By Paul Goodman
Student Rights, Harry's Place and Nick Cohen are up in arms about the trahison des clercs at University College, London, over the Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab scandal - see here, here, here and here.
In 2009, Abdulmutallab tried to blow up an airplane flying from Amsterdam to Detroit. Between 2005 and 2008, he studied at UCL, where he was President of the University's Islamic Society. It's been claimed that he was radicalised towards extremism during this period, that he was under surveillance by MI5, and that he was directed to carry out the attempted airplane atrocity by the Al-Qaeda linked preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was later in contact with Major Nidal Hood, the perpetrator of the Fort Hood massacre.
An enquiry commissioned by UCL into the Abdulmutallab affair was recently published. Student Rights describes it as a "whitewash", Harry's Place as "self-serving" and Cohen as "a lame effort". I want to make only one point arising from it. Cohen writes -
"UCL [chose] to put on the inquiry team Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. Dr Bari is high up in the Jamaat-e-Islami-dominated East London Mosque".
Dr Bari is the Chairman of the institution's Mosque Committee. On December 27 2008, the Daily Telegraph reported that Al Awlaki had been invited to deliver a video lecture at the mosque, that he was allegedly "a spiritual adviser to three of the September 11 terrorists" and that he had been described by the US Department of Homeland Security as "an Al-Qaeda supporter" which had accused him of using video lectures to "encourage terrorist attacks".
I was at the time the Party's front bench spokesman in the Commons, and had had some dealings with Dr Bari in his MCB capacity (we hadn't at that point broken off relations with the organisation). This was the first I'd heard of Al-Awlaki, and I wrote to Dr Bari about the Telegraph's report. In my letter, I said that "the claims in the piece are serious" (a statement of the obvious) and "have serious implications for the relationship between the mosque and the Conservative Party" (ditto).
However, I noted that the mosque "hasn't had the chance to put its side of the story to us, and would be grateful for your view of the claims". Dr Bari replied a fortnight or so later. He wrote that "we saw no need to revoke the permission for the event based on one article in the Daily Telegraph, whose record on reporting our institution or our community does not inspire us with much confidence". He didn't address the US Department of Homeland Security's view.
He did write that "we found no evidence that the event was promoting hate". Interestingly, he didn't add the words "or violence". As the Telegraph reported, the material advertising the event "appears to be a clear reference to the attacks on New York, and features meteors raining down on Manhattan, setting fire to the city and shattering the Statue of Liberty". As for further evidence of hate, another speaker advertised for the event was Khalid Yasin, who according to the Telegraph "has described the beliefs of Christians and Jews as 'filth'."
In short, we have a mosque committee Chairman who, when asked about the visit to his mosque of a preacher viewed by one of our main allies as an Al Qaeda-linked preacher, either couldn't be bothered to address the matter or evaded it - the same preacher, remember, who later turned out to be associated with an attempt to blow up an airplane and a separate attack which killed 13 people.
And we also have a college which appoints the same mosque committee Chairman to an enquiry...which investigates a student linked to a Al Qaeda-linked preacher... who that same Chairman had allowed to broadcast into his mosque (despite being warned not to do so).
At the end of all that, the single point that I'm making is this. The Mosque's website says that "we unequivocally reject all terrorism". But for as long as terrorist-linked preachers are allowed to broadcast into the mosque, the Conservative Party should have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
