Many people around the world witnessed this
great coming together on television. For most of us it was a symbol of hope.
For those on the march it was a symbol simply of being together for a great
common cause. Who of those watching it could fail to be moved? Fail to be
inspired by the people of Paris, by the citizens of the French Republic,
because between those world leaders on the march whether conservative or
liberal, the great mass of people and the police there to protect them there
was a real common bond, that of the principle of freedom. The refusal to be
terrorized into silence.
Many of us undoubtedly had our own
individual high moments. For me two events stood out among so many others. That
of a group of young French children holding up a placard on which was painted a
bright yellow flower and singing the stirring national anthem of the French
Republic, the Marseillaise. Secondly that of a police marksman standing high on
a roof directly over the march and raising his arm in salute to the hundreds of
thousands parading below. His great symbolic gesture brought endless roars of
approval from the crowds below because here a policeman of the Republic protecting
its people was telling those people that they were together as one. That he was
defending their right to march for the principle of freedom! It was all great
and fine only maybe we should consider for a moment where it all actually
began.
So
where did it all actually begin, this great march
from the Place of the Republic? Was it just with the murders of journalists,
police and French Jews a short time back or were the killings that led to the
march inspired much earlier, years back in time to the end of the 20th
century? We know that the Kouachi brothers, who murdered the journalists had
strong terrorist connections with the Yemen. One received military training and
religious indoctrination there by an Al Qaeda fundamentalist preacher. The
other, Cherif, served time in a French prison from 2008 for terrorist recruitment
where he met and became a disciple of Al Qaeda lynchpin Djamel Beghal. As it
turns out this meeting was more than significant because it marks a key stage
on the road to mass murder.
Arrested in 2001 over allegations of
involvement in a bomb plot and released in 2010, Beghal comes to our attention
as someone with serious fundamentalist cred. In the mid-1990s he headed a
puritanical extremist Islamist group in Western Europe initially financed by
Bin Laden but was then dropped by him for being too much of a loose cannon. Undeterred
he spent time regularly travelling Britain during in the late 1990s recruiting
young British Muslims for jihad, finding the climate around the Finsbury Park
Mosque particularly congenial. Already a notorious anti-Semite he openly called
for the murder of Jews and other infidels as being particular enemies of the
faith. A constant presence at the Mosque for 2 years during the late 1990s he
was close to Abu Hamza, one of the main fundamentalist preachers outside on the
streets but also to Abu Qatada, both men being self-styled imams with a
considerable following among young Muslims.
Many British people will undoubtedly recall
the genuine shock of hearing for the first time the extremist views of those
Muslim fundamentalist sermons made by both Islamist preachers with their
violent anti-Western, anti-Christian and particularly anti-Semitic content all
of which were made freely and openly on the streets of London. It is of
the utmost importance to grasp this singular fact. That these highly charged
inflammatory diatribes, openly racist and threatening in character, were made
in the hearing of a heavy police presence. In fact during the early years of
this preaching of openly hate propaganda no attempt was made by the police to intervene
or prevent it. In fact it seemed to many that the police presence was there solely to protect
these preachers and their followers. It was like the whole Finsbury Park
area had become a hotbed of Islamic extremism with its followers just about
everywhere, one of the most active and dedicated of whom, Djamel Beghal, would later
become friend and mentor to Cherif Kouachi in a French prison.
When looked back on from today the timing
of all this was auspicious. In 1997 a New Labour Government was elected to power
and Jack Straw chosen to be Home Secretary, a position he held until 2001. Throughout
his period in office, Muslim extreme fundamentalist preaching continued
unchecked around the Finsbury Park Mosque with police protection always at hand.
Both the despicably vile racist content of these sermons and the protection
given to these Islamic hate preachers by politicians and the police was
supported by a host of woolly headed liberal lawyers and mealy mouthed leftists
under a muddle headed notion of freedom of speech. In short the Islamists were
allowed to say what they liked, grossly offensive as it was, without hindrance.
Furthermore, during this time many stalls appeared on the streets of London run
by these extremists openly selling anti-Semitic and often Nazi material.
It was a time of great consternation and
anxiety for British Jews, perplexed at the time by the failure of Tony Blair’s
New Labour Government to prohibit the activities of these Islamic extremist preachers
and their anti-Semitic diatribes, any complaint usually met with the glib
retort that there was no law against it! In other words these hate preachers
were given carte blanche under New Labour Government to say whatever they
wanted. The consequence of this was to radicalize of tens of thousands of
British Muslim youths and inspire others already converted to the extremist
ideology of death to go on to greater things, like radicalizing others and preparing
the way for mass murder in Paris.
In short there is an undoubted linear
connection between the early years of Tony Blair’s New Labour Government with its
policy of facilitating mass Muslim immigration into the UK while at the same
time turning a blind eye to the radicalizing of Muslim youths by fundamentalist
Islamic preachers and now the barbarous events in Paris of recent days. Before
the appearance of Blair’s New Labour Government in 1997 there were already
millions of Muslims living in France as a relic of its conflict with Algeria.
These however had never in main been radicalized with an extremist
fundamentalist Islam. From the time of their arrival in the UK from the Middle
East and the appearance at the Finsbury Park Mosque of Islamic fundamentalist
preachers this was to change. Their overt anti-Semitism and authoritarian views
were soon to radically affect many French Muslims, create devastating tensions
with long established Jewish communities, particularly in Paris, resulting in
many acts of violence towards Jews, and a general hostility towards the general
universal principles of freedom on which modern France is based.
New Labour Government from 1997 and its
permissive attitude to Islamic extremism at Finsbury Park has a great deal to
answer for, same as it has for its disastrous policy of removing financial
control over banking practices from 2006. As for the later career of Jack Straw
as Foreign Secretary from 2001 it’s worth noting that to many he became known
as the Ayatollah Straw in view of his visits to the fundamentalist Islamic
Republic of Iran where he was always given a friendly welcome.
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