- On July 18, 2024, riots broke out in Leeds, a city with a significant Pakistani population, involving violent actions such as setting a bus on fire and attacking police vehicles. Newly elected councilor Mothin Ali was seen among the crowd.
- Britain’s support for Islamic jihad during the Cold War, particularly against Russia in Afghanistan, laid the foundation for the current extremist elements within the UK, with British Muslims actively participating and fundraising for the Mujahideen.
- The influx of Muslim immigrants, often resistant to assimilation, is creating parallel societies within Britain. Sharia law and Islamic finance systems are increasingly prevalent, with extremist activities going unchecked in some areas.
- British-born jihadis of Pakistani origin, like Usman Khan, have carried out significant terrorist attacks, highlighting the persistent and evolving threat from radicalized individuals within the UK.
- Political correctness and reluctance to address the issue of radicalization among Muslim immigrants are seen as contributing to the ongoing unrest and the potential erosion of liberal democracy in Britain, with increasing calls for Sharia law from within the Muslim community.
On the evening of July 18, 2024, violence broke out in the Pakistani-dominated city of Leeds in the north of England. In visuals that have surfaced on social media, a frenzied mob was seen setting a bus on fire in the Harehills area. The rioters also overturned a police car, broke the glass windows of another police vehicle, and endangered the lives of officers seated inside it. Newly elected Leeds councilor Mothin Ali was spotted among the crowd.[1] He’s among the record number of Muslims elected in the recent British parliamentary elections.[2]
Political correctness means nobody will question the elephant in the room – a steady influx of Muslim immigrants, including uncountable illegals, that threatens to rip apart Britain’s multicultural society. Large numbers of these immigrants are notorious for ripping off the country’s welfare system. Few are willing to assimilate, but instead, many have joined the jihad against the very state that feeds them. How did Britain come to such a pass? To understand this, let’s start from the Cold War era.
Journey to Jihad
In early 1980, shortly after the Russians had invaded Afghanistan and installed a pro-Moscow regime, Britain took the lead in sparking an Islamic jihad to bait the Russian bear. The plan was to bring Muslims from all around the world into Pakistan, where they would be trained as Mujahideen (“those engaged in jihad”) and sent into Afghanistan to fight the Russians.[3]
Britain’s sponsorship of jihad was music to the ears of British Muslims, especially those who had migrated from Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, who went into a frenzy of fundraising. Islamic demagogues in places like Birmingham and London openly recruited Mujahideen at street corners, spewing hate speech not only against “godless communists” but also against Jews and Hindus.
Islamic jihad even became a fashionable catchword in Britain, with pop singer Cat Stevens becoming its most visible symbol. After converting to Islam as Yusuf Islam, he declared that author Salman Rushdie “must be killed” for insulting Mohammed, the prophet of Islam.[4]
But like all Faustian bargains, there always comes a time to pay up….the Pakistanis and other immigrant Muslims have started turning on Britain, the country that provided them training and safe havens for launching jihad against Russia.
Encouraged by Britain’s green light for international jihad, shops in London’s Muslim-dominated neighborhoods now started displaying posters exhorting customers and passers-by to contribute money for killing Hindus in Kashmir. When local Hindus saw this naked display of Islamic fundamentalism, they promptly informed a British cop about the offensive posters. The cop did nothing, so the Hindus took up the matter with superior officers. To their disappointment, the British police said it was a “South Asian matter,” and they didn’t think it was necessary to clamp down on such “banal” activities.
But like all Faustian bargains, there always comes a time to pay up. The Mujahideen of the 1980s metamorphosed into al-Qaeda, which became the incubator for today’s Islamic State. But the more dangerous development from Britain’s point of view is that the Pakistanis and other immigrant Muslims have started turning on Britain, the country that provided them training and safe havens for launching jihad against Russia. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, during a visit to Islamabad, said that 75 percent of serious terrorist plots aimed at Britain were connected to Pakistan.[5] The Harvard Kennedy School agrees: “Most significant terror plots in Great Britain since 9/11 have had a Pakistan-based connection.”[6]
The result of this cynical policy of allying with the radicalized elements of the Islamic world is that British-born and raised jihadis of Pakistani origin have hit the headlines globally on numerous occasions. One of them was Usman Khan, the knife-wielding terrorist who stabbed to death a young British man and woman near London Bridge. Khan was a convicted Islamist terrorist, recently released from prison after serving just half of his 16-year sentence for an earlier plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange and pubs in Stoke, the town where he was born.[7]
Before his arrest in 2010, Khan was a member of a cell inspired by the al-Qaeda terrorist organization. The group was trying to assemble materials and knowledge to make pipe bombs and other explosive devices, according to accounts of his earlier conviction. The men were also fundraising to construct a religious school in Pakistan that would have been used instead to train terrorists.
History of Backing Radicals
When it comes to providing a safe haven for hardened terrorists, Britain never fails to rise to the occasion. “The British Empire had an overprotective attitude toward Islam,” writes Nu’man Abd Al-Wahid of the Lebanon-based Al-Akhbar.[8]
Considering that Britain was one of the prime culprits in the destabilization of Iran in the 1950s and is behind the devastation of Iraq, Libya, and Syria in more recent times, one would be tempted to take the view the British are anti-Muslim. But in fact, the British are only opposed to nationalist Muslims and the moderate middle classes.
Al-Wahid explains: “When the Empire began to consolidate its lordship over the Arab world after World War I, it partnered with Saudi Wahhabis and the Muslim Brotherhood. The trends these movements represented were not so much ‘invented’ by the British but favored and promoted.
The British Empire…heroically and selflessly defended Islam, even if al-Azhar, the traditional bastion of Islamic learning in the world, didn’t comprehend this urgency.
“Before the British allowed the Wahhabis to establish themselves in Riyadh in 1901, they were an isolated, exiled cult in the Basra region known as ‘Kuwait’. With further support from the Empire, the Wahhabis expanded into the western part of the Arabian peninsula in 1924 and 1925.”
The British advocated the Muslim Brotherhood brand of Islam rather than the traditional moderate Islam as practiced by the oldest university in the Islamic world, Al-Azhar:
“The British Empire…heroically and selflessly defended Islam, even if al-Azhar, the traditional bastion of Islamic learning in the world, didn’t comprehend this urgency. By the time these two major trends of Islamism strategically coalesced in the 1950s to meet the challenge of third-world independence and socialism, the Americans had embraced the British Empire’s imperialist strategy.”
“This embrace meant bringing British puppets, such as the al-Saud clan of Saudi Arabia and the Thani clan of Qatar, under its protective umbrella. This American appropriation of the puppets had initially gained doctrinal credibility through the Eisenhower doctrine and extended all the way until the 1980s to support the Islamist mercenaries, or Mujahideen, against the Soviets in the 1980s.”
Britain’s infatuation with extremism was evident during its colonial presence in India. In a speech before the British Parliament in 1843, Thomas Macaulay suggested how Britain should deal with India’s Hindu majority versus its Muslim minority. Britain, he said, should “take no part in the disputes between Mahometans and idolaters. But, if our Government does take a part, there cannot be a doubt that Mahometanism is entitled to the preference“.[9]
How Muslims are Transforming Britain
Muslim mass immigration is changing Britain in ways unimaginable a generation ago. For instance, London is creating a parallel Islamic financial system to fill the growing demand for Sharia-compliant banking products demanded by Muslim immigrants. Britain has emerged as ground zero for Islamic banking in Europe, and London is now the leading center for Islamic finance outside the Muslim world.
Sharia law is transforming daily life, too. In the Tower Hamlets area of East London (also known as the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets), extremist Muslim preachers, called the Tower Hamlets’ Taliban, regularly issue death threats to women who refuse to wear Islamic veils. Neighborhood streets have been plastered with posters declaring, “You are entering a Sharia-controlled zone: Islamic rules enforced.” And street advertising deemed offensive to Muslims is regularly vandalized or blacked out with spray paint.[10]
The Islamic Emirates Project, launched by the Muslims Against the Crusades group, names the British cities of Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, as well as Waltham Forest in northeast London and Tower Hamlets in East London as territories to be targeted for blanket Sharia rule.
Says an announcement posted on the Muslims Against the Crusades website: “In the last 50 years, the United Kingdom has transformed beyond recognition. What was once a predominantly Christian country has now been overwhelmed by a rising Muslim population, which seeks to preserve its Islamic identity and protect itself from the satanic values of the tyrannical British government.”
The website continues: “With several Islamic emirates already well established across Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, including Iraq and Afghanistan, we see this as a radical, but very realistic step in the heart of Western Europe, that will inshallah (God willing), pave the way for the worldwide domination of Islam.”
Muslims Against the Crusades website: “In the last 50 years, the United Kingdom has transformed beyond recognition. What was once a predominantly Christian country has now been overwhelmed by a rising Muslim population, which seeks to preserve its Islamic identity and protect itself from the satanic values of the tyrannical British government.”
The biggest threat is that through demographic jihad (aka relentless breeding), Muslims may subvert freedoms that British citizens have prided in for centuries. Trevor Phillips, former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, claims the arrival of some Muslim groups in particular who are actively “resistant to the traditional process of integration” threatens to shake the foundations of “liberal democracy” itself.[11]
In a 100-page paper published by the think-tank Civitas, set to provoke uproar, Phillips argues that a new brand of “super-diversity” is bringing challenges to the Western way of life, far removed from those of immigration of the past.
“Squeamishness about addressing diversity and its discontents risks allowing our country to sleepwalk to a catastrophe that will set community against community, endorse sexist aggression, suppress freedom of expression, reverse hard-won civil liberties, and undermine the liberal democracy that has served this country so well for so long,” he insists.
Safehouses for Terrorists
During and after the Chechen Wars of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Britain directed terrorist activity against Russia in a big way. A prominent London-based fugitive is Akhmed Zakayev. A key figure in the rebel Chechen government, he is wanted in Russia for terrorist-related crimes, including murder.
Zakayev has been living a charmed life in Britain since 2002, when English actress Vanessa Redgrave paid $98,000 for his bail. “I’m Akhmed’s host. I’m his friend, I’m his guarantor,” Redgrave told the British media. “I think there’s a load of people who care…that there should be peace for the Chechen people at last.”[12]
Two years later, Chechen terrorists massacred 330 children in the Russian city of Beslan. However, the British, including the likes of Redgrave, refused to have a relook at their special relationship with the Chechen rebels. After all, they were Russian children who were killed.
If British liberals hope the jihadi snakes they are rearing in their backyard would only bite countries that Britain wants to destabilize, then it is mistaken.
At the same time, the Chechen connection continues to be useful for Britain. Iranian news agency FARS reports that Britain is pumping London-based Chechen terrorists into Syria via the open Turkish border.
If British liberals hope the jihadi snakes they are rearing in their backyard would only bite countries that Britain wants to destabilize, then it is mistaken. Kim Sengupta writes in The Independent[13]:
“For years, violent Islamist groups were allowed to settle in Britain, using the country as a base to carry out attacks abroad. This was tolerated in the belief that they would not bomb the country where they lived and that, as long as they were here, the security service would be able to infiltrate them. At the same time, mosque after mosque was taken over through intimidation by the fundamentalists. Police and others in authority refused pleas from moderate Muslims with the excuse that they did not want to interfere.
There was even a name for this amoral accommodation: the ‘covenant of security.’ We now know that jihadists will indeed blow up their home country and that the security agencies signally failed to infiltrate the terrorist cells while they had the chance.”
No Way Out for Britain
Britain’s dalliance with terrorists and jihadis will not end well. A poll in April 2016 found that two-thirds of British Muslims would not tell the government if a friend or family member became involved with extremists. Half of them said homosexuality should be illegal, and over 20 percent supported establishing Sharia in the UK.[14][14]
The culmination of Britain’s nexus with radical Islam is that London became the first major European city to elect a Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan. Says British politician Paul Weston: “A Muslim man with way too many extremist links to be entirely coincidental is now the Mayor of London. I suppose this is hardly a shock, though. The native English are a demographic minority (and a rapidly dwindling one) in London, while Muslims from Pakistan and Bangladesh are a rapidly expanding demographic.”[15][15]
Indians who were outraged by Khan looking the other way while fanatic Pakistani mobs trashed the Indian embassy in London should have seen that coming.[16][16] In 2008, Khan gave a speech at the Global Peace and Unity Conference, an event organized by the Islam Channel, which has been censured repeatedly by British media regulators for extremism. Members of the audience were filmed flying the black flag of jihad while Khan was speaking.
That Khan won despite Pakistanis making up only 12 percent of London’s population shows there are way too many Britons who are unable to see that Khan’s ascendancy portends grave tidings for Britain’s non-Muslim population. Muslim leaders in Britain have declared that while they welcome the gains of electoral politics, as long as they are a minority, they will shut down parliament and introduce Islamic law when they become a majority.
The British are way over their heads in events they cannot begin to understand, let alone control.
Meanwhile, there is no end to political correctness in Britain when it comes to dealing with Islamic terror. One of the two people stabbed to death by Usman Khan was 25-year-old Jack Merritt. When Conservative Party leader Boris Johnson attempted to pin the blame for his death on the Labour Party’s policies, which ensured Khan’s early release from prison, Merritt’s father tweeted: “Don’t use my son’s death….to promote your vile propaganda. Jack stood against everything you stand for – hatred, division, ignorance.”[17][17]
Merritt’s father later reposted a post on X by self-styled journalist Ash Sarkar (a leftist demagogue and anarchist), who railed against “draconian sentencing,” implying that Usman Khan had nothing to do with Merritt’s death.[18][18]
The British are way over their heads in events they cannot begin to understand, let alone control. Meanwhile, the battle is spilling over into the streets of Leeds, Birmingham and London. It will take the Brits more than a miracle to put the jihad genie back into the bottle.
Citations
[1] Paul Golding: “Newly elected Leeds councilor Mothin Ali spotted among the crowd in the ongoing riots in Harehills, Leeds. They will never integrate or assimilate; https://x.com/GoldingBF/status/1814027225362034795
[2] Record number of Muslims elected to UK parliament despite rising Islamophobia; https://www.aa.com.tr/en/europe/record-number-of-muslims-elected-to-uk-parliament-despite-rising-islamophobia/3270749
[3] UK discussed plans to help mujahideen weeks after Soviet invasion of Afghanistan | National Archives | The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/dec/30/uk-mujahideen-afghanistan-soviet-invasion
[4] Cat Stevens – Wikipedia; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_Stevens#Lawsuit_over_News_UK_newspaper_reports_that_he_had_supported_terrorism
[5] Jack Merritt named as London Bridge stabbing victim – The Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/london-bridge-attacker-had-previous-terrorism-conviction-police-say/2019/11/30/c365555e-12ed-11ea-924c-b34d09bbc948_story.html
[6] Gordon Brown: 75% of UK terror plots originate in Pakistan | Mumbai terror attacks | The Guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/world/2008/dec/14/mumbai-terror-attacks-india
[7] Terrorist Safe Havens (belfercenter.org); https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/publication/terrorist-safe-havens.pdf
[8] Islamic Britain & The Compromised Western Civilization – Page 4 – Bharat Rakshak (bharat-rakshak.com); https://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic.php?t=6554&start=120
[9] The Somnath Gate Saga – A Vivid Example of the Imperial Contempt for “Hindoos” – Hindu Dvesha (stophindudvesha.org); https://stophindudvesha.org/the-somnath-gate-saga-a-vivid-example-of-the-imperial-contempt-for-hindoos/
[10] Britain’s “Islamic Emirates Project”: Gatestone Institute; https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/2278/britain-islamic-emirates-project
[11] Race and Faith (civitas.org.uk); http://www.civitas.org.uk/content/files/Race-and-Faith.pdf
[12] Britain Orders Extradition Hearing for Chechen Official – 2002-12-06 (voanews.com); https://www.voanews.com/a/a-13-a-2002-12-06-11-britain-67414222/383627.html
[13] Secret Affairs, By Mark Curtis (Reviewed: Kim Sengupta); https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/secret-affairs-by-mark-curtis-2038691.html
[14] Two-thirds of British Muslims would not give police terror tip-offs | UK | News | Express.co.uk; https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/659913/two-in-three-British-Muslims-would-NOT-give-police-terror-tip-offs
[15] Meet the First Muslim Mayor of London: Gatestone Institute; https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/8011/sadiq-khan
[16] Truly sad: Anand Mahindra reacts to attack on UK journalist by Pakistan supporters in London – India Today; https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/anand-mahindra-uk-journalist-pakistan-supporters-london-1613410-2019-10-28
[17] London Bridge victim’s father tells politicians and media ‘Don’t use my son’s death to promote your vile propaganda’ – Wales Online; https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/london-bridge-victims-father-tells-17347369
[18] Ash Sarkar on X: “It’s beyond disgusting that Boris Johnson, Priti Patel, & newspapers like the Mail are using Jack Merritt’s death and image to promote an agenda he fought against all his life. He was a passionate believer in rehabilitation and transformative justice, not draconian sentencing”; https://twitter.com/AyoCaesar/status/1201402895171756032