UK: Hardline takeover of 600 mosques

September 2007, Times Online
Hardline takeover of British mosques

Almost half of Britain’s mosques are under the control of a hardline Islamic sect whose leading preacher loathes Western values and has called on Muslims to “shed blood” for Allah, an investigation by The Times has found.

Riyadh ul Haq, who supports armed jihad and preaches contempt for Jews, Christians and Hindus, is in line to become the spiritual leader of the Deobandi sect in Britain. The ultra-conservative movement, which gave birth to the Taleban in Afghanistan, now runs more than 600 of Britain’s 1,350 mosques, according to a police report seen by The Times ...

59 of the 75 mosques in five towns – Blackburn, Bolton, Preston, Oldham and Burnley – are Deobandi-run ...

The Times has gained access to numerous talks and sermons delivered in recent years by Mr ul Haq and other graduates of Britain’s most influential Deobandi seminary near Bury, Greater Manchester.

Intended for a Muslim-only audience, they reveal a deep-rooted hatred of Western society, admiration for the Taleban and a passionate zeal for martyrdom “in the way of Allah”.

The seminary outlaws art, television, music and chess, demands “entire concealment” for women and views football as “a cancer that has infected our youth”.

Mahmood Chandia, a Bury graduate who is now a university lecturer, claims in one sermon that music is a way in which Jews spread “the Satanic web” to corrupt young Muslims ...

Mr ul Haq, the most high-profile of the new generation of Deobandis, runs an Islamic academy in Leicester and is the former imam at the Birmingham Central Mosque. Revered by many young Muslims, he draws on his extensive knowledge of the Koran and the life and sayings of the prophet Muhammed to justify his hostility to the kuffar, or non-Muslims.

One sermon warns believers to protect their faith by distancing themselves from the “evil influence” of their non-Muslim British neighbours.

“We are in a very dangerous position here. We live amongst the kuffar, we work with them, we associate with them, we mix with them and we begin to pick up their habits.” ...

A commentator on religious radicalism in Pakistan, where Deobandis wield significant political influence, told The Times that “blind ignorance” on the part of the Government in Britain had allowed the Deobandis to become the dominant voice of Islam in Britain’s mosques.

Khaled Ahmed said:

“The UK has been ruined by the puritanism of the Deobandis. You’ve allowed the takeover of the mosques. You can’t run multiculturalism like that, because that’s a way of destroying yourself. In Britain, the Deobandi message has become even more extreme than it is in Pakistan. It’s mind-boggling.”

In some mosques the sect has wrested control from followers of the more moderate majority, the Barelwi movement.

September 2007, Times Online
The homegrown cleric who loathes the British

The voice, gentle but clear, has a mesmeric quality to it and as he recites verses of the Koran in Arabic they gain a hypnotic, captivating beauty.

Then Riyadh ul Haq translates the words into English and delivers his own interpretation of the holy text, and what sounded so lyrical becomes a stark manifesto of separationist loathing.

His target is the kuffar, the nonMuslim, whether Jewish, Christian, Hindu or atheist, and the message is simple: their designs are evil, their ways corrupting. Stay away from them.

... For Mr ul Haq, everything that a Muslim does – the way he eats food, the clothes he wears, the way he parts his hair, the length of his beard – should emphasise his separateness from the nonMuslim. The Muslim should not raise his hand to greet a fellow Muslim because that is how Christians greet each other. He should not offer applause as a sign of approval or appreciation – clapping is a pagan practice.

And he should not celebrate “anyone’s birthday, Father’s Day, Mother’s Day” or the new year. “Categorically, the Prophet forbade the celebration of the new year.” ...