Matt 24 Watch 20, update: El-Faisal's reputed terrorist "children"

The blog, Western Resistance, has compiled several interesting bits of information on the apparent influence of Mr el Faisal on several terrorism suspects coming out of the British radical Muslim scene in recent years.

While of course, the following is not a blanket endorsement of the blog just linked, we should bear in mind the following, especially given the numbers of enraged youths across our region who are looking for an articulate leader and an ideology that can give focus to their rage:

Aug 16, 2006: 26-year old Assad Sarwar, another High Wycombe suspect, that promotional literature from Abdullah al-Faisal began to be left at a local mosque in High Wycombe.

A friend of 27-year old Shahzad Khuram Ali said that the suspect would travel to Faisal's sermons "most Sundays."

Another suspect from High Wycombe is 29-year old Waseem Kayani, who acted as a volunteer driver for Abu Hamza, whom he had met at the Old Bailey trial of Abdullah el-Faisal . . . .

In May this year, newly-appointed Home Secretary John Reid told the House of Commons that one of the four suicide bombers of 7/7, Jermaine Lindsay [a Jamaican], had been "strongly influenced" by the sermons of Abdullah al-Faisal.

There was a connection with other 7/7 bombers. The Sunday Times reported that Mohammed Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer had attended the Al-Madina Masjid mosque in Beeston. The imam of this mosque, Hamid Ali, claimed that the 7/7 bombers were al-Faisal's "children". Faisal actually preached at this mosque on three separate occasions.

Abdullah al-Faisal's sermons were placed on audiocassette and DVD by Amar Iqbal, an Islamist from Ashton-Under-Lyne near Manchester. These sermons were sold at Islamic bookshops around the country. Jermaine Lindsay had some of these in his home, which he would regularly listen to.

[Based in part on an August 2006 Sun article.]

No wonder, then that we see that "Sunday Times discovered that Hamid Ali, of the Al-Madina Masjid mosque in Tunstall Road, Beeston had described the bombers of 7/7, who killed 52 people in London Transport last year, as al-Faisal's "children"."

In this same post, February 2006, the blogger goes on to note:

Al-Faisal was preaching at several mosques in Britain. At the Brixton mosque, Zaccarias Moussaui, implicated in the 9/11 US attacks, attended. The shoe bomber Richard Reid [son of a Jamaican father]also was a regular visitor at this mosque.

Al-Faisal gave sermons at a mosque in Tipton in the west Midlands. It is said that the "Tipton terrorist", Munir Ali, was radicalised by his sermons. Ali went to fight in Afghanistan and has now vanished without trace.

Again, perhaps not all of this is 100% accurate [corrections are invited], but sufficient of it is clearly plausible that we should take note and should monitor carefully whether militant Islamism is rising among our youth in the Caribbean. This is particularly so since two of the terrorists in the above list are in fact Jamaicans or Jamaican descendants, and el Faisal is himself Jamaican.

Going beyond this, we need to think about how we can provide positive leadership for h5e region, and hope for its youth, which will drain away the pools of rage that a4re so evident across the region, and that pose such manifest dangers to our stability and potential for development.

That brings us back to the cyber college proposal, as a means of building up leadership, capacity and hope, thus catalysing positive transformation of our region and beyond through the blessing and fullness of Christ. END