London — For Abu Zahid, the hijackers who slammed two jetliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center two years ago were not terrorists but Islamic heroes whom he and fellow members of the London-based extremist Islamic group al-Muhajiroun prefer to call the "Magnificent 19."
"For me, these 19 people were magnificent people," Mr. Zahid said as he helped prepare the organization's unkempt office in the London district of Tottenham for a news conference today commemorating the events of Sept. 11, 2001.
"Some of them memorized the Koran. Some of them were scholars. Some made sacrifices," he said. "They left their wives and their children and went to die for the sake of Allah."
Al-Mahajiroun, a small radical group that loves to court controversy, has done it again with plans for a series of conferences honouring the hijackers, to be held in London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leicester.
The group has been denounced by mainstream British Muslim groups as marginal publicity-seekers, but at least some of their virulently anti-American message appears to be shared by a growing number of the country's young Muslims.
In announcing the public meetings last month, al-Muhajiroun said that on Sept. 11, "many Muslims worldwide will be celebrating the comeuppance of the U.S.A. in what they see as retribution for the atrocities that the U.S. has committed, and indeed continues to commit against Muslims."
Another spokesman for the group said this week that the 9/11 attacks were "completely justified" and "quite splendid," and that any Muslim who thought differently was nothing but an "apostate."
Spokesman Abdul-Rehman Saleem denied yesterday that the meetings are a celebration — he called them "more of a commemoration." Nevertheless, he said, he doesn't understand why people continue to "whine" over the death of 3,000 innocents while ignoring what he said are millions killed by the United States.
Britain's Home Office has vowed that police will monitor "every word and every statement" made during the al-Muhajiroun meetings. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the group's leader, was investigated by police last summer after he disclosed that a British man who killed three people in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv had studied with him.
Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, called al-Muhajiroun a fringe group that is being deliberately provocative to attract media attention. Britain's 1.6 million Muslims pray at more than 1,000 mosques, he said, and not one of them is run by the group.
"The media profile is way out of proportion to their standing in our community, and they are despised because they deliberately court media publicity to the detriment of Islam and ordinary Muslims in this country," Mr. Bunglawala said.
At the al-Muhajiroun office in a former factory adjacent to the Tottenham Hotspurs soccer stadium, Mr. Zahid, 28, said he was a non-practising Muslim before he joined the group two years ago.
Born in Bangladesh, Mr. Zahid is a former Royal Air Force cadet and a current unemployed information technology consultant. He doesn't believe that the victims of the World Trade Center attacks were innocent. Because America is a democracy, he said, all of its citizens are responsible for the country's actions.
At a mosque in neighbouring Finsbury Park, Somali teenagers Abdul and Abdi said they thought the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were terrible, but their friend Saeed was not so sure that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were responsible.
"As far as I'm concerned, he didn't do it," said Saeed, a 16-year-old student. "I think the people of America are very gullible toward the media and I think their media and their whole country is run by Zionists, Freemasons and all those weird people."
Fuad Nahdi, editor of Q-News, a Muslim magazine, said the initial shock of 9/11 has worn off because of U.S. actions in Iraq and Afghanistan, which he said has dissipated much of the sympathy that Britons originally felt toward the victims.
"People are no longer as reverential. . . . What is it that makes the Americans who died on 9/11 better human beings than ordinary Palestinians who continue to die in Palestine?" he asked.
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