This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/859

MP and police take action after tabloid refers to bombers home turf as ' Al Qaeda Street '

July 25, 2005

MIM ; The MP and businessman in Luton doth protest too much, as Luton is synonymous with Al Muhijiroun. Which begs the question as to where the police and MP's outrage was when Al Muhajiroun members were 'displaying their leaflets' and calling for Muslims to be 'suicide bombers on their doorsteps' in the monthsn prior to the attacks. Indeed, Luton has proven so hospitable to AM members that it was used as an alternative venue for one of their rallies which had been cancelled in London and was seen as their semi official headquarters.

Fury over 'Al Qaeda Street' slur

http://www.lutontoday.co.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?SectionID=541&ArticleID=1094749

MP takes action against tabloid newspaper

A furious business leader has challenged millionaire newspaper editor Sir Paul Dacre to come to Luton and justify his newspaper's slurs on the town.

Bedfordshire Police have already written an official letter of complaint to the Daily Mail over its coverage in the wake of the London bombings.

Luton South MP Margaret Moran is taking the tabloid to the Press Complaints Commission after slamming its reporting.

And the University of Luton is considering legal action over stories which linked it with one of the bombers.

Now Lee Allen, who represents the Bury Park Traders' Association, has challenged Sir Paul – knighted for his services to journalism, and pictured left – to come to Luton and see for himself whether the town really is a hotbed of radical Muslim activity.

The paper, which sells 2.35 million copies a day and topped a poll as Britain's most trusted tabloid earlier this year, ran extensive reports exploring the Luton 'connection' in the wake of revelations that the London bombers set off for the capital from the town's railway station.

It labelled Bury Park as 'Al Qaeda Street' and claimed the area was a fertile recruiting ground for extremist Muslim groups.

In an angry email Lee told the under-fire editor: "Luton has been mentioned because we have a station and good rail links which made access to London easier. That is all.

"You talk of Al Muhajiroun having stalls in Luton. If you mean the two, yes two, men with a pasting table, a black flag and some pamphlets, I have seen them – but so what?

"Does that mean that the 30,000 or so Muslims who live here and Luton as a whole are tarnished with the same brush? I don't think so.

"Luton as a whole is shocked at what happened and we deeply regret that we are near a railway station and a motorway which made the route to London easier, but what happened is the work of twisted misguided people who are led by evil, ill-informed masters.

"The government is asking us to stay together – why are some members of the press trying to pull us apart?"

Sir Paul had failed to respond to Lee's invitation as the Herald&Post went to press, but the Bury Park businessman is aiming to use his top drawer connections to try to repair some of the damage done by the lurid headlines about the town.

He was recently appointed as a Prince's Trust ambassador for the East of England by Prince Charles, and he's also inviting the heir to the throne to visit Luton and see for himself how the town is coping with its many challenges.

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For it's part a satirical paper which makes it their mission to 'keep tabs on the tabloids' thought that Al Muhajiroun leader Omar Bakri and deputy Anjem Choudary were prime candidates along with the suicide bombers for ' the most hated people in England". http://www.anorak.co.uk/news.cfm?id=168365

Four Warned

25 Jul 2005

AFTER more than a week of unity, finally there was a split in the consensus as the papers began to go their separate ways.

The Royal Institute of International Affairs had looked into why terrorists do what they do and written a report which led the Mail to conclude on Monday: "IRAQ WAR MADE BRITAIN TERROR TARGET."

The Institute, a group with a lower profile than a ping-pong ball, although the Mail saw it as Britain's "most authoritative thinktank", said invading Iraq upset Islamic fundamentalists and people who hate the West. Controversial just wasn't in it.

But there was something bigger. In the Sun, Jude Law, the nice family man with the nice manners, the nice eyes and the nice looking girlfriend, was a cheating rat who had slept with his kids' nanny.

Nanny Daisy Wright, the woman with whom Jude had cheated on his fiancée, Sienna Miller, said the actor had made her "body tingle" during sex. He had been a "masterful lover".

By Tuesday things were getting worse for randy Jude as shy and retiring Daisy told us how he'd "begged" her for three-in-a-bed sex.

It was all too terrible, and a source close to the actor put things in perspective when they said Jude felt like the "most hated man in Britain".

Though we universally loathed Law for daring to cheat on the blonde Miller, there were others who demanded to be despised.

There was Omar Bakri Mohammed, who spouted the opinion that Britons are all to blame for the terrorist atrocity in London. "I blame the British government," said the Syrian-born polemicist, "and I blame the British people."

And while Bakri claimed his benefits from social security and ranted about this and that, we noticed Anjem Choudary, the British leader of militant Islamic group al-Muhajiroun.

"The British want to show they are on the side of justice and truth," said he, "whereas in reality the real terrorists are the British regime, and even the British police."

And, of course there was Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London, who said that decades of intervention in the Middle East and the Iraq war could have influenced the terrorists. "I suspect the real problem was that we funded these people as long as they were killing Russians," said Ken. "We gave no thought to the fact that when they stopped killing Russians they might start killing us."

Law may have been the most hated man in the country on Monday, but he was rapidly slipping down the league table as the week went on.

And on Friday, the competition to be hated was joined by four would-be mass murderers.

In London, passengers on three Tube trains and a bus escaped with their lives because their would-be killers' bombs failed to detonate properly.

So much for the Islamic extremists being highly skilled bomb makers; these terrorists were unable to even injure themselves.

And so rather than being cowed we began to think. Perhaps the authorities had already apprehended the master bomb maker, so leaving his stack of "Mother of Satan" explosives in the hands of someone not up to the task.

Perhaps, to borrow the invective of the Islamic extremists, God was not on their side after all and in His infinite wisdom had put the mockers on his enemies' plan to maim and murder.

In fleeing the scene, these idiotic, narcissistic, wicked terrorists had left clues, invaluable in the fight against terrorism. And so on...

The papers didn't know what to make of it. But undeterred by any lack of facts, they gamely filled page upon page with tales of bombers on the loose and killers in our midst, all interlaced with lines about how we are not afraid.

But if the terrorists intent is to create fear, can we really say we are beating them? The terrorists have no chance of winning in any war. But we can still lose.

But things change fast. The fight back began on a Tube train at London's Stockwell station when a suspect was chased onto a train and shot dead.

Although the killed man was innocent, a Brazilian electrician, the message was unequivocal and deadly.

Which leads us to the question: who should be afraid - a rich country of millions backed by powerful allies, with a trained military and a ruthless armed police force that shoots to kill, or a few suggestible, none-too-bright, gene pool non-swimmers with low self esteem..?


This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/859