by Soeren Kern
March 23, 2012 at 5:00 am
March 23, 2012 at 5:00 am
Livingstone's appeal to Muslims may, on May 3, propel him into the mayor's office. Either way, London appears headed for an Islamic future.Ken Livingstone, the British Labour Party's candidate for mayor of London, says he wants to turn the capital city into a "beacon" of Islam.
Speaking to Muslim worshippers on March 16 at the North London Central Mosque, one of the most hardline mosques in Europe, Livingstone pledged that if elected, he would "educate the mass of Londoners" about Islam.
Livingstone, a self-described socialist who previously served as the mayor of London from 2000 to 2008, declared: "I want to spend the next four years making sure that every non-Muslim in London knows and understands [Mohammed's] words and message. That will help to cement our city as a beacon that demonstrates the meaning of the words of the Prophet."
Livingstone's electioneering tactic may earn him the support of Muslim voters in London. But by speaking at the North London mosque, Livingstone has also succeeded in reviving long-standing suspicions that he is closely linked to Islamic fundamentalists.
The North London Central Mosque, also known as the Finsbury Park Mosque, has a well-established reputation for being a center for radical Islamism in Britain. The mosque was once controlled by Abu Hamza al-Masri, an Egyptian jihadist who is now in prison in Britain for "instigation to acts of terrorism." The Finsbury Mosque is currently being run by the Muslim Association of Britain, an Islamist organization tied to the Muslim Brotherhood as well as the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
One of Livingstone's main links to radical Islam is through an organization called the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), an Islamist group dedicated to changing the "very infrastructure of society, its institutions, its culture, its political order and its creed … from ignorance to Islam."
The IFE is especially active in the East London borough of Tower Hamlets. Also known as "The Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets," the area is brimming with extremist Muslim preachers, the Tower Hamlets' Taliban, who are seeking to impose Islamic Sharia law on large swaths of the British capital. Read the rest on:
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