Al Muhajiroun

The extremist Muslim group Al Muhajiroun was founded in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, in 1983 by the radical cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad. The small group, now based at the Finsbury Park mosque in North London, has been largely dismissed by mainstream Muslim religious leaders as a band of “propaganda seeking extremists” and is often written off by British commentators as a bothersome joke.

Muhammad, a Syrian, was expelled from Saudi Arabia and has lived legally in London since 1986. Known in British tabloid headlines as the “Tottenham Ayatollah,” Muhammad urges his followers to fight to reestablish “true” Islam, often using harsh anti-Semitic language to call for the wiping out of other religions. Although Muhammad's application for British citizenship has been rejected several times, he was granted “exceptional leave to remain” because the Syrian government rescinded his passport and is not likely to issue him another one.

Al-Muhajiroun is not outlawed in England, although it has come under increased scrutiny by Scotland Yard since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The chairman of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain called the group “nutters” in London's Independent newspaper and advised that a crackdown on the group's activities would exaggerate its importance.

During the U.S.-led air raids on Afghanistan in retaliation for the September 11 attacks, Al Muhajiroun leaders gave public lectures telling young British Muslims that their duty was to travel to Afghanistan and fight on the side of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Members of the group later boasted that as many as 600 British Muslims had gone to Afghanistan to fight. They were unable to substantiate these claims, however.

When Britain joined the military strikes against Afghanistan in October 2001, an Al Muhajiroun spokesperson in Pakistan told the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Sharq Al-Awsat that Prime Minister Tony Blair was a “legitimate target” for assassination. Under intense press scrutiny, Muhammad told British journalists that his group engaged in “political and intellectual attacks, not violent ones.” He also condemned the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He said that the attacks were not the work of bin Laden and Al Qaeda but instead carried out by a covert group of “Anglo-Saxon Americans” who wanted to provoke war between the West and Islam.

In November 2001, Al Muhajiroun provoked further outcry in Britain by claiming that at least three British Muslims fighting with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan had died during the bombing. However, Al Muhajiroun was unable to provide solid facts to back its claim. Family members of one of the men named by Al Muhajiroun said that he was in Afghanistan as an aid worker.