Interesting - but is it true?

Note the date - back in 2004. Cohen (I will frown at that name in connection with Islamist plotting) does not say whether this is a reporter-speak collection of theories or totally factual. I repeat it with that proviso but I have not found any retraction of the report. The Luton connection back in 2004 was lucky if this is just bullsh*t.

Terror on the dole By David Cohen, Evening Standard 20 April 2004
Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT
specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a
fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing
down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths
pour heated words of revolution.
"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb
London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's
going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like
Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."
"Pass the brown sauce,
brother," says Abu Malaahim, the IT specialist, devouring his chicken and chips.
"I agree with you, brother," says Abu Yusuf, the earnest-looking financial
adviser sitting opposite. "I would like to see the Mujahideen coming into London
and killing thousands, whether with nuclear weapons or germ warfare. And if they
need a safehouse, they can stay in mine - and if they need some fertiliser [for
a bomb], I'll tell them where to get it."
His friend, Abu Musa, the security
guard, smiles radiantly. "It will be a day of joy for me," he adds, speaking
with a slight lisp.
As they talk, a man with a bushy beard, dressed in a
jacket emblazoned with the word "Jihad", stands and watches over them, handing
around cups of steaming hot coffee. His real name is Ishtiaq Alamgir, but he
goes by his adopted name, Sayful Islam, meaning "Sword of Islam". He is the
24-year-old leader of the Luton branch of al-Muhajiroun, an extremist Muslim
group with about 800 members countrywide, who regard Osama bin Laden as their
hero.
Until recently, nobody took the fanatical beliefs of al-Muhajiroun too
seriously, believing that a British-based group so brazenly "out there" could
not be involved in something as "underground" as terrorism. The group is led by
the exiled Saudi, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad, from his base in north London.
Yesterday, in a magazine article, Bakri warned that several radical groups are
poised to strike in London.
For all its inflammatory rhetoric, al-Muhajiroun
has never been linked to actual violence. Yet, with the discovery last month of
half-a-tonne of ammonium nitrate fertiliser - the same explosive ingredient used
in the Bali and Turkey terror attacks - and with the arrest of eight young
British Muslims in London and the South-East, including six in Luton, extremist
groups such as al-Muhajiroun are under the spotlight like never before.
Detectives fear that the "enemy within", the homegrown extremists leading
apparently normal lives in suburbia, now pose the greatest threat to security in
Britain. Sayful and his friends fit this "homegrown" profile: three were born
here, two came as young children from Pakistan; all were educated in local Luton
schools; and they grew up in families of full employment - one of their fathers
is a retired local businessman, two are engineers, and two worked in the local
Vauxhall car plant.
The question is: how worried should we be? Is
al-Muhajiroun nothing more than a repository for disaffected Muslim youths who
have adopted an extreme interpretation of Islam - perhaps to cock a snook at the
white establishment - but who are essentially posturing? Or does the group also
perform a more sinister function, sucking in alienated young men and
brainwashing the more impressionable into becoming future suicide bombers?
Although none of the arrested Muslims - aged 17 to 32 - appear to be current
al-Muhajiroun members, rumours have circulated of informal links to the group.
Moreover, parents of the arrested men have spoken anxiously of the "radicalising
influence" of al-Muhajiroun militants who " corrupt" their children at mosques.
Nowhere has this public confrontation between radicals and moderates been
more apparent than in Luton, which has the highest density of Muslims in the
South-East - 28,000 out of a total population of 140,000 - and has long been
regarded as a hotbed of extremism.
Sayful Islam, for one, is particularly
proud of his contribution to Luton's hardline reputation. His exploits include
covering the town with " Magnificent 19" posters glorifying the 11 September
suicide bombers. "When I joined al-Muhajiroun four years ago, there were five
local members," he says. "Now there are more than 50 and hundreds more support
us."
The strange thing is that four years ago, Sayful Islam was a jeans-clad
student completing his degree in business economics at Middlesex University in
Hendon, north London.
The son of a British Rail engineer who came to this
country from Pakistan, Sayful grew up in a moderate, middle-class Muslim family
in Luton. At the local Denbigh High School, he is remembered as one of the
smartest kids, and was selected to attend a science masterclass at Cambridge
University. He would go on to marry, have two children and find work as an
accountant for the Inland Revenue in Luton. He was thoroughly uninterested in
politics.
THEN he met Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad at a local event. Within
two years, he had swapped his decently paid job as an accountant for an unpaid
one as a political agitator. What turned him into an extremist? And how far is
he prepared to go to achieve his aims?
Prior to seeing the group at the
fastfood restaurant, Sayful meets me at his semi-detached rented home in Bury
Park, Luton's Muslim neighbourhood. He no longer works, even though he is
able-bodied, he admits, preferring instead to claim housing benefit and
jobseeker's allowance. He smiles sheepishly and says the irony is not lost on
him that the British state is supporting him financially, even as he plots to
"overthrow it".
"I made a decision that I wanted to follow what Islam really
said," Sayful begins, sitting on his sofa in his thowb (a traditional robe) and
bare feet. "I went to listen to all the local imams, but I found their portrayal
of Islam was too secularised. When I heard Sheikh Omar [the leader] of
al-Muhajiroun speak, it was pure Islam, with no compromise. I found that
appealing.
"At the same time," continues Sayful, "wars were happening in
Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Afghanistan. People were being oppressed simply
because they were Muslim. Although I had never experienced racism in the UK, it
opened the eyes of a lot of Muslims, including mine."
But it was the events
of 11 September that crystallised Sayful's worldview. "When I watched those
planes go into the Twin Towers, I felt elated," he says. "That magnificent
action split the world into two camps: you were either with Islam and al Qaeda,
or with the enemy. I decided to quit my job and commit myself full-time to
al-Muhajiroun." Now he does not consider himself British. "I am a Muslim living
in Britain, and I give my allegiance only to Allah."
According to Sayful,
the aim of al-Muhajiroun ("the immigrants") is nothing less than Khilafah - "the
worldwide domination of Islam". The way to achieve this, he says, is by Jihad,
led by Bin Laden. "I support him 100 per cent."
Does that support extend to
violent acts of terrorism in the UK?
"Yes," he replies, unequivocally. "When
a bomb attack happens here, I won't be against it, even if it kills my own
children. Islam is clear: Muslims living in lands that are occupied have the
right to attack their invaders.
"Britain became a legitimate target when it
sent troops to Iraq. But it is against Islam for me to engage personally in acts
of terrorism in the UK because I live here. According to Islam, I have a
covenant of security with the UK, as long as they allow us Muslims to live here
in peace."
HE USES the phrase "covenant of security" constantly. He attempts
to explain. "If we want to engage in terrorism, we would have to leave the
country," he says. "It is against Islam to do otherwise." Such a course of
action, he says, he is not prepared to undertake. This is why, Sayful claims, it
is consistent, and not cowardly, for him to espouse the rhetoric of terrorism,
the "martyrdom-operations", while simultaneouslylimiting himself to
nonviolentactions such as leafletting outside Luton town hall.
He denies any
link between al-Muhajiroun and the Muslims arrested in the recent police raids.
But, as I later discover at the fastfood restaurant, not everyone attaching
themselves, however loosely, to al-Muhajiroun draws the same line. Two members
of the group - Abu Yusuf, the financial adviser, and Abu Musa, the security
guard - scorn al-Muhajiroun as "too moderate".
"I am freelance," says Abu
Yusuf, fixing me with his piercing brown eyes. What does that mean? I ask.
"The difference between us and those two," interjects Abu Malaahim, pointing
to Musa and Yusuf, "is that us lot do a verbal thing, [but] those brothers
actually want to do a physical thing."
Referring to the latest truce offered
by Bin Laden, and Britain's scathing rejection of it, Abu Malaahim adds: "He
tried to make a peace deal. When terrorism happens, you will only have
yourselves to blame."
How far are you prepared to go? I ask.
"You want
to know how far I will go," says Abu Musa, his high-pitched lisp rising an
octave. "When Allah said in the Koran 'kill and be killed', that's what I want.
I want a martyr operation, where I kill my enemy."
Are you saying, I probe,
that you are looking to kill people yourself ? "Yes," Abu Musa says, "to kill
and to be killed." He emphasises each word.
What's stopped you doing it? "As
you know from watching the news," intones Abu Yusuf, "there are brothers who do
leave the country and do it." He is referring to the four Muslims from Luton who
died fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the two British Muslims, said
to have had ties to al-Muhajiroun, who last April left to become suicide bombers
in Israel. "In-shallah [ Godwilling], there will be a time to go."
It is
hard to know whether Musa and Yusuf are deadly serious or just pumped full of
misguided, youthful bravado. Though I see coldness - even ruthlessness - in
their eyes, I sense no malice. Both young men agree, perhaps foolishly, to be
quoted using their real names, though they decline photographs - thus
illustrating their uncertainty of which way to jump.
Muhammad Sulaiman,
president of the Islamic Cultural Society, the largest of the 14 mosques in
Luton, dismisses al-Muhajiroun as "verbal diarrhoea".
"They are an extreme
Right-wing group - the Muslim version of the BNP," he says disdainfully. "They
think Muslims should dominate, just like the BNP thinks whites should dominate.
They use Islam as a vehicle to promote their distorted beliefs, particularly to
unemployed young bloods who are vulnerable."
ALTHOUGH unemployment in Luton
is just six per cent, the rate among Muslim youths is estimated at 25 per cent.
"They are no more representative of our Muslim community than the BNP are of the
white community."
Sulaiman insists that Sayful Islam and his crew are not
welcome at the mosque. He cannot prevent them praying there, but he will never
give them a platform. "I've told Sayful to bugger off and ejected him many
times," he says brusquely. "Even Sayful's father, who I know well, thinks his
son has been brainwashed."
But Sayful and his friends laugh at the idea that
they are local pariahs. "The mosques say one thing to the public, and something
else to us. Let's just say that the face you see and the face we see are two
different faces," says Abdul Haq. "Believe me," adds Musa, "behind closed doors,
there are no moderate Muslims."
They also mock the idea that they are
attracted to al-Muhajiroun because they have suffered alienation from white
society. "Do we look like scum?" they ask. "Do we look illiterate?"
As they
call for the bill, Abu Malaahim flicks open his 3G mobile phone and, with a
satisfied grin, displays the image, downloaded from the internet, of an American
Humvee burning in Iraq.
Abu Yusuf says: "That's nothing. I downloaded the
picture of the four burnt Americans hanging from the bridge." It's oneupmanship,
al-Muhajiroun style.
Sayful, the only married one in the group, prepares to
go home to his wife and children. Before he departs, he says he has a message to
deliver.
"I want to warn that the police raids - if repeated - could create
a bad situation.
"Islam is not like Christianity, where they turn the other
cheek. If they raid our homes, it could lead to the covenant of security being
broken.
"Islam allows us to retaliate. That would include" - he tugs his
"Jihad" coat tight against the night air - "by violent means."