The Fool said: > A careful reading of interviews and statements made by militant Islamic > leaders themselves show a different picture. Sheik Omar Bakri is leader > of the al-Muhajirun Group based in London.
Omar Bakri gets a lot of press; he's big on media-friendly soundbites. Jon Ronson made a facinsating (and award-winning) documentary about him called the "Tottenham Ayatollah" which is well worth seeing if you can track it down. He actually spent quite a lot of time with the man himself, rather than cobble it together from other peoples interviews/footage etc. This was remarkable not least for the fact Ronson is Jewish, and Bakri is hugely anti-jew. Bakri comes over more as a bit of a bumbling ass with grand ideas but very little follow through (booking the 14,000 capacity London arena for a huge Islamic rally, later cancelled after selling "between 2-3,000 tickets", for example). He seemsd to be living in a bit of a dream world, albeit a news-friendly one. Also, Ronson wrote a lengthy piece for the Guardian Weekend about his experiences; this generated a lot of interest and inspired his book "Them: Adventures with Extremists" where he did the same thing with assorted oddballs around the world, searching for secretive cabals etc. It's a good read, if a little lightweight. The time he spent with Omar Bakri makes up the first chapter, IIRC; I can't find a copy of the Guardian article online anywhere. Obviously I don't know which is the "real" Bakri, but it's (predictably) probably somewhere between the two However, the more personal interviews/documentaries I've seen suggest he's perhaps less dangerous (and less effective) than this excerpt would have you believe. Rik. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
