British Islamists remember 9/11

On Sunday, Charles at LGF linked to a BBC story and also to this Islamist website regarding a planned conference in celebration (yes, celebration) of 9/11 to be held tomorrow at Finsbury Mosque in London. Among other things, the conference is intended to launch the Islamic Council of Britain, which will work toward the implementation of Muslim Sharia law throughout the British Isles.

Fleshing out this picture, here are a couple of interviews, published last month by MEMRI, with conference organizer Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, imam of the Finsbury Park Mosque and head of the Ansar Al-Shari'ah organization, and with Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, who established and heads the Islamic Religious Court in London and also heads the Al-Muhajiroun Islamist organization. Here's a snippet of the Bakri interview:

....Q: "I listened to your lesson on the foundations of belief, and it seems that you are not interested in bringing students into British society - that is, you are not helping them to be British Muslims."

Bakri: "In my method of education, I am opposed to the idea of integration. We do not believe that it is permitted to integrate into the societies in which we live. I am not a supporter of seclusion from society, and I am not a supporter of integration into it. I am a supporter of interaction with society, by means of my religion and my belief, in order to change the environment, not to be changed by it..."

Q: "And where will this life of estrangement lead?"

Bakri: "The life of estrangement will lead... to [a] change in the situation of the country in which we live, as the Muslims changed the situation in Abyssinia and Indonesia. Allah willing, we will transform the West into Dar Al-Islam [that is, a region under Islamic rule] by means of invasion from without. If an Islamic state arises and invades [the West] we will be its army and its soldiers from within. If not, [we will change the West] through ideological invasion from here, without war and killing."

"Either we will preach to them and they will accept [Islam], or we will live among them and they will be influenced by our lives and will accept Islam as a political solution to their problems, not as an ideological solution. Islam can be a spiritual faith and it can be a political faith... Islam defended the religion of the Christians, the Jews, and others, and stated that 'there is no coercion in religion.' [But] the coercion is in the laws. Laws can be Islamic-religious and they can be man-made. They [the West] have imposed man-made law on us, and the [future] Islamic regime will impose Islamic religious rulings on them. The Muslim will act according to this law out of obedience [that is, willingly], and anyone who is not a Muslim will do so by force of law. I do not obey the man-made law. Even if I don't break it, I do not obey it. Allah said: 'Do not obey the infidels and the hypocrites.' "