These preachers of hate betray their sisters
However hateful their views, there is now something familar about the image of most extremist Muslim preachers: hairy and scary.
But that's the stereotype. What we ignore are female preachers, some with PhDs, who spread Taliban-inspired Islam from Pakistan to Britain. Monday night's Dispatches, filmed undercover in Regent's Park Mosque by a Muslim journalist, showed us some such women. They represent a dismaying trend.
"Authorised" female teachers brainwash those who come to them in good faith, many of them young women seeking guidance. A number are angry about Iraq and Palestine; others need certainty in the age of uncertainty. They are innocents entering a web of deceit. Veiled "experts" convince them that Muslim apostates, gays and other sinners "must be killed" — and will be when Wahabi Islam dominates the globe. Women must never be seen near men, friendships outside the circle are forbidden, as is travel without a male escort. Driving too, I imagine, this being a Saudi-funded mosque.
The preachers don't rant but use guile. Um Saleem — feminine, seemingly pious, as poisonous as a black widow — convinces her flock that they must not take up citizenship or speak English, or work. That means mixing with other humans.
These are mothers of impressionable children. If allowed to carry on thus, they will destroy the future for their own families, for integrated Muslims, for their Muslim sisters, many of whom are finally breaking through to claim their rights — perhaps even the future of the nation itself.
Why do preachers like Saleem do what they do? Some are stupid, easily used by fundamentalist male clerics. Others display the cult mentality: their minds have been surrendered to their leaders. Then there are fervent ideologues recruited as overseers. Grateful for petty power, they feel compelled to be more extreme than their masters.
In spite of the rights the Qu'ran gives them, Muslim women across the world are cruelly oppressed and controlled. In the West some have the chance to reclaim their lives. And so the fanatics rise to stop their progress, right under our noses, in the heart of London. It is time to say that our city is not willing to tolerate such sinister cells and for those in power to intervene. When mosques turn bad, the state must act, and decisively.
