UK Plot: Stop at the "extremist"

By Zeyno Baran

After each terrorist incident, the family and close friends of the accused say something like “he was such a nice person” and express strong doubt that he/she really could have been involved in such a horrible act. When will we learn that “being nice” is not mutually exclusive with being ideologically committed to bringing about an Islamic world order in the way the Islamists consider would be best for “social justice”? Or that these nice people would commit violent acts to achieve this goal?

Take the most recent case of Bilal Abdulla, the British-born doctor who rammed his Jeep into the Glasgow airport last weekend. According to Hicham Kwieder, an acquaintance of Abdulla during his time in Cambridge, the good doctor was “a genuine man, he looked fine and was often smiling.”

But then we have this quote:

“His mother was apparently afraid to remove her headscarf in his presence. And one classmate recalls an incident when he tried to destroy a crucifix dropped by a Christian student in a classroom.”

Shiraz Maher, one of the former HT members, wrote about his memories of Dr. Bilal Abdulla from his time as student at Cambridge. He remembers Bilal as believing in “Wahhabi ideology” and that “He didn't see himself as being radical: he saw himself as following Islam.” Indeed, according to Shiraz, it was this Wahhabi stand of Islam that got Bilal angry with his housemate who “use to sing and play guitar—a complete no-no for the Wahhabis…so, what does Bilal do?

"Bilal called him a 'waster' and boasted to me that a few days earlier he had brought the guy into his bedroom. He sat him down and told him he needed to pray. He told him: 'If you ever play again I'm going to smash the guitar.' He then put on a video of al-Zarqawi beheading one of the hostages in Iraq. 'If you think I'm messing about, this is what we do. This is what our people do - we slaughter.' Bilal laughed when he recounted the story."

Shiraz further recounts,

"Bilal talked about the validity of jihad, about expelling American and British troops. He described jihad as the highest pinnacle of Islam. He worked to the same endgame that we were all working to. There was no difference between us at the time. He would laugh when we talked about a particular bomb attack in Iraq. We all rejoiced then. And yet even I didn't think that he would take action himself.

Like myself, Bilal didn't have any non-Muslim friends and the circle of Muslims he chose to socialise with was small and selective. But he certainly trusted and respected us. I think this was solely because he recognised that we shared the same ultimate vision as him for Iraq and the wider Muslim world. In that sense our views were virtually identical. We only differed over our choice of method."

And I completely agree with Shiraz and all those other Muslims who either escaped the Islamist trap or have been lucky not to have ever fallen into it that:

"….I believe it's wrong to distinguish between 'extremism' and 'violent extremism' as the government has been doing in recent months. The two are inextricably intertwined. Without movements such as Hizb creating the moral imperatives to justify terror, people like Bilal wouldn't have the support of an ideological infrastructure cheering them on. And, I believe, it's a fallacy to suggest that the culpability of agitators and cheerleaders is any less than for those who actually carry out acts of terror."

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