II — STRANGERS ESTRANGED

I spoke to various locals old enough to recall the first generation of Muslim migrants. They all agreed that this generation, who arrived in Britain between the fifties and seventies, were not radicalised; although many were deeply religious, and some had strong nationalistic feelings about Kashmir, they had all witnessed jihadism warts-and-all in their home countries, most notably in Bangladesh during the 1971 Genocide. Many had in fact come to Britain precisely to escape murderous zealotry.

However, shortly after the community settled in Luton, it became a prime target of far-right groups like the National Front, who would often enter the town to engage in “Paki-bashing”. In defence, the Kashmiri youth formed their own gangs, such as the Rajas and the Tiger Khans, the glue of which was Pakistani nationalism.

These gangs would police the streets as vigilantes, driving off racist mobs, but they began to lose their purpose when the National Front went into decline in the eighties. By this time most members were used to street life, and unable to get well-paying jobs, so they began dabbling in petty crime and drug-dealing. They called themselves Muslims because it was part of their gang identity, but most had never opened a Qur’an in their lives.

In short, these angry and disenfranchised youths were perfect for Islamist indoctrination.

But who indoctrinated them?

The extremist mentality has existed to some degree in Luton since at least the seventies. Some members of the Kashmiri gangs joined fledgling Islamist movements such as Hizb ut-Tahrir and campaigned for Sharia in Britain. One shopkeeper, Tariq, told me that in the eighties there were small numbers of local extremists who tore down billboard adverts showing too much female skin, or publicly called for Salman Rushdie’s beheading during the Satanic Verses controversy.

However, although the extremist mindset existed in Luton at this time, the jihadi terrorist mindset did not. There were many Muslims who sympathised with, say, the plight of the Palestinians, but no one from Luton planted a bomb on a bus due to Britain’s role in the creation of Israel.

One reason for this was the lack of pervasive electronic media such as the Internet, which prevented locals being poisoned by propaganda in their bedrooms.

But there was also a more important reason. Radicalisation is essentially indoctrination into a cult, and all cults are built around a charismatic central figure. An idea alone rarely has the power to radicalise; what is needed is a powerful personality to articulate that idea, and to act as a paragon for it.

In the Middle East, the first global jihadi terrorist networks formed in the eighties around the alluring characters of Abdullah Azzam and his protégé Osama bin Laden. Unlike the jihadi terrorists before them, they were able to win the allegiance of foreigners through force of personality alone.

And yet, in the dingy, uneventful town of Luton, few people had any idea who they were. Luton’s radicalisation would instead begin in the early nineties, when it received its own magnetic cult leaders.

They were a pair of Qutbi-Salafi preachers who lived 30 miles to the south of Luton, in London. You may have heard of them: Abu Hamza al-Masri, and Omar Bakri Mohammed.

Hamza had become radicalised in Mecca, 1987, by Azzam himself, and later joined his Afghan Mujahideen — the forerunner to many of today’s jihadi terror groups.

Bakri, meanwhile, was leader of the fledgling UK branch of Hizb ut-Tahrir, while secretly developing his own, more revolutionary group: al-Muhajiroun.

Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza at an al-Muhajiroun rally in London, 2002. (Getty)

Both Hamza and Bakri seemed unlikely figures to build a national cult around; they didn’t have bin Laden’s solemn gravitas, or Anwar al-Awlaki’s rhetorical pyrotechnics, or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s choreographed mystique.

They were, in all honesty, comical figures. Hamza, a former strip-club bouncer, had a glass eye and hooks for hands, causing satirists to portray him as a pirate or a Bond villain. Bakri, meanwhile, had an uncanny knack for bathos. In one example, at a jihadi event in Trafalgar Square, he ranted about the coming victory of Islam from the top of a podium, beneath which was a net holding thousands of black helium balloons with notes attached that called for holy war. After proclaiming the fall of Western civilisation, he released the balloons, intending them to float upward and carry their warnings across England. But the messages attached to them were too heavy, so they remained on the ground, bobbing and rolling around.

Hamza and Bakri initially spent most of their time in north London, where they influenced each other in a game of hate-preaching one-upmanship. They both claimed it was acceptable to carry out random attacks on civilians, drawing their authority from Qur’an verses such as 8:12:

“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them”

If any Muslim scholars tried to point out that such verses needed to be interpreted within a wider context, Bakri and Hamza would turn to their own scholar, al-Qaeda philosopher Abu Qatada al-Filistani, who spent his time pondering such existential conundrums as “Is it morally permissible to obey Western traffic lights?”

Given how clownishly quirky Hamza and Bakri appeared, they were soon picked up by tabloid journalists, whose attention they found addictive. Bakri in particular was a born showman, describing himself as “delightful”, and constantly emphasising how important he was to anyone who would listen.

In August 1996, a meeting was held at an isolated manor house in Birmingham, featuring a who’s who of international jihad: UK leaders of Hamas, the “Algerian Liberation Party”, and even the Shia Hezbollah were in attendance. The meeting was supposed to be top secret, but Bakri turned up with a Channel 4 film crew. When he was taken aside and questioned by the others, he proudly told them the crew was making a film about him. “Long term project,” he said. “Ten-fifteen years.” He later told the film crew they had to leave, but as an apology gave them chocolate-covered ice cream, which the jihadi overlords had brought to eat while they secretly conspired.

Short clip from Jon Ronson’s documentary on Bakri, “The Tottenham Ayatollah” (1996). (Fair use)

This kind of buffoonery caused the country’s other, more secretive jihadi leaders to regard Bakri and Hamza as liabilities, too magnetic to media attention, so they began to exclude them from private affairs. As a result, the two hate-preachers were soon isolated, and forced to build up their own networks, preaching wherever they could get an audience, such as in parochial towns like Luton, where their outrageousness could instead form the basis of personality cults.

Bakri and Hamza first came to preach in Luton around 1995, having been invited by local Islamists who had attended their talks in north London. However, they did not get the welcome they had expected; all the main mosques knew what they stood for and shunned them. Bakri was reportedly awed by Luton Central Mosque — then one of the largest in Europe — and tried to buy it out, but failed.

Hamza, meanwhile, had just returned from Bosnia, and made his home in a shack of a mosque on Luton’s Leagrave Road, to which he began inviting Bakri and other hate-preachers like Abdullah al-Faisal.

They began preaching in Luton in the wake of the murder of Mark Sharp by four Muslim men, who were only jailed for four years each, igniting severe tensions between Muslims and non-Muslims — including riots, beatings, and vandalism — that at times came close to a race-war. The two hate-preachers thus came to a town already divided, making their objective easier.

They told any Muslims who would listen that all non-Muslims were the enemy, and that the Muslim community’s leaders had betrayed Islam by compromising with the West. They said that one either followed Islam in every single aspect of their life, or didn’t follow it at all. Their view of Islam thus differed from that of mainstream Salafis in that it was a total system dictating every aspect of life, no matter how trivial. A former student of Hamza’s once told me his mentor had warned that anyone who slept on his belly rather than on his side was not a true Muslim. Bakri, meanwhile, told filmmaker Jon Ronson that Islam even dictated the direction in which one must fart (“toward the unbeliever”). Many will assume he was joking, but those familiar with his worldview will not.

This kind of “absolute Islam” is a hallmark of the jihadi ideology. It may seem disturbingly authoritarian to most of us, but it also has its appeal; for some, freedom can be a burden, evoking feelings of being lost, and leading to anxiety and indecisiveness. In such situations, a system that directs every single aspect of your life, and allows you to outsource your agency to a higher power, can seem like the perfect solution.

In January 1996, Hamza distributed five audio cassette tapes to Luton’s mosques. In the tapes, entitled “Allah’s Governance on Earth”, the hate-preacher spoke out against Muslim leaders who deviated from his vision by not following every letter of the Qur’an all the time.

One of these tapes found its way to Latif’s place, which was then the Call To Islam Centre, a cramped hall above a shop. Latif and his fellow quietists decided they should try to answer Hamza before he further discredited the local Salafi scene, so they invited him to the centre to attend a talk by the Jordanian scholar Sheikh Saleem Hilaali, a fierce opponent of Hamza’s brand of totalitarian Islamism.

In July, Hilaali gave his sermon at the centre, in which he warned of the dangers posed by totalitarianists to Islam, and emphasised the need to seek knowledge on Islamic matters from bona fide scholars and not rabble-rousers.

Hamza, the rabble-rouser, soon turned up with his henchmen. They sat down at the back, and proceeded to disrupt the meeting by drowning out the speech in a chorus of abuse and interruptions. They repeatedly asked Hilaali to declare King Hussain of Jordan to be an apostate because he didn’t rule by every word of the Qur’an, having committed such transgressions as speaking with former Israeli prime minister Yitzak Rabin. Hilaali insisted that the king was a Muslim because he followed the core of Muhammad’s message. Hilaali then tried to continue his talk but Hamza began shouting, “Why are you ignoring the real issues?” The scholar, upset at the disruption to the lecture, began to argue with the hate-preacher and his neophytes, many of whom did not speak Arabic so required Hilaali’s interpreter. The exchange became increasingly caustic until Hilaali’s interpreter, exasperated, refused to translate any more.

Over the following months, Hamza and Bakri’s uncompromising vision of Islam slowly began to catch on in the town. Although the two hate-preachers had initially lacked the pulling-power of traditional cult leaders, their quirkiness made them the darlings of both the local and national media, who essentially advertised their services by creating for them a reputation of outrageousness that proved irresistible to many.

Furthermore, they both proved adept at living up to this wild reputation, competing to outdo each other in controversy. The stark simplicity of their vision — and the boldness with which they expressed it — attracted many young and ideologically restless Muslims, particularly from nearby university Islamic societies.

As their congregations got larger, Hamza and Bakri began to hire out local community centres, one of which was owned by the disturbingly puritanical Rabia Education Trust, which also owns a girl’s school that (still) teaches its students to live culturally isolated lives.

Latif and his associates, realising the two hate-preachers were becoming more than a mere nuisance, decided to do something about it. They printed leaflets, gave public speeches, and challenged the jihadis to theological debates, which were apparently never accepted. If the two groups met in the streets, it often led to fights, with punches and water being thrown. For their part, the jihadis would sometimes knock on the doors of quietists late at night, and leave threatening messages by post and phone.

Despite the best efforts of Latif and his associates, they were not able to dissuade youngsters from falling for Hamza and Bakri’s sermons. Aware of Luton’s large Kashmiri population, the two hate-preachers stirred up anger by talking about Indian atrocities in the disputed region, such as rapes and supply blockades. In the face of powerful irrational forces like rage and blind faith, Latif’s learning and tafsir (exegesis) were largely powerless.

Bakri and Hamza also appear to have exploited local religious ignorance. They were both ultracrepidarians; they claimed to be authorities on Islamic jurisprudence, but neither had any scholarly credentials. However, they were fluent in the complex language of the Qur’an — Arabic — while those they indoctrinated spoke only Urdu or Bengali. Thus, the hate-preachers could twist any passage to mean what they wanted it to mean, and no one could argue unless they too spoke the authentic language of scripture.

During their speeches they would tell locals it was their God-given duty to help their Muslim brothers and sisters in Kashmir. Their henchmen would pass around tins for donations. They also mentioned jihadi training camps in Pakistan, for those who “really” wanted to help.

Both Bakri and Hamza had their own “fixers”. These were well-connected men who co-ordinated the transit of jihadis from the UK to training camps abroad.

One of those based in Luton was a mysterious figure known as Abu Munthir, who may in fact be Sami al-Saadi, a leader of the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), which would later influence the Manchester suicide bomber Salman Abedi.

The other prominent fixer in Luton was taxi driver Mohammed Qayyum Khan (whom I will call by his codename, “Q”). According to the former president of Luton Central Mosque, Haji Sulaiman, it was Q who brought Bakri to Luton.

“Q” — an important figure in this story. (BBC)

During the 2006 trial of the fertiliser bomb plotters, the prosecution’s star witness, Junaid Babar, asserted that Q had been the “emir” (leader) of the plot, and was al-Qaeda’s top guy in Britain. This point was echoed by several of the other plotters. Oddly, Q has never been jailed.

I tracked down Q’s old workplaces. He had driven taxis for two companies in nearby Dunstable — Elite Cars and Express Cars — and once managed a takeaway called “Nibbles” in the town centre. Unfortunately, all three of these companies had long closed down.

Summoning up courage, I decided to visit his home, on Stratford Road. I spent some time ringing the doorbell, to no avail. I then spoke to his neighbours. Most of them said they didn’t know him. Two people told me he had relocated. Another man tensed up and demanded to know who I was and why I was asking about him. After I explained my research, he advised me to copulate with myself.

Stratford Road, last known address of “Q”.

Fortunately, while tracking down Q, I came into contact with someone who had attended al-Muhajiroun meetings with him. This man said he was no longer a jihadi, but that he had things he wanted to say. It took me a month to convince him I was not trying to “trap” him, showing him all my research, and when he finally agreed to tell me his story, he did so strictly on condition of anonymity. For the purpose of this report, we agreed to call him “Raheem”.

He said he had been introduced to Bakri by a friend, and through him learned of atrocities against Muslims in places like Kashmir, Palestine, and Chechnya. He claims he began to regularly attend al-Muhajiroun talks because they were the only ones who seemed to care about the atrocities. Bakri told him that the only solution against oppression was to fight back, and that the town’s theologians, who generally condemned jihadism, were “scholars for dollars” (i.e. in the pocket of rich Arabs or Western governments). Raheem loved Bakri’s knowledge and confidence, feeling he had all the answers, and was someone he could trust to guide him in every aspect of life.

Raheem said he didn’t know Q very well as there was a big age gap between them. But he did know that Q had chauffeured Bakri around Luton several times. He also knew that he’d lived a long time in Pakistan and knew many people there, including, apparently, high-ranking jihadis. He thus became a main contact point between al-Muhajiroun in the UK and groups like al-Qaeda and Lashkar-e-Taiba in Pakistan.

According to Raheem, a big jar would be handed around at meetings, in which attendees were expected to put donations for Kashmir. The jar would then be given to Q, who would leave the hall and put it in his car. Apparently, Q was also the go-to guy for travel to the camps in Kashmir, helping the youngsters fulfil Bakri and Hamza’s commands to fight jihad abroad.

Raheem said it was strange that Q had never been prosecuted, given the central role he played in Luton’s jihad network. But he said it should have been expected.

“Why?” I asked.

He hit me with a bombshell:

“In ’96 or ’97, coppers wearing suits used to come to the centre, sit at the back, listen to Bakri while he spoke about Kashmir, and Chechnya, and all that. He’d mention the training camps in Pakistan, and say going there was fard (obligatory). He’d talk about blowing up buildings and beheading the enemies of Islam. He’d say this in English. The police officers were sitting there listening to it all. They even saw the money being collected for the camps in Kashmir. Then after the sermons, they’d stand and shake our hands and talk to us like friends.”

I found this hard to believe. Why would police officers allow hate-preachers to publicly encourage terrorism?

It then occurred to me that British intelligence may have tried to use Hamza and Bakri as honeytraps or agents provocateur, to spy on their fellow jihadis.

But Raheem offered another, more surprising reason. “We knew what they wanted,” he said. “They thought they could use us, like they’d used the Sikhs and Gurkhas. They wanted us to kill people for them.”

That sounded hard to believe. Was Raheem telling the truth, or was this just an elaborate prank?

Let’s find out.