UK: Muslim who plotted jihad massacre wrote “imams and scholars will condemn our actions yet deep down they will feel happy”

Umar Haque is not a non-Muslim “islamophobe.” He is a Muslim who was making a concerted, sophisticated effort to recruit Muslim children to carry out his plans for jihad murder and mayhem. And he wrote: “Imams and scholars will condemn our actions yet deep down they will feel happy.” This will be dismissed without examination as preposterous and unthinkable, but why not check just to make sure? This is a strong argument for monitoring the mosques and knowing what is preached in them. The British government is staking the future of its nation on the proposition that what Umar Haque wrote is self-evidently false. That may not be the wisest path to take.

“Imams will condemn yet deep down they will feel happy, says thwarted London bomber,” by Paul Baldwin, Express, March 3, 2018:

A RADICAL Islamist convicted of recruiting child terrorists to bomb London left a damning paper trail with a string of chilling claims including “the Imams will condemn us but deep down they will be happy”.

ISIS-obsessed Umar Haque used an Islamic madrasa school to recruit 110 children to his Islamic State child army which he hoped would unleash carnage on the streets of London.

The 25-year-old with no qualifications showed beheading videos to children as young as 11 and made them reenact the Westminster terror attack in which a policeman was stabbed to death.

But paperwork recovered by anti-terror police showing attempts to build a murderous army of “100 serious men” is just as terrifying including, as it does, the following claims:

“People will know the Muslims of East London are serious.

“Imams and scholars will condemn our actions yet deep down they will feel happy.

“Recruitment should be easy across Newham/Tower Hamlets.”

Haque goes into more detailed planning and adds: 

“What we require?

“1 Serious Men: 3 leaders / 5 financiers 100 fighters

“2 Weaponry: Guns, knives, bombs, chainsaw

“3 Media Means: Rehearsed via video”

Haque worked at the Hafs Academy in Newham then the independent Muslim secondary Lantern of Knowledge in Leyton, while also teaching after school in the Ripple Road Mosque and madrassa in Barking.

A court heard that initial attempts by police to investigate Ripple Road and the Lantern of Knowledge were met with a “wall of silence”.

Astonishingly Ofsted inspectors gave the £3,000 a year independent Muslim school an “outstanding” report in November 2015, having been kept in the dark that Haque was teaching ISIS ideology.

He went further at the mosque where he was an administrator and teacher in 2016, by forcing boys to re-enacting terrorist attacks while swearing them to secrecy.

Of some 250 children Haque had access to since 2012, he attempted to radicalised 110 of them, of which 35 are receiving ongoing safeguarding support.

Commander Dean Haydon, of the Met’s counter terrorism command said it was “concerning” that Haque was teaching when he was supposed to be an administrator and that he was showing pupils “frightening” IS videos.

On the Lantern of Knowledge, he said: “We spoke to parents and as you can imagine they were as concerned – and probably horrified – as we were.

“The parents are paying a significant amount of money to a school where you would expect them to be safe and taught by fully qualified teachers.

“He abused his position at those venues and tried, and did, radicalise vulnerable children aged between 11-14.

“It was clear he aspired to create an army of children as he called them. His plan was to teach them to drive as they got older and his intention was they would help him carry out those attacks in London.

“He had instructed the children not to say anything. He had almost paralysed them with fear. As a result of that we almost had a wall of silence.”

Jurors had appeared visibly upset as they watched taped police interviews with an ex-pupil and five youngsters from the mosque as young as 11-years-old.

A Ripple Road boy told officers: “Umar has been teaching us how to fight, do push-ups, given strength and within six years he was planning to do a big attack on London.

“He wants a group of 300 men. He’s training us now so by the time I’m in Year 10 (aged 14-15) we will be physically strong enough to fight.

“Umar, apparently, he told us boys he is part of Islamic State and Islamic State ordered him to do a big attack in London.

“We took an oath like we would not tell our parents. If we did not promise, we would go down a group.”

Giving evidence, Haque told jurors he had played an IS YouTube video at the request of a pupil but admitted it was “obviously not a good idea”….