by Jon Ronson
And finally, everyone, Islamic fundamentalists included, had an inalienable right – by law – to park their cars.
Omar was confident that these arguments were watertight.
♦
Every morning, Anjem would buy all the papers, and Omar would read about himself and the rally, and listen to debates about himself on BBC Radio 4. His offices in the basement of the Finsbury Park Mosque were besieged by reporters and TV crews. When Omar prayed, television crews filmed him praying. Later, shots of Omar praying were broadcast on the news with the following commentary:
There are more Muslims in south-east London than anywhere else in Europe. The vast majority of them are horrified by Al Muhajiroun. They believe the group only generates prejudice against all Muslims in the West.
Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed is the leader of Al Muhajiroun. He’s a Syrian living in Britain on state benefits. What he wants is a Holy War that is unashamedly violent.
Omar hadn’t eaten properly in days – just crisps and chocolates and fig rolls. His health was suffering. And he was getting woken up in the middle of the night by anonymous phone calls. “Enough is enough. You fundamentalists are going to pay the price. You are dead meat.”
“Very silly messages,” said Omar. “But the one that came last night had an Arabic accent. ‘If the rally goes ahead, we will blow it up, you traitors.’”
But in spite of this, I’d not seen Omar quite so happy.
He was asked to appear on a Carlton television discussion programme called Thursday Night Live. The producers told Omar that it would be an intellectual and even-handed debate about the issues surrounding the rally. Omar was excited.
♦
The night of the broadcast, I turned on Carlton TV to see a television studio full of young white males. They wore Fred Perry shirts and smart-casual sports tops, the uniform of the modern-day south-east London racist. There was a great deal of shouting.
The presenter, whose name is Nicky Campbell, was wandering amongst the audience holding a microphone. He pointed it at random shouting men, and their amplified cries drifted briefly above the general noise. Omar sat, very quiet and still, on a stage.
“The gentleman in the striped shirt,” said Nicky Campbell, passing the microphone across.
“I don’t wanna get into depth about Islamic or Islam and all that,” he said, “but I believe if anyone comes into this country, like this geezer ‘ee’s on benefit – I think if you’re gonna be in this country, you should be British.’” There was thunderous applause. “Not Islamic or Islam or nothing, but British.”
Nicky Campbell said, “How much money in benefit are you getting every week?”
“One hundred and fifty pounds,” replied Omar softly. You could barely hear him over the shouting.
“If you wanna change something,” interrupted the man in the striped shirt, “you wanna get a job!” There were howls of support from the audience. “Not ponce down the bleedin’ DHSS.”
“I used to have a job,” replied Omar, “and many people like you worked for me.”
“Well, go down the corner shop and get one then,” said the man in the striped shirt.
Nicky Campbell intervened. “OK,” he said. “The man in the front row with the glasses.”
“We have our laws, and all that,” he said, “so shouldn’t it be a simple thing? As in Rome, do as the Romans do. You’re a bloody terrorist and you should swim home to – ”
His final words were drowned out by howls of approval.
♦
I arrived at Omar’s offices early the next morning. This was the day before the rally. Omar was laughing.
“Did you see me on TV last night?” he said, shaking his head. “My God!”
“Were you upset?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” said Omar. “It was very silly. Did you see them?”
The offices were packed as always with supporters and news crews from around the world waiting to interview him.
“You know, Jon,” he said, “there have always been plans. And the first two plans have already been put into operation. Plan A was to announce the rally, and we announced the rally. Plan B was to shake up the entire world, and we have shaken up the entire world.”
“How many plans are there in total?” I asked.
“Four plans,” said Omar.
“So you’re now on to Plan C?” I asked.
“That’s right,” said Omar.
“What’s Plan C?” I asked.
“I will tell you now,” said Omar, “because we are ready to implement it. OK. Do you know how many journalists have asked to interview me and have requested a press pass for the event of the rally?”
“Six hundred and thirty-four,” I said.
“Exactly,” said Omar. “I don’t think that any member of Parliament, or even Lady Diana herself, had this many journalists requesting a press pass.”
“What has this got to do with Plan C?” I asked him.
“OK,” said Omar. “Today, I will announce that all journalists are banned from entering the London Arena.”
Omar grinned. He looked at me to gauge my response to Plan C. I was confused.
“Why?” I said. “What’s wrong with letting them in?”
“It will be a Muslim-only conference,” says Omar. “Ha ha! What do you think of that?”
“I think it’s a little bit of a shame,” I said, “and I don’t quite understand the rationale behind it.”
“It is a Muslim-only conference,” said Omar, a little sharply.
♦
Then Omar was called away for a private meeting with Anjem, his deputy. I considered Plan C. I knew that ticket sales had been disappointing. Only two or three thousand had been sold, which left eleven thousand empty seats in the London Arena. Also, few of the pledged video messages from incarcerated terrorists and fugitives from justice had arrived – not even the one from Omar’s old friend, the Blind Sheikh. As I watched Omar wandering away, I realized what his final plan, Plan D, must be.
♦
At lunchtime, Omar and Anjem disappeared again into a room together. Then they reappeared, looking grave. Omar cleared his throat. He had something he wanted to say. The room fell silent. Omar didn’t announce it as such, but this was Plan D.
“The rally,” said Omar, “has been cancelled. It is over. There will be no rally. They have blackmailed us. The London Arena have blackmailed the Muslims. They wanted to charge the maximum cost of security. Eighteen thousand pounds. They know we can’t afford this sort of money. So do not blame us for the cancellation. We were blackmailed. Any questions?”
“Are you disappointed?” I asked Omar.
“Oh, no,” said Omar. “It is a great victory for Muslims worldwide. It is a victory because we said we would shake up the world, and we shook up the world. We promised it would become historical rally and it has become historical rally. It blew up the whole world.”
“And financially?” I asked. “Has it been an expensive endeavour?”
“Oh, no,” said Omar. “I am entitled to a full refund from the London Arena.”
As word of the cancellation spread, rumours began to circulate that Omar would have his rally after all, but at a different location.
“Is there going to be a march in the streets?” asked the journalists. “Somebody mentioned Hyde Park.”
“We will have our rally,” said Omar. “Speaker’s corner. Hyde Park. Ten-thirty on Sunday morning. Come along. The world’s press will be there.”
“And what about your supporters?” I asked. “What about the audience?”
There was a moment’s pause.
“They are very welcome to come along too,” said Omar, “of course.”
♦
I arrived early at Speaker’s Corner on Sunday morning. It was an unusual choice of location for Omar’s alternative rally. This corner of Hyde Park was a notorious asylum for the theologically and politically overwrought to exercise their democratic right, on Sunday mor
nings, to be heard on top of soap-boxes and stepladders. The flaw was that the audience turned up only to be amused by the speakers’ eccentricities. It was a tourist attraction. I could not understand why anybody who felt he had something crucial to impart would choose to make himself heard at Speaker’s Corner. If I was far-fetched in this manner, I wouldn’t pigeon-hole myself. I’d try to slip into the mainstream.
I spotted Omar. He was surrounded by film crews. Although he had often said he would relish the opportunity to die in the battlefield, security was tight today. Omar’s people were holding walkie-talkies and eyeing passers-by as if they were potential assassins. I waved a hello, but Omar didn’t respond. Now he was at the centre of world events, our relationship had cooled a little. He didn’t need me any more.
I noticed Mohammed, one of Omar’s teenage sons, in the crowd. He was standing alone. He looked a little anxious and he seemed not to be sharing in the excitement of the day. He told me that he had seen the movie Malcolm X on the video a few nights before, and he recognized some worrying parallels between this story and his father’s.
“You see what happened to Malcolm X?” said Mohammed. “Too much publicity, and you see what happened? Bang.”
“Is that what your dad’s becoming?” I asked.
“I didn’t exactly like that video,” he said. “Even Mum says she’s worried. But it’s all in the hands of God. I guess.” Mohammed paused, sadly. “I guess,” he said, “it’s all in the hands of Allah.”
Then there was a shrill noise to our left, screeching and cat-calls. Everyone looked over. We saw a mass of pink flags surrounded by a police escort. It was Outrage, the gay rights group, who’d arrived for a counter demonstration, a Queer Fatwa. They held placards sentencing Omar to ‘1,000 Years Of Relentless Sodomitical Torment’.
“Al Muhajiroun!” they chanted. “Anti-gay! Anti-women! Anti-you!”
The TV crews abandoned Omar en masse to film the Queer Fatwa.
“That’s the decline of this nation,” Omar announced to the few journalists still listening to him.
One of Omar’s young followers, a teenager with a wispy beard and a Jihad baseball cap, spotted me watching the Queer Fatwa.
“You cannot put the homosexuals in Omar’s life story,” he said, furiously. “No way. If you do that, you will get so many death threats. You will get more death threats than the entire State of Israel gets. Which is two or three billion, actually.”
“Just if I put Outrage in Omar’s life story?” I said.
“No way,” he said, “can you do that.”
This worried me. Whenever I told people I was spending a year with Omar Bakri, they invariably looked concerned and said, “But what about the Fatwas?” I had shrugged these concerns off. But now a Muslim extremist had actually said the words death threat to me. Admittedly, it wasn’t a tangible death threat, per se, more a death threat precursor. But that was still one step closer to a death threat than I’d ever hoped to come. I felt the need for some comforting words from Omar, but I couldn’t get anywhere near him for all his bodyguards.
♦
I did not see Omar for two months. We spoke on the phone from time to time, but he didn’t seem to want to have me about. Things had taken a turn for the worse. He had been evicted from his offices at the bottom of my road. His landlords, the Finsbury Park Mosque, were sick of all the film crews. Also, the DSS had stopped his unemployment and disability benefits. Rupert Allason claimed victory for this.
“I would love nothing more than to get a job,” Omar told me over the phone. “But how can I, with all the terrible publicity your media gives me?”
“So you’ve lost your offices and you’ve lost your unemployment benefit,” I said. “You’ve lost everything.”
“I have lost every material thing in this life,” said Omar, “but I have not lost my belief or my struggle or the cause I believe in. I may not have money but I have dignity.”
“Omar,” I said, “there’s something I’m a little worried about which I wanted to talk through with you.”
“Oh, yes?”
“One of your followers said that if I put Outrage in your story, I would get two or three billion death threats.”
“Ah,” said Omar. “They are terrible people. They are always putting death threats on people, those homosexuals.”
“No, no,” I explained. “It wasn’t the homosexuals who put a death threat on me. It was one of your people. I was wondering if you could put in a word for me. Smooth things over.”
“I don’t talk to homosexuals,” Omar replied.
“It wasn’t the homosexuals,” I said, exasperated. “It was a young man, with a wispy beard. And he was wearing a Jihad baseball cap.”
There was a long silence.
“There are a lot of people with beards,” said Omar, finally. “And a lot of people wearing Jihad baseball caps.”
There was another silence.
“Omar,” I said, “I can point him out to you. I don’t know his name, but I’ve often seen him standing next to you.”
“Jon,” said Omar, quietly, “this cannot have happened. No Muslim would ever put a death threat onto anybody. Anyway. I’ve got to go now. Goodbye, Jon.”
“Goodbye, Omar,” I muttered.
♦
A month passed, and then it was January, the first day of Ramadan. For months now, I’d been asking Omar to take me to his secret Jihad training camp in Crawley – which seemed a rather incongruous location for a Jihad training camp. Finally he agreed. We were picked up at Crawley station by some young local followers. These were people I had never seen before. Omar said that in every town and city in the country, and many towns abroad, there was a cluster of Al Muhajiroun supporters.
“When you put all those people together,” said Omar, “you have an army. Oh yes, there is a time when a military struggle must take place in the UK. Jihad. It’s called ‘Conquering’. One day, without question, the UK is going to be governed by Islam. The Muslims in Britain must not be naive. They must be ready to defend themselves militarily. The struggle, as I always say, is a struggle between two civilizations, the civilization of man against the civilization of God.”
We were driven to the Jihad training camp, a well-stocked gym in a scout hut in a forestry centre. Snow lay on the ground. Inside, a young man wearing boxing gloves was beating a punchbag, and Omar immediately instructed him to focus his assault.
“On the head,” he said. “That’s it. The head! Easy. Easy. OK, stop now. Rest, rest! You kill him! You kill him!”
The group laughed, and I laughed too.
I was standing in one corner, with my back against the wall. I found this situation slightly uncomfortable. And then, apropos of nothing, Omar made an announcement to the group.
“Look at me!” he said. “Here I am with an Infidel. Jon” – Omar paused for effect – “is a Jew.”
There was an audible gasp, followed by a long silence.
Of all the locations in which Omar could have chosen to disclose this sensational revelation, a packed Jihad training camp in the middle of a forest was not the place I would have hoped for. I found myself searching for the fastest path to the door.
“Are you really a Jew?” said someone, eventually.
“Well,” I said, “surely it is better to be a Jew than an atheist?”
There was a silence.
“No, it isn’t,” said a voice from the crowd.
“When did you know that I was Jewish?” I asked Omar.
“From the beginning,” he said. “I could see it in your eyes. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Well,” I said. “You know – ”
“You are ashamed to be a Jew?” said Omar. “You deny it?”
“No,” I said.
“I am not offended that you are a Jew,” said Omar. “We are all Semites. If you were Israeli, if you were Zionist, that is a different matter. But what offends me is that you hide it. You assimilate. That you have no pride.”
Of course, Omar was right. I should have told him.
“Assimilation,” tutted Omar. “Integration. That is the worst thing of all. Be a Jew!”
♦
I left the Jihad training camp soon after. I was to see Omar on only one more occasion. It had been a year since he bought his novelty Coca-Cola Hamas collection boxes from the Cash and Carry. They were full now of loose change and £50 notes. There was a cheque for £5,000 in one. Anjem and Omar were taking the collection boxes to the bank. The money would be converted into foreign currency and shipped off to the Middle East, where it would be used in the fight against Israel.
Omar had some business to finish. Anjem packed the bottles in the back of his car. Then he remembered that he’d left his coat inside. He said, “Could you guard the money for a moment? I won’t be long.”
“OK,” I replied.
Anjem disappeared and I was left standing guard over thousands of pounds, money that would go to Hamas, to kill the Jews in Israel.
For a while I stood there.
And what the hell was I doing, guarding money that would be used to kill the Jews? And then I understood that I had to take the money. I had to reach into the car, grab the Coca-Cola bottles, and make a run for it. This was my responsibility, my duty. I had an obligation to do this. I had the strength to carry two bottles. How many lives might that save? Omar and Anjem were still inside. The car was unlocked.
But I didn’t do it, of course. I just stood there. And then Anjem and Omar returned, thanked me for my help, and took the money to the bank.
∨ Them ∧
2
Running Through Cornfields
Rachel Weaver is eighteen. She lived with her boyfriend, Josh, in a large, plain ranch house in northwest Montana. I sat at her kitchen table, drinking her apple juice and eating from a jar of Certs mints, while Josh lifted weights in the spare bedroom.
Rachel said, “The gun I really fell in love with is the .45 70. I’m not even sure who makes it. It’s a lever action. It’s not like it’s a big machine gun. It’s not a hard kick. It’s a…whoa…it lugs you back.”
