151.
In my view, proper syntactical analysis clearly militates against his suggestion. The
tone of the passage is obviously serious in nature throughout. The Claimant is
describing armed jihad in robustly positive terms as “good” and involving
“courage”. He is telling his audience that it is wrong for people to call the sort of
jihad which has taken place in Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq as “terrorism”. It should
be noted that the Claimant accepted in cross-examination that he was clearly wrong to
have included Kashmir, since this was on any view a ‘leaderless’ insurgency, i.e. not
sanctioned and declared by a recognised leader of a Muslim state.
152.
It could not properly be suggested that Muslims were engaging in “terrorism” when
defending themselves. Accordingly, it is clear that the Claimant is clearly talking
about a wider concept of jihad, i.e. aggressive notions of armed jihad (qital). His
inclusion of a reference to defence of “his land and his deen” (and his later references
to “Zionists” as being “terrorists”) support this. He explains that a characteristic of
Muslims should be “strength” and exhorts Muslims to “be strong in your deen”. He
then starkly contrasts this with references to death (“everyone of us has to die”) and
chastises the “weak minded” who are not “steadfast”. His peroration (“You want to
make jihad? Very good. Don’t shout and scream and fight with your Muslim brother
who is doing something else for the deen. … etc.”) is thus clearly meant in the same
serious tone.
153.
The Claimant is clearly exhorting or encouraging or mocking those who simply
“scream and shout” about jihad and fighting but actually do nothing practical (i.e.
armchair jihadists), to get up and “do something else for the deen” and go and fight.
His reference to “take some money” and “Zionists in Palestine” reinforces the
seriousness of his message. In my view, one does not need to hear a tape of the
speech to glean this clear clarion call for ‘actions not words’ by the Claimant.
Other explanations by the Claimant
154.
Mr Bennett suggested that the Claimant was merely employing rhetorical devices in
this speech. I disagree. In my view, the plain meaning of the words used by the
Claimant is clear and there is no reason to suppose that the Claimant did not mean
what he said. If, as the Claimant now claims, his intention in the speech was to stop
young people engaging in jihad abroad, in my view, the Claimant would not have said
what he did say (in particular “…go to Palestine and fight, fight the terrorists, fight
the Zionists...”), i.e. the exact opposite of what he is now saying he meant.
155.
Mr Bennett sought to place weight on the FSIC statement as a contemporaneous
denial of the meaning now attributed to the speech by the BBC. However, the fact
that “The Sunday Times” had attributed the same meaning to the speech at the time as
the BBC do now might be thought to be a more significant point.
156.
Professor Gleave sought to suggest that the Claimant’s references to the conflicts in
Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir and Iraq were the Claimant merely arguing that
Muslims should resist ‘societal pressure’ to label these conflicts as (illegitimate) jihad
when the Muslims in these countries were merely defending themselves. However,
Professor Gleave’s explanation takes no account of the blanket approval of what is
being done in these conflicts, purportedly in the name of Islam, including violent and
indiscriminate attacks on innocent civilians. Inferentially, the Claimant is saying “…
this is not terrorism”.
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