Luton: A town becoming synonymous with extremism

Luton in London has mosques and halal meat shops and cheap ready made shalwar kameez hang with sweaters.

LONDON: The Bury Park area of Luton is a world within a world; mosques jostle with halal meat shops and cheap ready made shalwar kameez hang with sweaters that seem to have been lifted straight from Raja Bazaar in Rawalpindi.

Home to about 20,000 Britons of Pakistani origin and some 25,000 Muslims, this otherwise unremarkable town has become synonymous with extremism.

Luton has hit the national news twice in the last week. Pastor Terry Jones, the man behind ‘burn the Quran day’ wanted to come here in February at the invitation of the English Defence League (EDL), a far right anti-Muslim group that has its origins in this town. The bomber involved in the latest suicide bombing to take place in Europe has also been traced back to Luton.

On Saturday an Iraqi-born Swede carried out Sweden’s first suicide bomb attack in its capital Stockholm. The attempt was botched and the only casualty was the bomber, but had he been successful the loss of lives would have been substantial.

It was later discovered that the 29-year-old Abdulwahab Alabdaly had lived in Luton for the last decade. Alabdaly was married and had three children; recent reports have suggested that he was a “beer-swilling, fun loving” teenager before coming to Luton.

Former local councillor from Luton and recently appointed Lord, Qurban Hussain says, “There is a small group here which is busy brainwashing people and their activities need to be curtailed.” The group he is referring to is the al Muhajiroun which has been proscribed under this name and now comes up in other guises, such as Islam4UK.

“They’re on the pavement every week, recruiting people and spreading their hate”, adds Hussain. “They say it is shirq to be part of the democratic process, their aim is to establish a caliphate in the UK,” he said.

It was apparently in reaction to the activities of this and other like-minded groups that the EDL was spawned in 2009 to ‘counter the spread of Islamism’. The apparent trigger was a protest in March of 2009 in which a group of Muslims in Luton hurled abuses at soldiers returning from duty in Afghanistan, calling them ‘butchers of Basra’.

In the past too, successful and foiled terrorist plots have had a connection with Luton; the suicide bombers responsible for London’s 2005 bombings were from Luton.

Abdul Qadeer Baksh of the Luton Islamic Centre remembers Alabdaly attending the mosque  regularly in 2007. “We noticed him talking to the younger men. He would clam up when any of us older ones approached,” he said. Baksh discovered that Alabdaly was stirring up young Muslims against Muslim governments and scholars.

While liberal commentators point to unemployment and social deprivation as possible reasons for the radical extremes found in this town, Baksh sees things differently saying, “The cause of violent radicalisation is American foreign policy, hypocrisy and double standards.”

EDL has recently said that they have withdrawn their invitation to Terry Jones but their demonstration will go ahead. “We are bringing it back to where it all began... fight “the islamification of this great nation”, says EDL’s website.

It appears that a small minority is out to ensure that Luton remains a battleground for extremist groups.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 19^th, 2010.