Over the last few years we in the UK have been confronted with several stories about British Muslims who have gone off to fight Jihad ostensibly without the knowledge of their families. What is suspicious about these cases is how the denials of knowledge sound so familiar that the families could have been reading from a pre-prepared script. There is a noticeable similarity in what the families of these dead or captured jihadists are saying. It’s always ‘We didn’t know’, or ‘We thought he was going to Mecca’ or ‘He just disappeared’. There is such a similarity in comments and statements from families that we really need to ask ourselves: ‘are these families telling the truth’?
A British family fear a suicide bomber responsible for an attack in Iraq on Monday was their missing son.
‘Fear’ that there son was a suicide bomber or furiously trying to cover their own arses now that their son has been revealed to be a murderer?
The attack on Iraqi forces was said to have been carried out by a militant named as “Abu Musa al-Britani”.
The Awan family, from Huddersfield, claim a photograph of al-Britani, released by the so-called Islamic State (IS) group, was Mohammed Rizwan Awan.
It may well the case that the family knew or suspected that their son was off on jihad but said nothing and only said that they ‘recognised’ the image after denials were no longer possible.
IS claim that 30 people died in the attack, a figure denied by the Iraqi military.
The actual death toll may be in question but what can’t be denied is that Britain’s Islamic communities are very good at producing jihadists.
Awan, 27, is understood to have attacked the convoy after it had left Ain al-Assad military air base and was heading towards Kubaysah in the north-west of Anbar province.
The Iraqi authorities said only the bomber was killed.
Time will tell whether or not Iraqi government claim that only the bomber was killed is correct.
According to BBC Look North’s community correspondent Sabbiyah Perrvez, who spoke to Awan’s family, they recognised the photograph instantly and said they “knew in their hearts” it was him.
I saw this news report when it was broadcast a few days ago and it truly disgusted me. The BBC seemed to be giving the family far too much sympathy and paying very little attention or sympathy to those who may have been the victims of this self exploding savage.
He had left the UK in 2015 ostensibly to visit Mecca, but his family have not heard from him since.
The question we need to ask the family over this is why didn’t this disappearance make them suspicious?
Letters found at his home said he did not plan to return to the UK and intended to settle in Saudi Arabia, the family said.
Everyone should have the right to go off and make a new life for themselves but the family should not only have had, and voiced, concerns about their son’s behaviour, but in the current political climate should have reported them to the police or the Security Service, MI5. If I was a decent parent, who was a Muslim and my son embarked on a journey that others involved in jihad had taken, then I would have reported it. We need to ask why this family did not. The fact that they stayed silent until it was impossible to do so, makes me, and probably many others, suspicious that the family knows more than they are letting on.
His identity has not been confirmed by the British Government or Iraqi officials.
If al-Britani is confirmed to be Awan, he will be the latest suicide bomber to have come from West Yorkshire.
In 2015, Talha Asmal, 17, from Dewsbury, was one of four suicide bombers who carried out attacks near an oil refinery south of Baiji in Iraq.
All four of the men who carried out the 7 July bombings in London also had connections to the region.
We can see from this part of the BBC story that West Yorkshire has gone from a place that used to produce coal, textiles and industrial goods, into a production line for jihadis. The Muslims of West Yorkshire have been at the centre of some appalling terrorist activity and very little information about this activity seems to have been reported to the authorities or prevented by the Islamic community themselves. The sheer number of cases of jihadis being associated with British Islamic communities and the similarities of the familial denials of knowledge of such jihadi activity means that the best attitude to have when encountering stories like this should be unbelief. The fact that only a minority of Muslims in Britain would help the authorities tackle jihadism should tell us a lot of what we need to know about the character of these communities. Until we have solid evidence that this situation is changing, and that Muslims in Britain show that they are prepared to accept that the law of the Queen is the law for the Muslim, then there is little alternative but to suspect these communities of disloyalty, or worse, of being a clear and present danger to the rest of us in this nation.
Link
Original BBC story about the latest case of a British born jihadi.
