190. The Claimant’s “Advice” remains widely accessible on the internet and has not been publicly qualified or disavowed by him. (3) DEVIANT GROUPS SPEECH (2009) 191. The BBC rely upon a speech given by the Claimant on 31 st May 2009 at LIC as part of LIC’s four-part “Deviant Groups” series of seminars which focussed on ‘deviant’ groups within the Muslim community. The primary topics covered were hakimiyyah (dominion/authority) and jihad. The experts agreed that the context of the talk would have been a semi-formal, mosque-based teaching event in the form of a teacher-led discussion or question-and-answer session with relatively Islamically-informed participants, probably of a Salafi-Islamic persuasion. Preliminary observations 192. I make the following preliminary observations on the speech. First, it is clear the speech was not simply delivered off-the-cuff, but was carefully prepared. As the Claimant accepted in cross-examination, he discussed the speech in advance with a teacher at the Young Muslim Academy at LIC, Brother Ilyas Townsend, who was involved with the da’wah projects (call or spreading the word of Islam, proselytising and persuading others to join Islam) and who was to join him on the podium. They discussed and decided the topic for the meeting, neo-Salafism, the question-andanswer format and the themes to be raised and discussed, which included the meaning of jihad. 193. Second, the speech or lecture was delivered at a mosque, in a context which Professor Gleave accepted was ‘primarily educational’, before an engaged Muslim audience, who can be assumed to have been present because they were interested in learning more about Islam and “Deviant Groups” from the Chief Imam of LIC. The audience included young, impressionable men who were about to go off to play football together for the LIC Football Club in the Catford Power League. When dealing with such sensitive issues as jihad before such an audience, in my view, it was incumbent upon any Imam to take the very greatest care with the language used. 194. Third, the speech was clearly intended for wider dissemination. It was uploaded onto LIC’s website by Brother Ilyas Townsend, one of whose roles was to keep the mosque website (www.lewishamislamiccentre.com) updated. The Claimant claims not to have been aware of the speech going up onto the website at the time but accepts being aware of Brother Ilyas Townsend’s role. I have no doubt that the Claimant expected and intended this speech to go up on the website and to remain there for a wider audience for a significant period, as with many of his formal speeches and lectures. The LIC website was one of his prime teaching tools as Chief Imam. Text of key sections of the speech 195. The teachings of the Salafi-Wahabi scholar, Sheikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, feature heavily in the Claimant’s speech. Sheikh bin Baz was the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia in the 1990s and a highly significant religious figure in the development and prominence of Salafi-Wahabi Islam in the 20th century (see further below). 196. I set out below the text of eleven key sections of the Claimant’s DEVIANT GROUPS SPEECH (2009). In the first section, the Claimant quotes Sheikh bin Baz’s 43

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