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 group moved to London three years later, when Muhammad was expelled from Saudi Arabia. The small group was largely dismissed by mainstream Muslim religious leaders as a band of “propaganda-seeking extremists,” and it was initially written off by British commentators as a bothersome joke, but revelations that several suicide bombers were at one point members of the organization would ultimately result in the British government barring Muhammad from the country.

Muhammad, a Syrian, was known in British tabloid headlines as the “Tottenham Ayatollah.” He urged his followers to fight to reestablish “true” Islam, often using harsh anti-Semitic language to call for the wiping out of other religions. Although his application for British citizenship was rejected several times before 2005, he was granted “exceptional leave to remain” because the Syrian government rescinded his passport and was not likely to issue him another one.

al Muhajiroun came under increased scrutiny by Scotland Yard following the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Nonetheless, the possibility that the group might be dangerous was largely dismissed. The chairman of the Muslim Parliament of Great Britain called the group “nutters” in London's Independent newspaper, advising 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 9/11 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 Asharq 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, however, that the attacks were not the work of bin Laden and al Qaeda, but were 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, the group was again unable to provide solid facts to back up its claim. Family members of one of the men named by al Muhajiroun said that he was in Afghanistan as an aid worker. A year after the 9/11 attacks, al Muhajiroun hosted a celebratory anniversary event, in which Muhammed praised the al Qaeda operatives responsible as the “magnificent 19.”

al Muhajiroun's connection with terrorism began to seem more real in 2003, when two British Muslims conducted a suicide bombing operation in Tel Aviv, Israel, that killed three people. One of the men was an active member of al Muhajiroun. In 2004, British police arrested five men on charges of plotting to bomb targets in London; some of the bombers were members of al Muhajiroun. Later that year, Muhammed announced that he was disbanding the organization so that Muslims would be unified in their struggle against the United States.

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