Driving home late last night, I caught part of an NPR broadcast-they were saying that a rdical muslim cleric was planning a “celebration” of the Sept. 11 massacre. He was quoted as saying that "there were many benefits from Sept. 11 ", and that moslems should “celebrate” this horrendous deed.
Now, I don’t know the truthfulness of this report (London Dopers please advise). But it seems that moslem leaders should repudiate statements like these. After all, as a religion of peace, I would think that the deaths of 3000 innocent people should harly be a cause for celebration.
What has been the reaction of muslim leaders in Egypt and Saudi Arabia?
Quite strange really. I hadn’t heard anything about it but happened to get off a bus in Finsbury Park about twenty feet from the mosque in question at about 6.30pm last night - I’ve never even been to that part of London before. There were at least a dozen police vans packed with body-armoured officers in the area, and a small army of journalists.
The National Front (wannabe neo-Nazis with a more respectable anti-immigration / pro-repatriation veneer) were protesting. The Anti-Nazi League were protesting against the National Front. The local Member of Parliament had this to say:
Not a glorious episode but I think the government is really quite uncertain as to how to deal with these particular individuals. While they haven’t technically broken the law they’re definitely not popular and are sailing pretty close to the line.
According to The London Guardian, the organiser’s defence was:
Plainly this conference is not exactly sensitive to those who lost loved ones on September 11th (although the West isn’t exactly sensitive to the large numbers of Moslems being killed in the middle east), and these people are at the extremist end of the Islamic community and have little interest in a secular or multi-faith society. But to describe it as a celebration of the murders in New York and Washington is perhaps a little bit of license on the part of reporters keen on a good story.
This is the website of Al-Muhajiroun, the group which organised the conference.
http://www.almuhajiroun.com/index.php#
They, of course, strongly deny that they were ‘celebrating’ the anniversary, but they would say that wouldn’t they. Saying that they were just ‘analysing and highlighting the lessons which can be derived from the incident’ sounds, IMHO, little more than a variation on the same old cliches used by apologists of terrorism everywhere. Calling the conference ‘A Towering Day in History’ is, at best, ambiguous and is certainly open to a celebratory interpretation. You might also like to check out their ‘Recent Fatwas’ section.