What's the U.S. Olympic Team Doing at Jihad U?

I really did think it was an April Fools joke. The American 2012 Olympics contingent — a group estimated at one thousand people and clearly a terror target — will be lodged at the jihadi-friendly University of East London.

Before putting pen to paper, I decided to check my facts regarding the university and to see if my knee-jerk reaction was a needless form of hysteria, the kind of over-the-top terrorist fear of which Americans are accused by liberal Europeans and Britons. In fact, Britons who express fear about the proliferation of extremist Muslim groups handing out incendiary leaflets on our streets are more often than not branded Islamophobes by the media, by employers, by their local politicians, and even by shop assistants.

So I went into research mode and was able to acquire valuable background information from the excellent Center for Social Cohesion headed by the brave Douglas Murray.

In October 2002, at an “Islamic Fair” at the University of East London, Omar Khyam — mastermind of the terrifying fertilizer bomb plot in which several large British targets were to be blown to smithereens with mass casualties — met Anthony Garcia, a fellow member of the cell. Garcia, according to Center for Social Cohesion member Robin Simcox, had participated in a screening by the university’s Islamic Society of radical videos showing alleged atrocities in Kashmir.

Uthman Lateef, also known as Abu Mujahid, was recorded at a December 12, 2007, event telling his enthusiastic followers:

When you accept something from an alien or foreign tradition that is not from the core religion, down the line, decades, centuries, millennia after that, you’re going to get a very rotten apple.

This may seem harmless enough, but the agenda is as follows: go to a Western country, impose your religious beliefs on the majority, and if they do not accept your beliefs use any means necessary to enforce conversion.

The above-mentioned Douglas Murray tried to stage an intelligent debate with Anjam Choudary, former head of the now-banned al-Muhajiroun, only to have the proceedings canceled because Choudary’s supporters tried to separate men and women attending the event in the historic Conway Hall. Choudary then went outside and declared that Sharia law would one day prevail in Britain. It is in this tradition that Abu Mujahid addressed his followers at the University of East London.

In 2007, on a Channel Four television program, Abu Usama adh Dhahabee advocated holy war in an Islamic state:

Whoever changes his religion from al-Islam to anything else, kill him in the Islamic state. …

Allah has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. ..

Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain. …

Whether these kuffar are from the UK, or from the U.S., we love the people of Islam and we hate the kuffars.

Even after this rampage, Abu Usama was invited to University of East London to speak alongside, yes, Uthman Lateef at the Islamic Society’s annual dinner on April 28, 2009. The event was canceled after Douglas Murray informed the university authorities of the extremist nature of the speakers. However, no action was taken to stop Dhahabee’s appearance at the rescheduled dinner on June 17, 2009, despite a repeated deputation from the CSC. It is notable that the debacle with Anjam Choudary at Conway Hall occurred in the same week.

Haitham al-Haddad was invited by the University of East London’s Islamic Society to appear at an event on December 9, 2009. According to Robin Simcox, he advocates the abolition of Israel and supports Hamas. Showing what great knowledge he has of Jewish history, he has said Israelis should leave Palestine and “go back to their own countries.”

Readers may say, “So what? The university is a place of intellectual fervor and pedagogy. Free speech is part of that equation.” Well, what I find worrying is that the British Olympic team has already made it clear that taking security considerations into account means they will be ensconced in the military environment of Aldershot army base. So why is the United States not seeking a similarly secure headquarters?

I am not suggesting the University of East London is going to be the scene of an atrocity matching the horror of the slaughter of the Israeli team in Munich in 1972 — in what was supposed to have been a safe Olympic village — and one assumes the university will make every effort to provide excellent security.

But with the kind of frightening hostility I received at England’s Queen’s School in mid-March still reverberating in my mind many weeks later, when several hundred angry little children shouted and cheered when America was trashed by Muslim audience members, I am not convinced a university is the safest venue for a crowd of Americans. 2012 is not far off, and all one can hope is that the University of East London provides every precaution available to protect their “kuffar” guests.