|
Alleged Al-Qaeda Scholar Urges U.K. Muslims to Become Martyrs
 |
|
Abu
Qatada: “The time of victory is near”
|
LONDON,
July 14 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Missing Muslim scholar Abu
Qatada, suspected of being a key Al-Qaeda operative, has sent an
e-mail calling on Muslims here to martyr themselves, a British daily
newspaper said.
The
e-mail from the Palestinian-born religious scholar, who disappeared
last December, was read out to a meeting of Muslims in London on
Friday night, July 12, the Observer said, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
“I
have never felt more confident of the victory of almighty Allah and
never more certain that the faith will be victorious,” the e-mail
read, according to the paper.
Qatada,
whose assets have been frozen by Washington and who is wanted by
Jordanian authorities for his alleged role in a plot to blow up hotels
there on millennium eve, said Muslims were now in a time of calamity.
“The
time of victory is near. All over the world Muslims are sacrificing
more and contributing more to the struggle,” the message said.
“May
Allah accept us all to be martyred,” Qatada, recently described by a
Spanish judge as “the spiritual head of the mujahideen in
Britain,” said at the end of his e-mail.
Qatada’s
message was read out by Omar Bakri, the leader of the Al-Muhajiroun
group which organized the meeting, the paper said.
The
group has been implicated in sending volunteers to fight with the
Taliban, it added.
The
meeting was also addressed by Abu Hamza, the controversial prayer
leader from a Finsbury Park mosque in north London, who has been
accused of recruiting and fundraising for Muslims in Afghanistan and
Yemen.
Qatada,
40, left his west London home hours before new anti-terrorist
legislation allowing his detention without trial came into effect.
On
Saturday, July 13, the meeting hit out over the “oppression” of
Muslims across the world since the September 11 terror attacks on the
United States.
During
the conference in central London, Abu Hamza said that western
governments of “trying to terrorize Muslims as much as they
terrorize western people.”
Egyptian
Muslim activist Yasser Al-Siri criticized the conditions in which
Taliban and Al-Qaeda prisoners were being held in a U.S. Guantanamo
Bay base in Cuba.
“We
should put George Bush on trial as a war criminal for committing these
violations.”
“The
U.S. did not give any explanation about why they have been
arrested,” he said.
Siri is
suspected of involvement in the assassination last year of Afghan
opposition leader Ahmad Shah Masood, said AFP.
Washington
wants him extradited from London, but Siri declined to comment on
this, saying he did not want to talk about “personal matters.”
According
to the BBC’s online news service, mainstream Muslim leaders stayed
away from the meeting, insisting that the views expressed were not
shared by the vast majority of Muslims.
The
message from the conference was one of resentment towards the U.S. and
what was seen as the oppression being inflicted on Muslims, said the
BBC.
President
Bush’s war on terror, they said, was against Islam and the West was
blackmailing Muslim states to arrest fundamentalists.
Al-Masri,
who lost his hands and left eye fighting in Afghanistan and now
preaches at Finsbury Park mosque in London, said the U.S. government
was spiteful, BBC reported.
He
said: “They are trying to shut me up. I am one of the people who
speaks openly.”
Inayat
Bungalawala of the Muslim Council of Britain said the meeting
reflected the views of a small minority.
He
said: “No mainstream Muslim organization will touch Al-Muhajiroun
with a barge pole. Some of these people have made really outrageous
statements. It is relentless anti-Western rhetoric that is alienating
most Muslims.”
|
