Muslim radical shows moderation, or at least tact

IHT
By Hassan M. Fattah

Friday, July 20, 2007
TRIPOLI, Lebanon: There was a time when Omar Bakri Mohammed embodied every stereotype of the jihadi extremist. From his perch in London, he threw around words like "kafir" - infidel - to describe Christians and Jews and openly praised the bombers of Sept. 11, 2001.

But sitting recently in his new library overlooking Mount Lebanon in this northern city, with a bloody battle raging between the Lebanese Army and the Qaeda-inspired Fatah al Islam at a Palestinian refugee camp a few kilometers away, Bakri presented himself as a changed man. Whether the shift is as meaningful as he asserts is an open question.

He speaks of peace, decrying the unnecessary use of violence and emphasizing the sanctity of life.

The death of innocents, he says, has to be curtailed.

"I want to support Muslims by saving their blood and their life," Bakri said, as he began outlining his efforts to help negotiate a settlement to the confrontation in the camp. "My job is to calm the fighting and to open a dialogue."

Bakri grew to infamy after the suicide bombings of London's subway system in 2005, when he and a group of other radical imams who had been preaching in mosques became lightning rods for the creeping extremism of some young British Muslims.

He had co-founded the radical group Al Muhajiroun - disbanded in 2004 - which sought to restore and expand the Muslim caliphate, an empire whose "foreign policy is to conquer the whole world by jihad," he said.

He also helped found the British branch of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a like-minded political party that seeks a more peaceful, political route to the caliphate, before falling out with the group for theological reasons, he said.

Charismatic but never afraid of acrimony, Bakri embraced controversy.

In a newspaper interview in April 2004, he warned that "a very well-organized" London-based group, Al Qaeda Europe, was "on the verge of launching a big operation." He vowed that if Western governments did not change their policies, Muslims would give them "a 9/11, day after day after day."

When the London bombings occurred, however, the whole formula changed. British authorities were no longer willing to tolerate his speech, and public outrage increased.

When he left London for Beirut two years ago, the British government banned him permanently. He had last stepped foot in Lebanon more than 30 years ago, when he escaped the civil war, he said. Now he is starting anew, insisting that it is against his beliefs to be in Britain if he cannot preach his brand of Islam.

Nonetheless, his wife and children remain there, wards of its welfare state.

Bakri was briefly arrested after arriving in Beirut but soon began working to build a network here. He initially sought to open an Islamic college but was denied a permit. The mufti of Lebanon, the highest Sunni authority in the country, was against him, he says.

He then sought to open an institute to teach Arabic to Western converts of Islam, he says. But after a brief period when many of his former students in Britain came to attend, the Lebanese authorities closed the center amid what he says was British pressure.

This year he opened a public library, equipped with computers and Islamic texts, in addition to a lecture hall where he preaches. He also travels to various mosques.

Bakri has grown more rotund, less bellicose and more tactful to those of other faiths. But he attributes that tact to the environment in Lebanon.

"What has changed about me is I now live with people who respect Islam," Bakri said, as young men trickled into his library to listen in. "They have given me big space to speak out, to speak in the media, on national TV and in newspapers."

In return, he too has shown more respect. He no longer calls the Arab Christians around him infidels. He has preached for dialogue and sought to temper the growing tide of sectarianism, he says, and has called all of his followers to eschew collecting arms. And he has instructed his small but growing band of followers to stay out of politics.

But Bakri's apparent moderation may be less a matter of change than of contrast.

Here in Tripoli, arch-conservative Sunni Muslims and extremists of all stripes operate unhindered. Inside the Palestinian camps, armed men, some of whom have returned from the insurgency in Iraq, continue to resort to violence. The siege of the nearby camp, Nahr al Bared, is only the worst of many fights. Groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir have offices and operate freely with little trepidation.

Now Bakri calls himself simply a Salafist, differentiating himself from jihadi Salafists like Fatah al Islam who aim to build a Muslim nation even through violent means. His goal remains unchanged, but he insists he favors only peaceful means.

He says his work is easier in Lebanon because he is reaching out to Muslims born into the faith, and has to spend much less time teaching the basics.

His reputation helped him quickly build a following and ties within the community.

"I was much more active before but was less productive," he said. "Now, I have less activity but am much more productive."

Most of all, though, he does not apologize for anything in the past. Instead, Bakri says, he has been misunderstood, misquoted and harassed. He asserts there is a Western media effort against him and derides the British government for what he says is a campaign against Muslims in general.

He has also been connected to Internet postings calling on Muslims to attack other Muslims who join the armed forces.

Perhaps most surprising, he blames moderate Muslims for being the real cause of the London bombings and similar violence. Moderates, he says, are impressionable and do not learn their Islamic law from scholars. As they surf the Internet, he says, they are open to manipulation.

"How come the moderate Muslims, not Omar Bakri do this?" he demands. "Because of Sheik Google," he quips, referring to the use of the Internet to learn Islamic principles.

Nonetheless, he has been linked to numerous incendiary Internet postings, British newspapers have reported.

When his phone rang at 3 a.m. on May 20 with news of an impending showdown between the Lebanese Army and militants, the call was a testament to his newfound prominence here.

A colleague of his was frantically looking for another sheik who had been part of earlier negotiations with Fatah al Islam, warning that the group was planning to strike Lebanese forces at Nahr al Bared if they did not cease an attack on it elsewhere in Tripoli.

Hours later, Fatah al Islam attacked the army, decapitating four soldiers and killing scores of others. By day's end 23 soldiers were dead.

Bakri says that the violence was needless and that it violated Islam. He has worked to prod clerics in the area to persuade Fatah al Islam to end the confrontation.

"They keep saying the army is a force of apostates," Bakri said of Fatah al Islam. "We say, both of you, sort it out between you, but don't you dare try to apply the case of Iraq here."