recovered, President Barack Obama announced on Monday.
Here is a timeline of major events in bin Laden’s life.
1957 – Osama bin Mohammad bin Awad bin Laden born in Riyadh, one of more than 50 children of millionaire businessman. There are conflicting accounts of his precise date of birth.
1976 – Studies management and economics at university in Jeddah.
Dec 26, 1979 – Soviet Union invades Afghanistan. From 1984, bin Laden is involved in Peshawar-based Services Office to support Arab volunteers arriving to fight Soviet forces.
1986 – Bin Laden moves to Peshawar, begins importing arms and forms his own small brigade of volunteer fighters.
1988 – Al Qaeda (The Base) is established as a magnet for radical Muslims seeking a more fundamentalist brand of government in their home countries and joined in common hatred of the United States, Israel and U.S.-allied Muslim governments.
Anti-Western messages grow among Afghanistan’s imams
Enayatullah Balegh is a professor at Kabul University and preaches on Fridays in the largest mosque in central Kabul, where he advocates jihad, or holy war, against foreigners who desecrate Islam. After a fundamentalist U.S. pastor presided over the burning of a copy of the Koran last month, there has been a growing perception among ordinary people that many of the foreigners in Afghanistan belong in just one category: the infidels.
“The international community and the American government is responsible for this gravest insult to Muslims,” Balegh told Reuters in the blue-and-white tiled Hazrat Ali mosque. “I tell my students to wage jihad against all foreigners who desecrate our religious values. We have had enough.”
Protests in Kabul against the Koran-burning have not become violent but there are many other mullahs in the overcrowded capital whose sermons are filled with criticism of the foreigners fighting and working in Afghanistan.
In Kabul’s northwest, firebrand Habibullah Asaam warns his congregation that all contact with non-Muslims is dangerous. “The Jews and crusaders can never be friends of Muslims, they are the despoilers of our society and culture,” he said during Friday sermons. Worshippers cried “Allahu Akbar” — God is greatest — in response.
“Those who want them here are cowardly Muslims. Women avoid wearing veils, men chase fashion and show off, it’s all because of the foreigners,” he said.
With few Dari or Pashto-speaking foreigners in the country, the messages broadcast from mosques by loudspeakers often pass unnoticed by the people they are condemning. But the extent and impact of anti-Western sentiment was brought into stark relief last week when a protest in normally peaceful Mazar-i-Sharif city in the north ended with the frenzied killing of seven foreign U.N. workers.
>>>…..foreigners in Afghanistan belong in just one category: the infidels.
In free Egypt, Islamic Jihad leader says the time for the gun is over
Abboud al-Zumar went to jail 30 years ago for his role in killing Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. Now a free man, he believes democracy will prevent Islamists from ever again taking up the gun against the state.
Zumar was a prisoner for as long as Sadat’s successor, Hosni Mubarak, was president. His release with other leading Islamists jailed for militancy is a sign of dramatic change in Egypt in the five weeks since Mubarak was swept from power by mass protests. Zumar, 64, was a founding member of the Islamic Jihad group which gunned down Sadat during a military parade in 1981. He was released along with his cousin, Tarek al-Zumar, who had also spent three decades in jail on similar charges.
“The revolution created a new mechanism: the mechanism of strong, peaceful protests,” said Zumar, released on March 12 and one of the political prisoners who owes his freedom to the peaceful revolt against Mubarak. “Public squares around the Arab world are ready to receive millions who can stop any ruler and expose him,” added Zumar in an interview in his home village of Nahia on the rural outskirts of Cairo.
To many Egyptians, Zumar’s name evokes a violent chapter in the history of a country that has been an incubator for Islamist militancy. Seeking to ease concerns, Zumar describes the Islamist movement as the “first line of defense” of Egyptian society. Islamists merely want to enjoy the same freedoms as everyone else in the new Egypt, he says.
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