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MIM: More Londistan follies: If police chief Ian Blair is really serious about getting Muslims to 'tackle the enemy in their midst' he should start by showing he means business and arrest Iqbal Sacranie - instead of traipsing around London with him and making a mockery of government proposals to crack down on terrorism. The head of Scotland Yard makes the rounds of London mosques with Iqbal Sacranie, the secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain who supported Bin Laden's entrance into Britain, is trustee of an Al Qaeda charity front , and uses the facade of civil rights group to promote terrorism. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,22989-1695451_2,00.html Muslims 'must tackle enemy in their midst' |
The head of Scotland Yard visited mosques across Greater London today to appeal to the city's million strong Muslim community to actively join the fight against terrorism. A week after four British Muslims blew themselves up on the London Underground and a double-decker bus, Sir Ian Blair warned that Muslims had been in denial about the "lunatic fringe" in their midst for too long.
The bombing of London by British-born Muslims had been the worst nightmare for Britain's settled Muslim community. In their aftermath, Muslims could no longer ignore the dangerous elements in their midst, said Sir Ian. "Now it is your problem," he told Islamic leaders in a speech at the Minhaj-ul-Quran mosque in Romford. He suggested that a third-person reporting method was set up where Muslims could pass on their concerns about individuals. He appealed for the whole community to help identify terrorists, saying: "I need you. We've got nearly a million Muslims in London, 1.6 million Muslims in the UK. I've only got 300 Muslim police officers in London and that's not enough. I need your mothers and your fathers, your brothers and your sisters." The Metropolitan Police commissioner welcomed how Islamic leaders joined forces to condemn last week's attacks and he said that except for one single day, the number of race hate incidents in London had actually fallen since the bombing. "Nothing is showing that London is blaming one community rather than another. We say that no community should be targeted or shamed for this, you do not need to apologies, these are not your people, but you have to help us find them," Sir Ian said. "It is not the police, it is not the intelligence services, that will defeat terrorism. It is communities that will defeat terrorism. We must seize this moment. We have to seize a moment in which the Muslim community changes from your state of shock and disbelief into active engagement in counter-terrorism. "Now, it is your problem." It emerged today that three of the bombers - Shehzad Tanweer, Hasib Mir Hussain and Mohammad Sidique - had been banned from their three local mosques in Leeds, although the reasons for their exclusions remained unclear. Sir Ian drew an analogy with a successful campaign against Jamaican Yardie gangs that relied on the co-operation of the Afro-Caribbean community as he called for Muslims help in fingering the "preachers of hate" who are the recruiting sergeants of terror. No longer, he said, could Muslims dismiss figures such as Abu Hamza, the radical Finsbury Park preacher, as lunatics who are not important. "The problem is that if they appeal to only half a dozen, they are important," he said. Meanwhile, the Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain today visited community leaders in Leeds where he broadly agreed with Sir Ian's concerns. Sir Iqbal Sacranie told a meeting of Islamic and community group leaders in the city: "We are all responsible for it in a way. We have been talking about the fact there are elements within the community who perhaps are carrying out the rhetoric and message of hate and very little has been done |
