Stupidity, Thy Name is Abu Hamza al-Misri

When he isn't inciting supporters to combat their humiliation with arms and martyrs (and then accidentally blowing his own limbs off with home-made explosives), Abu Hamza "Captain Hook" al-Misri casts a blind eye to the resolve of those "soft, weak" Brits who do not subscribe to his mad delusions of grandeur:

Hamza is said to have been so convinced by a British undercover investigator posing as an extremist website operator that he allegedly sent him several secret propaganda films designed to attract new recruits. The videos were used, say investigators, to convince British Muslims to undergo jihad training at camps in Afghanistan and Bosnia.

The tapes and e-mails were obtained by Glen Jenvey, a 38-year-old freelance counterintelligence investigator from Wiltshire, over a period of more than a year. As the evidence flowed in, Jenvey forwarded it to the FBI, which is now building a case to extradite Hamza to America.

Ah, these plucky infidels and their personal home computers. This is playing dirty, and I advocate it strongly.

According to statements given to the anti-terrorist branch in March, Jenvey set up an internet site called islamic-news.co.uk in 2002 using the fictitious name Pervez Khan. He published news items on the site from Kashmiri extremist groups and other hardline Islamic propaganda.

Once established, he sent the material to Hamza’s website — supportersofshariah.org, which is now shut down. “He was so pleased with this he decided to put a link to my site from his site. That was his first big mistake,” said Jenvey last week.

It gets better. Once Jenvey was able to quietly track visitors to the SOS website, Hamza then sent Jenvey a whole stash of jihadi-propaganda goodies to recruit new supporters and thus "prepare them for jihad".

One tape given to Jenvey has already made an impact. It shows Hamza at a meeting sharing a platform with the US terrorist suspect James Ujaama.

Ujaama designed Hamza’s internet site under the name Abu Samaya, but denied knowing Hamza when first arrested by the FBI. However, his defence crumbled when the tape was produced. He is now the key witness against Hamza in the grand jury investigation.

As I write, British intelligence authorities are still, maddeningly, somewhat lax about charging Islamists like Abu Hamza for their tacit complicity in taking up arms against sovereign states. Apparently, unless jihadi cults drag their turf wars onto British soil, the police are obliged to keep some distance. Ori Golan reports:

In a collection of papers entitled The New Antisemitism? published by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, Prof. Robert Wistrich of the Shalem Center and head of the Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University, attempts to tackle the question. It is possible, he writes, that the British government has a tacit understanding with certain Islamist groups not to interfere with them so long as they don't strike on British soil. This may also explain why the Universities UK - the successor to the Council of Vice Chancellors and Principals - are reluctant to interfere with the activities of Islamist radicals on campus.

Golan further cites Michael Whine of the Community Security Trust (CST) as saying: "I don't think [the British authorities] really understand the Islamist thing, and the underlying ideology. They're interested in names and addresses, but not in what motivates these issues."

I tend to agree. A strident Islamist cult like, say, Hizb-ut-Tahrir or al-Muhajiroun, thrives in Britain because every minute spent operating relatively freely further vindicates their deep feeling of contempt for the British authorities. In my encounters with these Islamists, I strongly believe that this growing sense of contempt towards careless authorities is probably the most important aspect of what invigorates their sense of solidarity and spurs them to action. Hizb-ut-Tahrir, Al-Muhajiroun, as well as many others, are cults that see fulfilment of their will through sedition, not simply as an end, but as the only means to that end. Muslims who want to be recruited into the ranks of Hizb-ut-Tahrir or al-Muhajiroun are required to pass tests where proof of loyalty to the group’s cause is predicated almost entirely on proof of disloyalty to the out-group. But it is their astonishing degree of adaptability to their environment, by openly exploiting tolerance to insidiously preach intolerance, that demonstrates how central their ideology of contempt is in mobilising them.

Muslims who bewail the fact that Islam today wears the face of militancy in the eyes of the world should understand that when those who call themselves "moderate" do not speak as loudly as the militants, the militants speak for them too. But when it comes to waging war against Islamists, the track record of Muslims has never been enough to inspire much confidence. It is far too late, and already too dangerous, for the British authorities to wait for British Muslims to "police" their own. In the meantime, that correction must come from the outside. Cults like al-Muhajiroun and Hizb-ut-Tahrir need to have their illusions of contempt ripped away, and to thus tear away at the very fabric that holds them together.

UPDATE: Glen Jenvey himself responds, in the Comments section over at the Command Post.