The older brother of the Islam-following terrorist who killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in 2017 has fled Britain in order to avoid giving evidence to the enquiry into the bomb attack. According to a report on Sky News, Ismail Abedi, the older brother of the suicide bomber Salman Abedi and another younger brother who is currently serving a life gaol sentence for helping to build the bomb, asked the enquiry if he could be given immunity from prosecution for giving evidence. The enquiry refused Ismail Abedi’s request and the result of this refusal is that he slipped away from the UK. In a separate incident, a friend of Salman Abedi who was also asked to give evidence to the enquiry was arrested by police after being apprehended trying to leave the UK.
The reason for the calling of Ismail and of Salman Abedi’s friend to give evidence to the enquiry was to ascertain how Salman and his bombmaker brother Hashem, became radicalised.
The fleeing of Ismail Abedi and the reports that the rest of the Abedi clan are being uncooperative with the enquiry does reinforce what many said when the identity of the bomber was first revealed and that is that it is likely that the whole family, who came to Britain as ‘refugees’, were suspect. The absconding of Ismail Abedi does raise a number of questions for me. The first question is why Ismail was so afraid of giving evidence about Salman’s radicalisation? Is it the case that Ismail’s hands are also less than clean? If so then that may explain his request for immunity from prosecution.
The second question that I’d like answered is why Ismail Abedi was not being more closely monitored by the police and the inhabitants of Thames House, the headquarters of Britain’s internal security service MI5? Surely even with the pressing needs of other police work either Greater Manchester Police or some other force could have monitored him a bit better? I find it astonishing that a person like this could get out of Britain when he has familial connections with a savage who carried out one of the worst Islamic terror atrocities I recent years. It’s a massive and almost unforgivable cock up to let this bastard get away. I can’t help wondering who helped him get away? Was it a legal advisor or an Imam or someone else from one of Britain’s Islamic communities? Or was it a lefty activist of the sort that helped to spring the Communist traitor George Blake from prison in 1966? Someone helped him and someone must have known that Ismail Abedi wanted to avoid exposing himself to potential prosecution due to his evidence to the enquiry.
I think that it’s fair to say that the whole of the Abedi family are dangerous or potentially dangerous Islamic radicals. They should never ever have been allowed into Britain in the first place. Those who let them in have 22 innocent lives on their conscience.
The trouble is that the terrorist family Abedi are not one offs or aberrations. With 43,000 mostly Muslim extremists who are supposedly being monitored by the police and MI5, it’s likely that there are many more families linked not by love but by a loyalty to Islamic extremism. The big question is when and where will one of these terror families decide to strike next? We don’t know but what we do know is that one day they will strike. I suppose that when the next attack happens Britain will then have endure again the politicians speaking the bullshit lie that ‘Islam is a religion of peace’, the pointless candle lit vigils, the empty platitudes mouthed by the great and the good and the usual panoply of diversionary activities that go on instead of addressing the real issue which is that of Islamic violence.
They’re more shit scared of being called “phobic” than condemning or going after the bastards who’d kill is all in a heartbeat given half a chance. I hope I’m wrong, but Manchester wasn’t the last Islamic atrocity, nor will it be the last with every excuse & contortion to avoid laying the blame where it firmly lies, the Religion of Death & those who make excuses for it. Sadly, I don’t see an end.
I agree with you that the fear of being called ‘phobic’ is very strong. Also various Islamic groups have gained influence in government where it counts. But I believe that there are other factors. If you work, as many in authority do, with decent individuals who happen to be Muslim then it is probably much more difficult to condemn Islam because then you are also condemning the path of the decent individuals. People think that Islam isn’t bad because their colleague, let us call him ‘Farhan’, isn’t bad. They haven’t worked out that sometimes an individual can be decent even though his culture or ideology is not. I’ve met nice individual Communists but that doesn’t mean that I feel the same way about Communists.
I also believe that we could be looking at a case of the Establishment being frightened of the people. I believe that this dates back to the strength of support in some working class communities for Enoch Powell after the ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech where dockworkers and Smithfield meat porters turned out with pro-Powell banners at a number of ground up organised rather than top down organised demos. Now for the record I do not believe, as many believe that Powell did, that the cohesion and similar problems are racially based, I believe tht they are in reality cultural and attitudinal. However, the Establishment was somewhat caught off guard by the support for Powell after the Rivers of Blood speech and I believe that they are frightened of what they may unleash if they speak honestly about Islam, Islamic extremism and related issues such as the rape gangs and Islamic separatism. I would not be at all surprised if some in authority fear mobs and pogroms if they say the ‘wrong’ thing about Islam couple that with a compliance/cancel culture,which we saw evidence of in Keir Starmer’s failure to state the biological fact that only women have a cervix, and you have the recipe for a perfect storm of silence about problems that are obvious to the average man in the street.
Personally I’m much more optimistic. I believe that ordinary citizens can tell the difference between an ideology and an individual and that speaking honestly about Islam related problems would not cause pogroms and mobs. Yes some people are irrational and behave irrationally as we saw with the petrol panic buying, but the vast majority are sensible and will not go mad just because the political class have told some uncomfortable truths about Islam and Islamic extremism.
I think you are both right and wrong about “pogroms and mobs”. IMO it is NOT fear of the majority British public that spurs the Establishment fear and I agree that most can “tell the difference between an ideology and an individual”.
Let’s remember that the “Islamophobic backlash” that is prophesied after every Islamic terror attack basically does not occur, at least not beyond some shouted nasty words (unpleasant) a few Hijab tugs (which I think disgraceful), some cases of spitting (pretty vile), the odd broken window or (shock! Horror!) bit of bacon at a mosque and the very occasional half-arsed attempt to set fire to a mosque door or something.
Put that in one side of the balance against lives snuffed out and destroyed by injury and families traumatised by the loss or maiming of loved ones and I do not think that Muslims have anything to complain about for all that the incidents directed against them are unpleasant.
( I also wonder if those Muslims hyperventilating about the “islamophobic backlash” really do think that rude words, hijab tugs etc. are equal to the murder and maiming of “najjis Kaffir” – filthy nonbelievers, given that the Koran states categorically that the Kaffir are “the lowest of the low” and thus less than bacteria.)
That said I do think that some Muslims genuinely fear the “islamophobic backlash”. The reason they do is that they know that in Muslim majority Countries when a Kaffir merely ‘insults’ Islam the result is Muslim mob ‘revenge’ violence against that community which is condoned, either explicitly or implicitly (by inaction against the mob), by the Establishment in those Countries.
Implicit, then, is the idea that the majority in a Country will use violence when it is offended. Hence many Muslims will feel, rightly, that the majority of Britons will be offended when a Muslim commits mayhem – often in the name of Allah (“Allahu akbar!”) – and so they (subconsciously) expect a serious revenge attack on their communities.
Some, of course, will see the lack of such an attack as weakness and ‘proof’ of Islam’s ‘superiority’, others will breathe a sigh of relief and, doubtless, give thanks to Allah.
I think that the “Establishment fear” is fear of the Muslim (and perhaps twitter) mob, “Paki bashing” died out decades ago and was never the pass-time of more than a very nasty and genuinely tiny minority.
Politicians etc. remember the reaction to Rushdie’s “Satanic verses” (a book that would NEVER be published today) both here and abroad (in short violence and murder), the Charlie Hebdo murders, etc. They will also be aware that, more recently, the Police surrendered control of the streets to BLM. There was that disgraceful Palestinian convoy complete with anti-semitic chants that should have been stopped and ordered to disperse.The Muslim mob has taken over Speakers’ corner and assaults non-Muslims there with impunity or else gets those that oppose Islam arrested “for their safety”. We annually allow the “al-Quds day” march in support of terrorist organisation Hamas (Odd that the Police can police “Al-Quds” day with no problem, but cannot police free-speech at speakers’ corner.)
Consequently, Muslims in the UK are increasingly learning that they can use intimidation coupled to the (threat of) violence to silence contrary opinion, change how society behaves and gain concessions (as Islam has done for ~1400 years) which in turn makes Muslim mob violence more likely.
So I think that the Establishment’s efforts at deflecting attention away from the Islamic underpinnings of (most) terrorism is due to their fear of Muslim mob violence (along with twitter howls etc.), not a majority pogrom against Muslims, if honest statements were made about Islam.
Slightly to one side here is a nonsense piece on prevent and its “Channel” strand by Al-Beeb: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-58975385
The trumpeted success is as follows: “One of our successes that people forget is when a group of would-be jihadists in Birmingham went through the programme, changed their minds, and deliberately burned their plane tickets to the conflict zone,”
Whoopy-do! So they decided that fighting for ISIL was not a good idea, but did the change of minds extend beyond that, are they now “moderate” Muslims, or merely quietists, supporting Jihad in other ways?
Sadly, I suspect no-one knows since “the individual’s name and details are not normally passed to MI5, the Security Service, unless there is a concern that at the end of the course the intervention has failed to steer them away from extremism” and these people are a HUGE SUCCESS.
You make some very good points there. Despite the hyperventilating by various Islamic grievance mongering groups there’s never really been a full on backlash against innocent Muslims following an Islamic terror attack. Sure there is petty nastiness and occasional incidents of deplorable idioicy, but nothing major. There’s nothing like the sort of violence that was aimed at German-Britons during World War I when the shops and businesses of German-Britons were trashed, innocent people beaten unconscious and arson attacks on the property of German-Britons. We see none of that even after some of the most despicable atrocities carried out by the followers of Islam. It is a testament to the basic decency of Britons, of all faiths and races, that there have been no reprisals against the innocent despite horrific provocation by Islamic extremists.
Although I disagree that the Establishment has a false fear of pogroms if they told the truth about Islamic extremism I do certainly agree with you that the Establishment also fears Muslim mobs. It’s not just the lingering memory of the Rushdie Affair but also the more recent memory of Muslims rioting in northern towns and cities. I’m of the opinion that part of the reason why various police forces did not tackle the phenomenon of Islamic Rape Gangs as forcefully as they should have done was fear of Muslims rioting if they did so.
You make a valid point that some Muslims may fear a backlash because this is the sort of violence that is meted out to minorities in Islamic countries and societies. They may fear, wrongly, that others would act as those in their societies would do.
PREVENT and CHANNEL are a bit of a joke. They are infested with political correctness and in order to not be honest and say exactly wht is the biggest threat put too much effort into basement dwelling jackboot lickers, who although unpleasant and occasionally dangerous, do not pose the same threat to us as do Islamic extremists.