Vol XXVIII NO. 123 Thursday 21 July 2005
Red Ken blames West for radicalism
LONDON: Western foreign policy has fuelled the Islamist radicalism behind the bomb attacks which killed more than 50 people in London, the British capital's mayor Ken Livingstone said yesterday.
Livingstone, who earned the nickname "Red Ken" for his left-wing views, won widespread praise for a defiant response which helped unite London after the bombings.
Asked what he thought had motivated the four suspected suicide bombers, Livingstone cited Western policy in the Middle East and early American backing for Osama bin Laden.
"A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in (US detention camp) Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," he said.
"You've just had 80 years of Western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of a Western need for oil. We've propped up unsavoury governments, we've overthrown ones that we didn't consider sympathetic."
Turkish student buried
ISTANBUL: A Turkish student killed in the London bombings was buried yesterday after a funeral ceremony at an Istanbul mosque.
Gamze Gunoral, 24, was the only Turkish citizen known to have been killed in the explosions on three underground trains and a double-decker bus on July 7 which killed 56 people.
The funeral was attended by the governor of Istanbul, the city's police chief and two British policemen who flew in from London, the Anatolia news agency reported.
Third Polish victim named
WARSAW: British police have identified a third Polish national among the 56 people killed in the bomb attacks in London nearly two weeks ago, the Polish embassy in Britain said yesterday. The victim was identified as Anna Brandt, 43, who was probably killed in the explosion on the London Underground train near the King's Cross station on July 7, embassy spokesman Aleksander Kropiwnicki told the Polish news agency PAP.
Two other Polish women, Karolina Gluck, 29, and Monika Suchocka, 23, were previously named as among the fatal victims of the attacks.
Mosque failings in focus
LUTON, England: Mohammed Rashid would like to employ a British-born imam in his mosque in this southern English town, but limited resources and a shortage of candidates mean he has to recruit from abroad.
"It's a problem, there's no doubt about it," said Rashid, president of the Central Mosque in Luton, whose 35,000 Muslim inhabitants have come under close scrutiny since the July 7 bombings in nearby London.
"We can't afford to pay our imam more than £300 (BD197) a week," Rashid explained.
"If our young Muslims know they can earn £500 in the private sector, then why are they going to work as imams?" Muslim leaders say Rashid's problem is replicated across Britain. There is a chronic lack of well-qualified, homegrown English-speaking imams in Britain and, even when they are available, many cannot afford them. They therefore recruit imams from abroad who accept low wages but speak poor English, preach a conservative strain of Islam and are out of touch with their worshippers.
Britain 'ignored threat'
LONDON: The leader of a defunct Islamic militant group blamed Prime Minister Tony Blair's government and its "crusader views" of Muslims for the attacks. In an interview, Anjem Choudary, leader of the disbanded Muhajiroun extremist group, also said the British public shared the blame for ignoring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden's warning last year that Britain would be attacked if it did not withdraw troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Omar Bakri, the Muhajiroun group's radical founder and spiritual leader who is apparently being closely watched by British security forces, had on many occasions glorified suicide bombings in Iraq and by Palestinian militants in Israel. Choudary himself has been reported as saying that Islam regards as legitimate the kidnappings of Westerners in "occupied Muslim lands," such as Iraq.
Choudary criticised Blair's meeting on Tuesday with two dozen members of the Muslim community to discuss anti-terror legislation the government plans to introduce by the end of the year. "This is not the time for talking; it's time for action," he said. Blair, he added, has "got to do something (about the policies) which have caused 7-7."
"When Muslims talk about jihad, suddenly they're cast as terrorists and they're threatened with deportation. I think this is double standards, that's blatant racism, isn't it?"
Red Ken blames West for radicalism
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Originally Posted by Louis VI the Fat
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