22 Jan The Message of Jihad on Trial at Old Bailey
The trial of Abu Hamza in London is a subject that is riveting the English press, but amazingly is largely ignored back here in the United States. Hamza is an imam at London’s Finsbury Park mosque who is accused of encouraging terrorism, death, and murder of non-Muslims. He is on trial for 15 charges, including nine counts for soliciting murder, four counts for words or deeds that stir up racial hatred, and one count for possessing material useful in committing acts of terror.1. Allah Sent Hitler to Kill Jews. “They [Jews] are enemies to one another and Allah has cursed them … This is why he send [sic] Hitler for them. Jews they have nowhere to go, they are going to be buried in Palestine all of them.” (Link).
2. Jews are Blackmailing the West. “Now all these dogs of the West they have to go now, none of them have condemned what Israel has done to the Muslims and the Palestinians…. Why they act like sugar daddy for Israel? Because they love the Israelis? No way! Because they hate them very much, but the Israelis know how to deal with them. They got a file for each one of these politicians, how much homosexual you are, how many money he has taken as bribe, whom his wife goes with, which child he has been abusing and they got all this against them. Jews know how to control people. This is how they know how to control our leaders. (Link) .
3. Killing Infidels Without Cause is Acceptable. “Killing a Kafir [infidel] for any reason you can say it is OK even if there is no reason for it….Make sure that the person who gave him the licence for that wine shop doesn’t exist anymore on the earth. Finish him up. Give him Dawa. If he doesn’t respect Dawa, kill him.” (Link).
4. Israel Will Become a Graveyard. “The Jews will be destroyed, the state will be destroyed and some of the Jews will be running around hiding behind the trees and the stones and then they got cursed by the earth until there is not one of them left…. The Jews will never leave Palestine. The Jews will be buried there…. It is decreed that it will be the biggest Jewish graveyard in the world…. We do not want the Jews to pull away from Palestine, but we want them to be buried there. This is God’s decree…” (Link).
5. All Sinners are Targets. “Every place of iniquity, every brothel, every video shop which is selling naked, for the victorious party is a target…. If anybody protect these kufr (unbeliever) places and these fisq (sinful) places is a target… Anybody who propagate these kind of thing among Muslims is a target.” (Link).
6. Suicide Bombers are Martyrs. “It is not called suicide, this is called martyrdom…. If we do not use terrorism or torture what are we going to use?” (Link).
7. We Must Bleed the Enemy. “You have to bleed the enemy. Then, after you have done that, obviously you will be on the run.” (Link).
8. You Must Kill Them With Mice Poison, Not WMDs. “There is no real need to go and train for tanks and aeroplanes… where are you going to find these… you can’t buy these in the market… you cannot make them yourselves… You cannot do it by chemical weapons, you have to do it by mice poison.” (Link).
9. Allah Loves Blood. “There is no drop of liquid loved by Allah more than the liquid of blood.” (Link).
It is difficult to fathom that two Underground stops from King’s Cross Station we have an imam at a mosque in North London who is preaching such violent hatred. American and English sensibilities give a very wide berth for the freedom of speech. But these words, if proven to be uttered by Hamza, are criminal. They directly incite terrorism, murder, and death of non-Muslims. They are antithetical to a free and civil society and are deserving of criminal punishment.
Convict him and accomplish what when he’s placed in a general prisoner population whose views he further informs for the ideologically aligned and whose “need” for kinship he manipulatively twists into recruitment for others? From this perspective, inserting him into a place where he will have a captive audience of the criminally inclined seems to be just a different evil rather than a lesser one. The battle against such hatred requires a lot more than incarcerating radical imams and remains equally unsolved through the exacting of death. Critics often assert that the “war for hearts and minds” over changing values and predispositions is a soft and weak approach to the war on terror. Seeing the world as basically composed of a fixed mass of persons hell-bent on your destruction and deterred only through punishment of long prison terms or death will do that to a person. A worldview of this sort is only partially correct. There are some people that simply need to be killed because a peaceful co-existence with them is impossible. There are others (e.g., the imam characterized above) that should be placed in solitary confinement with a REAL rehabilitation to his character. Failure to pursue more relatively… Read more »