From Sweden to Macedonia: Radical
Islam Continues Probing Europe
By Irfan Al-Alawi and Stephen
Schwartz
The Weekly Standard Blog,
December 14, 2010
This past weekend Sweden became the latest country in
Western Europe to suffer from radical Islamist terrorism. As reported by Swedish papers, Iraqi-born Taimur Abdulwahab Al-Abdaly, aged
28, who blew up a car and then himself in downtown Stockholm, had been granted
Swedish citizenship in 1992. But he then went to Britain to study, and UK media say he was radicalized over the last decade
in the town of Luton, north of London.
Al-Abdaly was thrown out of the
Islamic Centre of Luton, also known as the Al-Ghurabaa or “Strangers’” mosque,
for preaching jihad. The mosque is considered a center of radical ideology, even
as it repudiates violence. Leaders at the Luton mosque are visibly oriented
toward Saudi-style Wahhabism, with a history of linkage to the extremist
Al-Muhajiroun, or “Religious Refugees,” led by jihadist preacher Omar Bakri
Muhammad. The latter has been expelled from Britain. At the Luton mosque, men typically grow long beards, women are cloaked in
full-length covering and face veils, and congregants are taught to eschew
music – all of which are signifiers of Wahhabism.
In May 2010 Luton attracted attention and
outrage across Britain when sympathizers of Al-Muhajiroun demonstrated there
against British soldiers returning from Iraq. The extremists carried
inflammatory placards and shouted accusations that the veterans were “the
Butchers of Basra,” “murderers,” and “baby-killers.” In the ensuing uproar, the
Al-Ghurabaa mosque was firebombed, and its leaders publicly declared that while
they adhered to fundamentalism, they did not tolerate radical agitation in their
midst. It is therefore unsurprising that the Luton mosque rid itself of
Al-Abdaly as early as 2007.
Meanwhile, over the same weekend, one of
Europe’s largest and most famous Sufi shrines, the Harabati Baba Bektashi
complex in Tetovo, a city in western Macedonia with an ethnic Albanian majority,
was targeted for an apparent arson attack. As described here, Wahhabis in control of the state-recognized
Macedonian Islamic Community have attempted to take over the Harabati site for
the past several years. The State Department noted in its International Religious Freedom Report for 2009 that the
burial of a Bektashi Sufi follower at the Harabati shrine brought a protest from
the official Sunni community, which declared the interment illegal and
threatened to remove the body.
The Harabati Sufi institution was built in the
16th century and became so closely identified with the city of Tetovo that it
appears on the municipal coat-of-arms. The local political organization “Wake
Up!” (Zgjohu! in Albanian) denounced the weekend fire as vandalism
against “one of the masterpieces of the cultural and spiritual heritage of the
Albanians.” But in the face of continued invasion of the property by
fundamentalists, neither the city authorities nor the Macedonian
government--dominated by Orthodox Christian Slavs in a country where Albanian,
Turkish, and Slav Muslims make up a large religious minority--had acted to
restrain the Islamist fanatics.
In 2007, the RAND Corporation’s Center for
Middle East Public Policy published a major report titled Building Moderate Muslim Networks. Composed by a team
led by Dr. Angel Rabasa, the document mapped out a strategy for the democratic
nations to identify and enlist as allies in the defense of civilization
adherents to a peaceful vision of Islam as a normal religion. The RAND report
specifically noted the importance of the Harabati shrine and the siege mounted
against it by Wahhabis. But what effect did the RAND document, or the State
Department’s reports, have in Macedonia? Finally, none. Sufis and visitors to
the Harabati complex were harassed, money and other assets were stolen, and each
of the historic buildings, in turn, was occupied by radicals, who used one of
them to set up a café.
With the extremists occupying most of the
complex, fire broke out in two of the last remaining large structures under the
control of the Sufis on Sunday, December 12. Baba Edmond Brahimaj, spiritual leader of the community at the
site, noted that the Sufi mejdan or meeting house for spiritual
exercises, where the blaze had its origin, had not been used to store flammable
materials. According to him, an arson attack was the logical culmination of
years of “usurpation and theft.”
Thus, at opposite ends of Europe, Islamist
radicals continue to probe for weak spots where they may carry out their
atrocious acts. Is there a direct connection between the fire and explosions in
Sweden and presumed arson in Macedonia? Perhaps not; to paraphrase Sigmund
Freud, sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. But there is an
ideological link between those who plot such attacks, and between those who
assault other Sufis and their monuments in the Balkans and in Pakistan. The connections remain focused in Saudi-funded Wahhabism and its Taliban
satellites, the latter in South Asia, in Britain, and even in America.