Al-Muhajiroun
Al-Muhajiroun is a proscribed terrorist network based in Saudi Arabia and active for many years in the United Kingdom. The group was founded by Omar Bakri Muhammad, a Syrian who previously belonged to Hizb ut-Tahrir; he has been denied permission to enter Britain since 2005. The organisation has been linked to international terrorism, homophobia, and antisemitism. In its September 2002 conference "The Magnificent 19", it praised the September 11, 2001 attacks. The network mutates periodically so as to evade the law; it operates under many different aliases.
The group in its original incarnation operated openly in the United Kingdom from 14 January 1986 until the British Government announced an intention ban in August 2005. The group preemptively "disbanded" itself in 2005 to avoid this; two aliases used by the group were proscribed by the British Home Secretary under the Terrorism Act 2006: Al Ghurabaa and The Saviour Sect. Further proscriptions followed with the Terrorism Act 2000 where Islam4UK was proscribed as an Al-Muhajiroun alias and Muslims Against Crusades followed in 2011. More recent aliases have included Need4Khilafah and the Shariah Project, proscribed in 2014, just before prominent members, including Anjem Choudary, were sent to prison.
The organisation and its activities have been condemned by larger British Muslim groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain. In the United Kingdom, Al-Muhajiroun is the most notorious of the domestic Salafi-jihadist groups and its public spokesman Anjem Choudary has significant name recognition; it is considered more radical than its initial parent organisation the Hizb ut-Tahrir, whose British-based branch does not advocate violence against the United Kingdom and were not proscribed until January 2024.
Individual members of Al-Muhajiroun have been implicated in a number of terrorist attacks, including the murder of Lee Rigby, the 2017 London Bridge attack, and the 2019 London Bridge stabbing. Some members, such as Zacarias Moussaoui, have been implicated in controversies surrounding Al-Qaeda.
It has also operated a Lahore safe house for visiting radicals. Another member, Siddhartha Dhar, became an executioner for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
Names
Since they were forced to disband in 2004–2005, Al-Muhajiroun network has adopted a variety of different names to try and work around British law; each time their aliases have been subsequently proscribed under the various Terrorism Acts. Typically, the sitting Home Secretary at the time names the specific organisation as proscribed; for example in 2010, Labour Home Secretary Alan Johnson named Islam4UK in relation to the Wootton Bassett affair. The organisation has used the following names; Al Ghurabaa, The Saved Sect, Ahlus Sunnah wal Jamaah, Islam4UK, Muslims Against Crusades and since then Need4Khilafah, the Shariah Project and the Islamic Dawah Association.History
Origins in ''Hizb ut-Tahrir'': 1983–1996
The network originated in the Middle East, inspired by the life and works of Omar Bakri Muhammad. Born in Aleppo, Syria, to a wealthy Sunni family, during his youth the state was taken over by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Syria Region; it was an organisation which promoted Arab socialism and Arab nationalism, rather than having an Islamic ideology. Although the Ba'ath Party was nominally secular, and Syria was a majority-Sunni country, many of the ruling Ba'athists were drawn from the Shia Alawite minority; these included Hafez al-Assad, who became President of Syria in 1971. Some of the religiously inclined Syrian Sunnis, including Omar Bakri, joined the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria; although Bakri was a member during the uprising which led to the 1982 Hama massacre, Bakri himself played no part.Omar Bakri lived for some time in Beirut, Lebanon. He joined a number of other Islamist organisations while he studied. In Beirut, this included the Hizb ut-Tahrir. Omar Bakri then lived in Cairo, Egypt. He moved to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, to study at Umm al-Qura University and the Islamic University of Madinah. In the Saudi Kingdom, Hizb ut-Tahrir was a banned organisation. According to Omar Bakri's account of events, by 1983, he had gathered some 38 followers who endorsed creating a Saudi Arabia-based branch of the organisation—but the nearest branch, based in Kuwait, would not allow him to create a branch in Saudi Arabia, and suspended his membership. Subsequently, on 3 March 1983 at Jeddah, he created the group Al-Muhajiroun. That date was "the 59th anniversary of the destruction of the Ottoman Caliphate." Sadek Hamid, a scholar of Islamic politics, has claimed that this new organisation was just a front for Hizb ut-Tahrir. While Omar Bakri lived in Saudi Arabia he worked for Eastern Electric, first in Riyadh, and then at its Jeddah branch. In January 1986, Al-Mahajiroun was banned in Saudi Arabia and Omar Bakhri was arrested in Jeddah, but he was released on bail and he fled to the United Kingdom. After spending some time in the United States to study, he returned to Britain where he became head of Hizb ut-Tahrir Britain.
''Al-Muhajiroun'' in Britain: 1996–2004
Bakri's involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir ended on 16 January 1996 when he was dismissed by the group's global leadership; following this he reinstated Al-Muhajiroun in early 1996. In the eyes of the Middle Eastern leadership of Hizb ut-Tahrir, Omar Bakri had become a liability to their organisation due to various extravagant statements he had made; justifying the assassination of Prime Minister John Major, stating that Queen Elizabeth II would convert to Islam and telling Bosniaks to reject American food aid during the Yugoslav Wars and to "eat Serbs" instead. Omar Bakri Muhammad and his group was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary entitled the Tottenham Ayatollah in 1997, in which Jon Ronson, an investigative journalist of Jewish-background followed Omar Bakri and Al-Muhajiroun around for a year. A young Anjem Choudary also featured as the group's Deputy. The documentary mentions mainstream Muslim groups, Conservative MP Rupert Allason, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and even Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt criticising the group. The sitting Foreign Secretary in the Conservative Party government; Malcolm Rifkind; responded to international concerns by saying as Al-Muhajiroun had not broken any specific laws they could not be prosecuted. Omar Bakri openly discussed living on Jobseeker's Allowance and the group publicly protested in favour of the Sharia, against homosexuality and other aspects in contemporary British society that it considered to be immoral. The group claimed that they were collecting donations for groups in conflict with the State of Israel, such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Egyptian Islamic Jihad, but none of these groups have ever confirmed connections or if any money came to them. Yotam Feldner of the Middle East Media Research Institute, a pro-Israeli group, cites reports from Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram Weekly in November 1998, whereby Omar Bakri is alleged to have presented himself as a spokesman for Osama bin Laden's "International Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders."File:Finsbury Park mosque.JPG|thumb|right|260px|Finsbury Park Mosque in Islington, under Abu Hamza from 1997 until 2003, was an important centre for Al-Muhajiroun. The Mosque has since been reopened under unaffiliated authorities.
During the 1990s, a number of radical Islamists who were wanted by the authorities in a number of Middle Eastern countries sought refuge in the United Kingdom, particularly London, leading some such as the French intelligence services to ridicule the situation as "Londonistan". Particularly close to Al-Muhajiroun was the Egyptian Abu Hamza al-Masri, who was the imam of Finsbury Park Mosque from 1997 until 2003. Abu Hamza had previously been an adviser to the Algerian Armed Islamic Group and had his own group called "Supporters of Shariah" which held joint protests with Al-Muhajiroun. Abu Qatada; who was associated with the Jordanian group Jaysh Mohammad and would later write sympathetically about the activities of Osama bin Laden; spoke at a Al-Muhajiroun meeting in November 1999 to raise funds for mujahideen fighters in Chechnya. Contacts were also maintained between Omar Bakri's group and other London exiles who spoke at Al-Muhajiroun gatherings; Yassir al-Sirri of Vanguards of Conquest and Mohammad al-Massari of Hizb ut-Tahrir. In the first two years of its new existence, the group did not advocate violence against the United Kingdom; Omar Bakri claimed in London-newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat, this was because he had a "covenant of peace" with the British government when they granted him asylum. In the early days of New Labour, Home Secretary Jack Straw even appointed Al-Muhajiroun activist Makbool Javaid to a newly formed Race Relations Forum.
This situation changed in September 1998, as seven members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, including Hani al-Sibai, Sayyed Ajami and Sayyed Ahmed Abdel-Maqssuod, were arrested by the Metropolitan Police's Special Branch as part of Operation Challenge for alleged violations of the Prevention of Terrorism Act 1989. This was in the aftermath of the 1998 United States embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, a joint operation by Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Al-Qaeda, killing 224 people. The "Londonistan" situation, as it was known, had long being criticised by some of the leading Arab world governments such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and others, who regarded the groups as a threat to their national security also. After the arrests, Omar Bakri described Britain in Al-Ahram Weekly as "the spearhead of blasphemy that seeks to overthrow Muslims and the Islamic caliphate" and claimed that the seven men had been "lulled and betrayed into believing they could seek sanctuary in Britain from their corrupt regimes", claiming that Britain was motivated by a desire for "future economic favours" from the likes of Saudi Arabia. Six months after the arrests, Al-Muhajiroun and others staged a demonstration in front of 10 Downing Street to protest the continued incarceration of the seven men and they, including al-Sibai were eventually released. Tony Blair, who was the Labour Party's Prime Minister at the time of the arrests, two decades later in 2017 accused al-Sibai of having radicalised members of the so-called "Beatles" group of ISIS militants, including "Jihadi John" and El Shafee Elsheikh.
In 1998, the so-called "Aden Ten" were arrested, while plotting attacks in Yemen. Omar Bakri boasted of connections, but the men were more directly inspired by Abu Hamza and his idea of Yemen as a starting point for an "Islamic Revolution". Two years later in 2000, the first British-born suicide bomber Mohammed Bilal Ahmed of Birmingham, blew himself up at an Indian Army barracks in Jammu and Kashmir, killing nine people. Omar Bakri described Ahmed as a student of his. Domestically, on university campuses, Britain's National Union of Students banned Al-Muhajiroun in March 2001 after complaints were made about literature promoted by the group and the advertisement of militant camps; Manchester University and the University of Birmingham were flashpoints for this. On an international level, closer attention was placed on Islamist groups following the September 11, 2001 attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda against the United States and the subsequent invasion of Afghanistan which followed to overthrow the Taliban-government which was hosting Al-Qaeda. In the immediate aftermath of the start of the War in Afghanistan, Al-Muhajiroun spokesman Abdul Rahman Saleem made statements proclaiming that terrorist attacks against government targets in Britain and even killing the Prime Minister would be legitimate acts.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, Al-Muhajiroun mostly focused on what they claimed was the injustice of the subsequent invasion of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and often held meetings where the flag of the Taliban; a white flag with the shahada in black; was displayed. According to a report Hope not Hate, a self-described anti-fascist group closely linked to the British Labour Party, Omar Bakri bragged of connections between Al-Muhajiroun and the so-called "Tipton Three", who were arrested in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban and held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Richard Reid the so-called "Shoe Bomber" during the failed 2001 shoe bomb attempt was radicalised at the AM-linked Finsbury Park Mosque. Aftab Manzoor, Afzal Munir and Mohamed Omar who died in Afghanistan fighting for the Taliban and the Pakistan-based Harkat-ul-Mujahideen had AM-connections. Indeed, Al-Muhajiroun maintained a safehouse in Lahore for visiting radicals fighting for the Taliban. The most explicit connection between AM and the 9/11 attacks itself was Zacarias Moussaoui who was radicalised by the group in Brixton during the 1990s; Moussaoui pled guilty to conspiring to carry out the attacks, but was in prison in Minnesota at the time that they were carried out. On 11 September 2002, Abu Hamza along with Al-Muhajiroun held a conference which came to be known as the "Magnificent 19" meeting. Promoted as the launching of the "Islamic Council of Britain", supposedly to advocate for sharia law, the conference at Finsbury Park Mosque was entitled "September the 11th 2001: A Towering Day in History" and posters, showing an image of planes crashing into the World Trade Center were put up in Stepney, Blackburn and Birmingham. Omar Bakri said that attendees "look at September 11 like a battle, as a great achievement by the mujahideen against the evil superpower. I never praised September 11 after it happened but now I can see why they did it" and described Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda as "sincere devoted people who stood firm against the invasion of a Muslim country." Anjem Choudary, Omar Bakri's deputy and a spokesman for Al-Muhajiroun also attended.