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British Muslim tycoon Sir Gulam Noon calls for curbs on extremist imams
‘Curry King’ recalls horror on anniversary of Mumbai hotel attack
- Rajeev Syal
- The Observer, Sunday 29 November 2009
Britain’s most prominent Muslim businessman, who was trapped inside a burning hotel in the Mumbai terror attacks, is calling on the government to toughen measures against extremist preachers.
Sir Gulam Noon, one of Labour’s most generous donors, says the door is being left open for foreign imams to radicalise thousands of young Muslims in mosques.
His demand comes in an exclusive interview on the anniversary of the attacks, which left 173 people dead after three days of mayhem. Noon was trapped on the third floor of the Taj hotel for nearly 10 hours while dozens of people were murdered in rooms around him.
Known as the Curry King for selling 1.5 million Indian ready-meals a week in Britain, he says the experience has left him less tolerant of foreign Islamist preachers, who he believes are indoctrinating young British Muslims.
“Having seen what I saw at close quarters, the indiscriminate violence and pain inflicted in the name of my religion, I am astounded that I hear from friends in the community that radical preachers are still coming to this country and praising attacks by al-Qaida and suicide missions. There is a limit to free speech. Extremists who preach their approval of suicide bombers should be sent back to their country of origin,” he said.
Noon, 73, who was born and raised in Mumbai, said his ordeal last year began as he stepped into the lift of the five-star hotel to go up to his third-floor suite to meet his brother and four colleagues for dinner. Behind him he heard a few sharp cracks, but thought nothing of it. “I heard what I believed were firecrackers from a wedding party. But a minute later a member of staff ran over and told me it was gunfire,” he said. Noon and his friends were told by staff to barricade themselves in. It was 9.30pm, and they would not emerge until 7am the next morning.
By the time the shooting was over, on 29 November, 173 people had been killed and 308 had been wounded.
Noon, who has given more than £300,000 to Labour, said he is proud of the way that India’s Muslim community has responded to the attacks. “Indian Muslims have refused to bury the nine dead terrorists. They are still in the mortuary. It is a good symbolic message for the rest of secular India. Now Britain needs to get tough with the radical imams. We have the power to do something,” he said.
A spokesman for the UK Borders Agency said the government has introduced new laws to force imams to go through tougher English tests before being allowed into Britain.
- guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2009
FBI moves to seize CAIR records from author
In an unexpected move, the FBI and the Justice Department are wading into a court battle between a conservative author and the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The feds reportedly served a grand jury subpoena Friday to seize thousands of pages of records allegedly stolen from CAIR by author David Gaubatz and his son Chris as part of an undercover infiltration of the group. The records were about to be returned to CAIR pursuant to a court order in a civil suit the organization brought against the pair.
Gaubatz, co-author of ”Muslim Mafia,” which accuses CAIR of being a front for Islamic terrorism, agreed earlier this month to the order requiring the return of more than 12,000 pages of disputed records while a federal judge considered the lawsuit.
However, on Friday afternoon, the U.S. Government, which previously had no role in the civil lawsuit, filed a motion in the case. The legal papers were filed under seal, perhaps in response to complaints that the Justice Department unfairly smeared CAIR in a public court filing in 2007 suggesting CAIR had links to Hamas.
At about the same time, agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation served the Gaubatzes’ attorneys with a grand jury subpoena demanding the records, according to World Net Daily, a conservative media outlet whose book division published “Muslim Mafia.”
“Obviously, we were prepared to honor the court order,” WND’s Joseph Farah said. “Now we will have to confer with the attorneys to determine what happens next. Which takes precedence – a federal court order or an FBI warrant? … Personally, I would like to see these papers in the hands of trained FBI investigators. The revelations raised about CAIR in Muslim Mafia have clearly piqued the agency’s interest.”
CAIR has denied any ties to or support for terrorism, but the Justice Department’s suspicions have prompted a ban at the FBI on some, but not all, outreach efforts involving the Islamic group.
A spokesman for CAIR, Ibrahim Hooper, told POLITICO Saturday that the group was still attempting to make sense of the legal developments.
“We are trying to find out what is going on,” Hooper said in an e-mail.
Spokespeople for the Justice Department and the FBI said they were unaware of the reported FBI move against CAIR.
A recollection of Mumbai
Thanks to Aziz at City of Brass
This is a guest post by Zeba Iqbal.
On the evening of July 11, 2006 a series of bomb blasts ripped through several suburban train lines in Mumbai. Over 200 people died and over 700 were injured. I was living in India then and was amazed at Mumbai’s resilience. The city did not miss a beat.
Trains were running again that night, and by the next morning, it was business as usual – offices and shops were open. Mumbai was a little bruised, a little sad, a little scared – but on its feet.
Mumbai did not recover so quickly from the attacks of November 26, 2008. Almost 200 were killed and over 300 injured in ten separate shooting and bombing attacks across Mumbai (mainly South Mumbai). The siege which lasted 60-hours began at 9 pm on the 26th and ended on the 29th – paralyzed Mumbai for three days, and stunned it for many more.
Halfway across the world in America, I celebrated a subdued Thanksgiving with family. We watched with disbelief and sadness as the horrific events of 26/11 unfolded in Mumbai. For those who don’t know Mumbai, it is the New York City of India. A big tough safe city that never sleeps. Like New York City, Mumbai is surrounded by water.
By all accounts, last year’s decentralized, prolonged form of real-time attack on ‘posh’ Mumbai was a successful mission for the perpetrators. Armed with a simple blueprint, the attackers vividly illustrated just how vulnerable cities near water are, and how difficult it is to safeguard them. A recent mock attack in Miami strengthened this hypothesis. Read the rest of this entry »
Switzerland to vote to ban minarets??
By Imogen Foulkes
BBC News, Geneva
On Sunday Swiss voters will have their say on a controversial proposal to impose a constitutional ban on the building of minarets.
The proposal is backed by conservative Christian groups and by the biggest party in Switzerland’s parliament, the right-wing Swiss People’s Party (SVP), which says allowing minarets would lead to the Islamisation of the country.
There are an estimated 400,000 Muslims in Switzerland, most from the former Yugoslavia or Turkey. Islam is the country’s most widespread religion after Christianity, but although there are Muslim prayer rooms, proper mosques with minarets are few and far between.
There are just four across Switzerland, and in recent years, all applications to build minarets have been turned down.
Fear of extremism
Although there is little evidence of Islamic extremism in Switzerland, supporters of a ban say the presence of minarets would represent the growth of an ideology and a legal system that are incompatible with Swiss democracy.
“The minaret is not an innocent building. It has been used in history to mark territory, to mark the progression of Islamic law in foreign countries,” said member of parliament Oskar Freysinger.
“Islamic people say it’s only decorative. I don’t agree. If Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey says ‘the minarets are our bayonets’ that means something to me. I don’t want his bayonets to be planted here in Switzerland.”
At public meetings to discuss a ban, this argument has clearly found favour with some voters.
“I’m not against Islam as a religion, I’m just against the minaret as a symbol of their power, taking over, conquering,” said one woman.
“I’m a believer, I’m a Christian and I’m not against the Muslims,” insisted one man. “But I’m not for the power, that they put their rights, the Sharia, over the rights that we have here in Switzerland, the law.”
Muslim frustration
These arguments have caused a great deal of frustration among Switzerland’s Muslim community, who insist that all they want is a recognisable mosque.
Earlier this month, Muslim prayer rooms across Switzerland opened their doors to the public, in the hope of reassuring voters that they had nothing to fear from minarets.
“We view the minaret as a symbol of religious freedom,” said Mahmoud El Guindi, of Zurich’s Islamic Centre.
“There is sometimes some fear in society, of Islam or the Muslims, based on various political events… and when they come here and they talk to the people and put their questions, they can see that Islam is a peaceful religion like other religions.”
But a highly visible campaign in favour of a ban paints a very different picture of Islam.
Minarets like missiles
Posters have appeared in many Swiss cities showing a dark, almost menacing figure of a woman, shrouded from head to foot in a black burka. Behind her is the Swiss flag, shaped like a map of the country, with black minarets shooting up out of it like missiles.
There is also an online game, which has proved very popular, in which players can shoot down minarets as they rise up on the skylines of Switzerland’s major cities.
And although few in Switzerland would question the country’s system of direct democracy, in which the people vote on all major decisions, many Swiss are very uncomfortable with the tone this particular campaign has taken.
Vehicle for prejudice?
Elham Manea, a Swiss citizen and a Muslim, believes an opportunity to have a meaningful debate about Islam and its integration in Switzerland has been missed. Instead, she says, it has become a vehicle to express prejudice.
“In this debate, the very fact that you belong to a certain religion turns you into something bad,” she says.
“They are bringing all these issues; integration problems, political Islam, fear of social change and social demographics, throwing them into one basket, calling it Islam and Muslims are bad.
“That is scary, because we have history to warn us when it comes to discrimination and discriminating against certain groups.”
Outside Switzerland, observers are watching the minaret debate with concern. Amnesty International this week called on Swiss voters to reject a ban, warning that forbidding minarets would be a violation of Switzerland’s obligations to uphold freedom of religious expression.
And there are hints that some Muslim countries, with whom Switzerland traditionally enjoys good relations, may even boycott the country if a ban is approved.
They are particularly angry that Islam has been singled out, since Sikh temples and Serbian Orthodox churches have recently been built in Switzerland, while synagogues have been present for more than a century.
Switzerland’s coalition government is urging voters to say no to a ban, fearing a yes vote could harm the country’s image abroad and cause anger among its many different ethnic groups.
But at the moment opinion polls predict a close result, and many in Switzerland fear that whichever way the final vote goes, the very fact that this referendum was held at all – and the tone of the campaign – will leave a legacy of bitterness among Swiss Muslims.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/europe/8381274.stm
Published: 2009/11/27 14:47:09 GMT
The imam’s very curious story – skirt chaser and terror proselytizer?
A skirt-chasing mullah is just one more mystery for the 9/11 panel
It’s been more than 2 1/2 years since the 9/11 attacks, but lots of questions remain about how the plot came together and just who might have been involved. This week in Washington, the federal commission investigating the attacks will try to answer some of those questions in its 12th and final public hearing. Sources say the commission will reveal dramatic new information about the plot that has been gleaned from al Qaeda detainees, including 9/11 operational mastermind, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed. “This,” says Democratic commissioner Timothy Roemer, “will be a blockbuster hearing.”
Commissioners hope the two-day hearing will help fill in the gaps in what is still a sketchy story. Among those gaps is the possible role of a charismatic young Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Awlaki, 33–allegedly a spiritual adviser to at least two hijackers who plunged American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon. A congressional joint inquiry report released last year says that al-Awlaki (aka, al-Aulaqi) is one of 14 men who had dealings with some of the hijackers while under FBI investigation; the bureau shut down a counterterrorism probe against him in 2000. The FBI has long downplayed al-Awlaki’s role, but bureau sources now acknowledge that during the 9/11 probe, agents became “very interested” in al-Awlaki and yet failed to prevent him from leaving the country for Yemen. “We don’t know how he got out,” says one FBI source.
Al-Awlaki could not be reached for comment but has denied prior knowledge of the attacks. The lanky imam was known for his fiery anti-American rhetoric and for his side business peddling pure, expensive Yemeni honey–and investigators were interested in both. The feds were tracking al-Awlaki’s honey trade, U.S. News has learned, because of evidence that Osama bin Laden was using a network of honey operations to fund the movement of gun shipments and possible terrorists.
Educated in Yemen and the United States, al-Awlaki first attracted attention in 1999 in Los Angeles. According to the congressional inquiry, an FBI counterterrorism investigation indicated that the imam had ties to several suspicious characters and that he had allegedly met in early 2000 with someone close to convicted terrorist Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, a blind Egyptian cleric. But the FBI closed its investigation in March 2000, stating that, “the imam . . . does not meet the criterion for [further] investigation.”
By then, al-Awlaki had settled in San Diego. And so had two of the hijackers, Khalid Almihdar and Nawaf Alhaz- mi, who began attending al-Awlaki’s mosque. In January 2001, the imam moved to the Dar Al-Hijra Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., the largest mosque in the country, and sure enough, Alhazmi and a third hijacker, Hani Hanjour, soon followed suit. Al-Awlaki has denied knowing the men.
Bogus? After the attacks, German police found the mosque’s phone number in the apartment of a major 9/11 co-conspirator, Ramzi Binalshibh, according to the joint inquiry. The spokesman for the Falls Church mosque, Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, did not return calls. But Randall Hamud, a San Diego defense attorney, said al-Awlaki was a “respected intellectual” and had an honest reputation among Hamud’s clients.
Al-Awlaki and his followers blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks. “There is an expectation that Muslims should apologize for something that they never did,” al-Awlaki told National Geographic magazine in September 2001.
The probe of the 9/11 attacks soon led Washington FBI agents back to San Diego, where they found that al-Awlaki had twice been busted for soliciting prostitutes in 1996 and 1997 but had avoided jail time. Al-Awlaki has previously described these charges as “bogus.” But FBI agents hoped al-Awlaki might cooperate with the 9/11 probe if they could nab him on similar charges in Virginia. FBI sources say agents observed the imam allegedly taking Washington-area prostitutes into Virginia and contemplated using a federal statute usually reserved for nabbing pimps who transport prostitutes across state lines. But in March 2002, al-Awlaki abruptly left the country for Yemen. “When he left town, it was as if the air went out of the balloon,” says one FBI source. Al-Awlaki briefly returned to the United States in October 2002, but federal authorities did not have sufficient cause to detain him, even though his name popped up on a terrorist “lookout” database. Now he’s back in the Middle East, where FBI agents are said to be keeping their eyes on him.
To contact the author: Ragavanc@usnews.com
With Carol Hook and Monica M. Ekman
This story appears in the June 21, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
