London’s Jihadists

From National Review

While the world is busy denouncing the United States for the deplorable behavior of a few soldiers, it is oblivious to growing incitement by Islamist clerics against America and the West. Calling for jihad earlier this month in London, Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammad told his disciples: "All Muslims of the West will be obliged to become his sword" in a new battle. At the same time, another Islamist, Imam Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, is preaching in London that "it's okay to kill [those who] work against Islam, by slitting their throats, or by shooting them."

Such incitement is prohibited by law in the U.K. Under the heading of "Inciting Terrorism Overseas," section 59 1(a), the Terrorism Act of 2000 clearly states that "a person commits an offence if he incites another person to commit an act of terrorism wholly or partly outside the United Kingdom." Needless to say, such an act would also constitute an offense if committed in England. Yet these imams and their ilk are free to call for murder with impunity.

The British allowance of this "free speech" has already resulted in a suicide-bombing attack — in April 2003 in Tel Aviv — that cost the lives of three Israelis and wounded more than 50. According to the prosecution attorney at the Old Bailey last week, this attack was planned by Hamas, which recruited British citizens Asif Muhammad Hanif and Omar Khan Sharif, whose family members are on trial in London for failing to inform the U.K. authorities. Considering this, and the fact that British law enforcement is busy exposing terrorist plots and arresting members of al Qaeda and other Islamist cells, while British soldiers are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.K.'s reluctance to go after advocates of terrorism is puzzling.

This disregard for the law extends to written incitement in the form of magazines and websites, originating from England, calling for jihad. Although Hamas was finally outlawed in the U.K. in September 2003, its publication, Filisteen Almuslima (Muslim Palestine), continued to be published in and distributed from London to the Middle East, Europe, and the U.S. In fact, the cover of that September issue carried the horrifying picture of the bloody casualties from a dissevered bus in Jerusalem, as well as the glorified image of the suicide bomber who murdered 23 innocent civilians, many of them babies, and wounded 136.

Finally, the US media is picking up on this. Maybe they can put some pressure on Blair to do something about these guys.