MUSLIMS HAVE a “religious obligation” to “diffuse” terror plots, according to a controversial visiting imam from Birmingham’s influential Green Lane Mosque.
Abu Usamah, an American-born convert who attended the Islamic University of Medina, commented: “I’ve mentioned a number of times in my public sermons that we have a religious, moral obligation if we know someone is involved with something that is going to hurt people, blow people up and kill people… to diffuse that situation in the best way possible.”
He said such action should be taken even when it means “getting [individuals] in trouble”.
Usamah was brought to Dublin by Discover Islam Ireland with support from the Islamic Foundation of Ireland to deliver a two-day lecture series. His visit prompted concern among some of Ireland’s Muslim community after comments of his included in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme, Undercover Mosque, broadcast in early 2007.
The programme showed Usamah describing non-Muslims as “pathological liars”, making inflammatory remarks about gay people and contending that the time was approaching when Muslims would win “jihad” against “non believers”, among other controversial remarks.
The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service determined that the heavily edited material presented in the programme appeared to take “aspects of speeches” out of context. West Midlands Police also reported the programme to broadcast regulators Ofcom, believing that it had inaccurately represented sections of the local Muslim community. Ofcom, however, found that the programme makers “accurately” represented the material it had gathered.
Usamah told Metro Éireann he regretted some of his statements while others had been taken out of context.
He said in Islam it is “incorrect to paint every non-Muslim with the same stroke of the brush” and that his statement on non-Muslims being pathological liars had been expressed clumsily when he was “emotionally hyped”.
However, he maintained his belief that any human being who does not recognise that there’s “no God worthy of worship except Allah” is being “false” to himself.
Usamah said he also retracts a ‘joke’ he made to followers about gay people. “I said to them, if you are a Muslim dentist and a homosexual comes to you, then you should take a big needle for the anaesthesia and stick it in his mouth, and the audience laughed, and I said ‘No, I was just joking.’
“That joke was inappropriate, so I took that back... in saying that, I apologise to no one about what Islam is saying from the beginning of the Qur’an to the end. From every statement that the Prophet Muhammad said about everything, I bite my tongue for no one.”
Referring to his statement concerning jihad – related to Prophet Muhammad’s prophecy that “there will come a time when Islam will dominate the world” – Usamah explained that in this sense, he meant “proper Islam” and not a caricature of the religion involving “Mullahs running around blowing people up and whipping women who are not dressed properly”.
He added that “the double standard” of US and UK foreign policy “doesn’t allow Muslims to go and break the law” as two wrongs do not make a right in Islam.
Usamah said Muslims have much to offer western society and shouldn’t be constantly put on the defensive. “We have to bring our piece of the puzzle to the table – what we have to offer. We are professional people, intelligent people, so like every other group we don’t want people to single us out and make us feel like we’re the sore thumb.”
Abu Usamah was delivering lectures at the Dublin Mosque on South Circular Road and at Trinity College Dublin on the theme of spiritually preparing oneself for the afterlife.
