Finsbury ParkInside the British Jihad

Finsbury Park, North London
Stepping off the subway at Finsbury Park, the change in scenery could not have been more acute. Just an hour earlier, I had been awed by the grandeur of Big Ben, towering over the British Houses of Parliament. It is the symbol of the England in our history books: a beacon of liberty, tolerance, and stability.

Finsbury Park is different. Small shops and ragged apartments line the streets of this working class area of North London. More pronounced than the socioeconomic inequality is the cultural discrepancy. Grocery stores feature Middle Eastern foods and advertisements for cheap phone calls to the East while women clad in veils and burkas stroll with their young children wearing kufis.

After a short walk from the subway, I spotted a building at the corner of St. Tomas’ Road with a crescent moon and star at its peak. I walked up the steps to the mosque and opened the door with a bit of trepidation. A clean-shaven young man named Faisal welcomed me in with a cheery smile. Explaining that I was a student from the United States, he inquired, “Have you heard of this mosque before?” I had. With a dismayed look, Faisal replied in broken English “Not good things, I bet.”

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Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the Finsbury Park Mosque became a symbol of Britain’s problem with Radical Islam and the eerie face of “Londonistan.” The Mosque was conceived at the Prince of Wales’ request. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated over 2.3 million pounds to construct the building. From 1997 until his dismissal in 2003, however, the fiery Egyptian-born preacher Abu Hamza al-Masri served as the Mosque’s imam. Hamza’s notoriety extends beyond his eye-catching if unfashionable look: an opaque eye and right hook, both consequences of his involvement with the Mujahideen in the late 1980s.

Hamza rose to prominence on the British Islamist scene, preaching a message of jihad and anti-Semitism. “Killing of the Kaffir (non-believers) for any reason, you can say it is OK, even if there is no reason for it.” The ultimate goal, he said, is to see “The Khalifa sitting in the White House, ruling from there like the Prophet Mohammed said that Allah… told him that the whole earth, it will be for Muslims, booty for Islam.” Beyond propagating such fighting words, the Mosque featured Kalashnikov AK-47 training and served as a base for shipping telecommunications equipment and medical supplies to fellow jihadists in Pakistan.

Hamza’s activity at Finsbury Park attracted nothing less than an all-star lineup of terrorists:
• Richard Reid — The British-born terrorist who attempted to detonate a shoe bomb on a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami in 2001.
• Zacarias Moussaoui — The French Moroccan who earned the moniker, “20th hijacker” for his role in the 9/11 attacks.
• Abu Doha — The Algerian who was arrested in February 2001 for trying to leave
England for Saudi Arabia on a forged passport. He is also fighting extradition to the United States for his involvement in the “millennium plot” to blow up an airport in Los Angeles.
• Nizar Trabelsi — Tunisian ex-footballer jailed in Belgium for plotting to attack the Kleine Brogul NATO airbase.
• Djamel Beghal — Recruited Reid, Moussaoui, and Trabelsi for suicide missions. Jailed in France over an alleged plot to attack the American Embassy in Paris. Beghal was so extreme that Osama bin Laden labeled him “over the pale.”

Despite ominous signs, British authorities’ were slow in confronting Hamza or investigating the Mosque’s activities. The seeming indifference to Islamist violence was not an isolated lapse; it represented one act in Britain’s larger pattern of inaction. Over the years, the governments of over nine different nations lodged complaints about terrorist operations in Britain. In response, Britain refused a string of requests to extradite suspected terrorists.

To a certain extent, British softness against Radical Islam can be attributed to a pre-9/11 naiveté of the terrorist threat. Yet there is also a more sinister explanation: a tacit bargain between British authorities and radical Islamists operating in the country. The jihadists were granted free reign so long as they did not attack England. In the words of a former British Special Branch security officer, “There was a deal with these guys. We told them if you don’t cause us any problems, then we won’t bother you.” Al-Qaeda leader Omar Bakri Mohammed similarly testified to the pact. Asked in 1998 why Islamists never attacked Britain, he replied, “I work here in accordance with the covenant of peace which I made with the British government when I got asylum…. We respect the terms of this bond as Allah orders us to do.” But following the 9/11 attacks, British aid in the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the 7/7 terrorist attacks, the arrangement has unraveled.

In January 2003, British authorities confronted the Finsbury Park Mosque. One –hundred-fifty policemen, equipped with riot gear and guns (a rarity in Britain), broke through the front door of the Mosque with a battering ram. Even then, the British dithered. They did not arrest Hamza as part of the raid. On the contrary, he continued to preach to thousands of followers every Friday in front of the Mosque. The events caused such a ruckus that British taxpayers were forced to foot the bill to keep at least twelve officers on guard.

Hamza’s reign came to an end in 2004. The United States began to seek Hamza’s extradition for his alleged role in trying to establish a “terrorist training camp” in Oregon. British authorities in turn convicted him on eleven of fifteen offenses for inciting murder and racial hatred, and possessing an encyclopedia of Afghan Jihad, which lists Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower, and the Statue of Liberty as possible targets for attack. After serving his sentence in Britain, Hamza will be eligible for extradition to the United States.

Since the 2003 raid, the Muslim Association of Britain has used legal means to take over the Mosque and install a more moderate leadership. Signaling a new direction, they changed the name of the Mosque to the North London Central Mosque in February 2005. Four months later, the new Imam publicly called for help in catching the London subway bombers.

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After removing my shoes at the front door, Faisal agreed to let me tour the Mosque with him. “Everything here has changed,” he assured me as we quietly walked up the stairs, “We are reaching out to the rest of the community, the churches, and MPs [Members of Parliament] to show that things have changed.” As evidence, he pointed to a course on Islam the Mosque now offers for non-Muslims.

On the second floor, where Hamza once delivered sermons to packed crowds of worshipers, children were gathered in small circles devoutly studying the Koran. Faisal explained that activity at the Mosque is flourishing, and that it has become a welcoming hub for first-generation immigrants adjusting to life in Britain. The numbers seem to support his claim; since the change in management, attendance at the Mosque has tripled.

Still, all is not rosy at the Mosque. Despite efforts to project a moderate image, the new board of trustees is marked by shady leaders. According to US court documents, for instance, Mohammed Kassem Sawalha, one of the current trustees, was “in charge of Hamas terrorist operations within the West Bank in the early 1990s.” Perhaps this explains the large advertisement on the front door of the Mosque urging Muslims to “protest the Zionist occupation of Palestine.”

Finsbury Park Mosque should serve as a clarion call to policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic. It reveals that the War on Terrorism is not simply a regional conflict. As Finsbury Park Mosque’s guest-list reveals, many of most vile terrorists exploit the West’s liberties to launch attacks on the free world. Finsbury Park is the logical consequence of Britain’s strategy of appeasement and complicity in the face of the global menace. A successful approach to combating global Islamism must recognize the jihadist threat within the West and take seriously the public statements of radical leaders who advocate terrorism as a means to reestablish the Caliphate. There can be no compromise with the radical elements within Islam.

Endnotes
1 Melanie Phillips, Londonistan, (New York: Encounter Books, 2006): p. 15.
2 Qtd. in The Telegraph, 2 August 2006.
3 Qtd. in The Telegraph, 2 August 2006.
4 The Observer, 17 February 2002.
5 The Independent, 31 May 2007
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Qtd. in The Observer, 26 January 2003.
10 Qtd. in Al-Sharq al-Awsat, 22 August 1998.
11 The Daily Telegraph, 18 October 2003.
12 BBC News, 7 February 2006, available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news?4690224.stm
13 New York Times, 9 July 2005.
14 Ibid.