Labour Concede Eviction Demands over Mega Mosque by CPA Councillors As Elections Approach
18 January 2010Councillors for the Christian Peoples Alliance in Newham have welcomed news
that Labour has finally conceded their demands for enforcement action against an
extreme, separatist Islamic sect in West Ham.
Tablighi Jamaat has been
unlawfully using the site close to the Olympics park, where they intend to build
a mega-mosque for 12,000 worshippers. But the Leader of the Opposition on
Newham, CPA Leader Alan Craig is warning that belated enforcement action is
unlikely to deter the group from pressing ahead with their plans for the site,
which they hope to become the biggest mosque in Europe:
"Under electoral
pressure, Labour are facing up to their responsibilities and doing the right
thing. However, publicly, Labour politicians have bent over backwards to support
plans for the mosque, knowing full well that the local community have long
opposed it. For three long years Newham Council have allowed Tablighi Jamaat to
use the site without any planning permission at all. Yet just weeks before local
elections, Labour concede that the illegal development has to stop.
"But
it's unlikely that Tablighi Jamaat will walk off the site. I expect them to
contest this at appeal and will go all the way to a public enquiry. This is not
a victory for locals, including the muslim community locally and nationally who
don't want this project. This is just a set-back for this group, not the end of
the story."
The recent airline terror plot trial - in which a group of
young Muslim men were convicted of planning to blow up seven Atlantic passenger
planes - has revealed that some of the key men were closely associated with
Tablighi Jamaat. Two years ago Cllr Craig, together with his wife and young
daughters, was the subject of a YouTube 'death-threat' video: "In Memory of
Councillor Alan Craig" by a young Muslim man linked to Tablighi Jamaat. In its
Pakistani homeland, Tablighi Jamaat has been closely associated with the Taleban
and with banned groups such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Councillor Craig
added:
"As local representatives in Canning Town, our campaign has always been
reasoned, based on facts and evidence. We are not against the democratic rights
of muslims to mosques. We are just against this mosque and the separatist sect
behind it.
"Tablighi Jamaat is a global and ambitious organisation with
a secretive, separatist nature. Its narrow medieval form of Deobandi Islam is
deliberately hostile to the modern and open democratic societies of the West.
Its frequent claims to be non-political and non-violent are at best a
superficial cloak that hides a deeper agenda."
Known adherents to
Tablighi Jamaat include Glasgow airport bomber Kafeel Ahmed, shoe bomber Richard
Reid and the July 7 London bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad
Tanweer.
Dr Irfan al-Alawi, European director of the Centre for Islamic
Pluralism, has highlighted others. He told ABC radio, "Tablighi Jamaat has been
linked with terrorist activities in Pakistan - Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba
and so forth. These are the organisations which train radicals and send them to
Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries."
Source: Christian Peoples Alliance
