The six degrees of al-Muhajiroun

By Jeffrey Cozzens

Evan Kohlmann's and Steven Emerson’s posts concerning the recent New York City demonstration of the Islamic Thinkers’ Society call to mind the involvement of other al-Muhajiroun-linked personalities in aiding and abetting the global jihad beyond the oft-discussed British suicide bombers of 2003, Hanif and Sharif. The recent trial in the United Kingdom of a group of British citizens accused of planning attacks in that country in 2004 sheds light on the former al-Muhajiroun’s under-researched and ambiguous role in the global jihad.

Muhammad Babar, a confessed member of UK and NY-based al-Muhajiroun networks since the early 1990’s, convicted al-Qa’ida affiliate and “star” witness in the UK trial, has labeled Omar Bakri Muhammad (OBM), the founder of the UK-based al-Muhajiroun, as one of his primary ideological mentors (the other being Abu Hamza al-Masri). Babar claimed that OBM was instrumental to his decision to emigrate from the United States to Afghanistan after 9/11 with the intent of aiding al-Qa’ida members and fighting against coalition forces. This move was very much in keeping with the ‘Covenant of Security’ theology often discussed by OBM, which stipulates emigration from the West prior to fighting against it.

It was allegedly in an al-Qa’ida-linked camp in Malakand, Pakistan, that Babar met the key defendants of the trial, supposedly aiding them in bomb-making and in attempts to smuggle explosives back into the UK. Interestingly, Babar has been tied to Muhammad Siddique Khan, the apparent ring-leader of the 7/7 London bombings. The sum of this information suggests not only tangential linkages between multiple plots in the United Kingdom but also portrays al-Muhajiroun as both a radicalizing agent, at one extreme, and an overseas logistical facilitator for attacks on the West at the other. Accusations that Omar Bakri Muhammad has started a camp in Lebanon for the further indoctrination of Western converts prior to their repatriation should therefore come as little surprise - and it should receive tremendous scrutiny from Western intelligence communities. Even if indirectly, the former al-Muhajiroun and its off-shoots have aided and abetted the global jihad more than previously believed, and it appears that these continue to do so, if only under different names and in different venues.

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