Councillors for the Christian Peoples Alliance in Newham have welcomed news that Labour has finally conceded their demands for enforcement action against an extreme, separatist Islamic sect in West Ham. Tablighi Jamaat has been unlawfully using the site close to the Olympics park, where they intend to build a mega-mosque for 12,000 worshippers. But the Leader of the Opposition on Newham, CPA Leader Alan Craig is warning that belated enforcement action is unlikely to deter the group from pressing ahead with their plans for the site, which they hope to become the biggest mosque in Europe:
"Under electoral pressure, Labour are facing up to their responsibilities and doing the right thing. However, publicly, Labour politicians have bent over backwards to support plans for the mosque, knowing full well that the local community have long opposed it. For three long years Newham Council have allowed Tablighi Jamaat to use the site without any planning permission at all. Yet just weeks before local elections, Labour concede that the illegal development has to stop.
"But it's unlikely that Tablighi Jamaat will walk off the site. I expect them to contest this at appeal and will go all the way to a public enquiry. This is not a victory for locals, including the muslim community locally and nationally who don't want this project. This is just a set-back for this group, not the end of the story."
The recent airline terror plot trial - in which a group of young Muslim men were convicted of planning to blow up seven Atlantic passenger planes - has revealed that some of the key men were closely associated with Tablighi Jamaat. Two years ago Cllr Craig, together with his wife and young daughters, was the subject of a YouTube 'death-threat' video: "In Memory of Councillor Alan Craig" by a young Muslim man linked to Tablighi Jamaat. In its Pakistani homeland, Tablighi Jamaat has been closely associated with the Taleban and with banned groups such as Harkat-ul-Mujahideen.
Councillor Craig added:
"As local representatives in Canning Town, our campaign has always been reasoned, based on facts and evidence. We are not against the democratic rights of muslims to mosques. We are just against this mosque and the separatist sect behind it.
"Tablighi Jamaat is a global and ambitious organisation with a secretive, separatist nature. Its narrow medieval form of Deobandi Islam is deliberately hostile to the modern and open democratic societies of the West. Its frequent claims to be non-political and non-violent are at best a superficial cloak that hides a deeper agenda."
Known adherents to Tablighi Jamaat include Glasgow airport bomber Kafeel Ahmed, shoe bomber Richard Reid and the July 7 London bombers Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer.
Dr Irfan al-Alawi, European director of the Centre for Islamic Pluralism, has highlighted others. He told ABC radio, "Tablighi Jamaat has been linked with terrorist activities in Pakistan - Jamaat-e-Islami, Lashkar-e-Taiba and so forth. These are the organisations which train radicals and send them to Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries."