Al-Qaeda cleric, Abu Hamza no threat

So says Mick Hume writing in The Times Online

PANTOMIME Abu Hamza, the infamous one-eyed, hook-handed preacher, is an Islamist bigot and cheerleader for Osama bin Laden, whose appearance and utterances often bring to mind the words “lunatic” and “raving”. What he is not, however, is a mortal threat to Western civilisation.

This week the Government’s drawn-out attempt to strip Abu Hamza of British citizenship and deport him descended further into farce. To judge by the furious public reaction to the latest delay in the court procedures, one might imagine that the beak had released bin Laden himself on bail. But while he might look the part, the preacher from Finsbury Park mosque, dubbed “Captain Hook” by the tabloids, is little more than a panto villain. Building up Abu Hamza into Britain ’s public enemy No 1 will do wonders for his inflated ego, but nothing to address real problems.

Presumedly, Hume doesn't mind using our tax money to pay for Hamza's Al-Qaeda recuritment programs.

He goes on to down play the effect Hamza is having on young Muslims.

Worse, the campaign against Abu Hamza could become a self-fulfilling mission. By building up his image as a formidable opponent, the authorities have succeeded in making him appear an heroic resistance fighter among some disaffected young Muslims. Without all the cameras, he would be invisible.

Well it seems that many do not agree with Mr. Hume.

From Paul Kenyon writing for The BBC

A growing number of young Muslim men in Britain want to train to become suicide bombers, a BBC investigation has revealed.

Young Muslims take notes on laptops while others scribble down key phrases and children as young as nine sit, mesmerised.

Despite his avuncular demeanour, Bakri, who came to the UK from Beirut, has twice been arrested for issuing a fatwa - one of them on the former Prime Minister, John Major.

Tonight, he rallies the crowd by listing places in America, Africa and the Middle East where suicide bombers have already struck, before coming closer to home: "If somebody decided to land an aeroplane over 10 Downing Street, for example - this is a form of self sacrifice", he tells them.

While this article talks about Bakri in particular, Hamza preaches the same kind of hate and encourages the same kind terrorism.

Trevor Phillips, head of the Commission for Racial Equality, speaking to The BBC

"said the sooner leaders of these groups were deported the better.

Mr Phillips said members of the far-right British National Party (BNP) were "scumbags" but reserved his most vehement criticism for Abu Hamza al-Masri and Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad, two of the leading figures within fringe Islamist politics.

"The faster [Home Secretary] David Blunkett can deport them the better," Mr Phillips told Reuters in an interview.

"Every time Abu Hamza or Sheikh Omar do their thing in front of the television cameras, Muslims suffer in dozens of places in this country," Phillips said."

There is no doubt that these people are not merely pantomime characters as Mr Hume would have you believe. They are just what they appear to be, evil recuriters for terrorism who should be locked up or deported. These people are not just exercising their freedom of speech.

Hume goes further though and blames Britain and the west for breeding terrorism.

Abu Hamza’s crankish sermons are not the reason why some British Muslim youths are drawn towards Islamic extremism. Treating them as mindless attack dogs that will jump at their master’s voice looks like a way of avoiding the awkward question of what it is about British and Western society that could make the backward cant of religious fundamentalism seem an attractive alternative. How much easier it is to knock down a one-eyed bogeyman.

Hume must have had one to many Gin and Tonics when he worte this pile of camel dung. Why would he write in support of a despicable terrorist like Hamza? Why would he blame the UK and the west for breeding terrorism?

Here's why

Mick Hume

Erstwhile leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party, editor of Living Marxism, and now editor of Spiked online.

"Mick Hume is the editor of spiked and a columnist for The Times (London) and a regular contributor to other publications. He was the editor of LM magazine (which he launched, originally as Living Marxism, in 1988) until it was forced to close in 2000 following a libel suit brought by ITN. Hume is a fortysomething ex-grammar school boy from Woking, who went to Manchester University and still has a season ticket at Old Trafford." [1]

References

"Speakers' biographies", Communicating the war on terror conference website, 5 June 2003

Now you know why.