The Sunday Telegraph

British Muslims ordered to adopt Taliban teachings
By Julian West and Jo Knowsley
(Filed: 27/07/1997) (p. 13)

Thousands of young British Muslims are being indoctrinated into the Taliban, the hard-line Islamic sect which believes women are the source of evil.

The young men study at British mosques and religious colleges, learning the laws of the Deobandi sect, a political branch of Islam that formed the basis of the Taliban movement in Afghanistan.

There are already Deobandi mosques in Birmingham, Manchester, Bradford and London, together with up to 20 religious colleges.

Others have been sent abroad for "training", lasting up to eight years, at Deobandi religious universities. Students emerge without any other qualification and are expected to come back to Britain and teach in mosques and colleges here.

Under the extremist Taliban regime in Afghanistan, executions are carried out in public and criminals have had their hands and feet chopped off. Women have been banned from working and must live in purdah, forbidden to leave their homes unless accompanied by a male relative. In the latest Taliban edict last week women have been forbidden to wear "noisy shoes" so that they can walk more softly.

Deobandis are given to issuing fatwas of this kind regulating tiny details of behaviour. Since the beginning of the century they have produced something like a quarter of a million of them.

Most of Britain's Deobandi mosques were funded by money from Saudi Arabia. These include the Al Farouq Masjid mosque in Walsall, West Midlands, which cost an estimated £5 million to build. It is named after the Saudi oil millionaire who put up the money.

Laws enforced at the Walsall mosque are so strict that women members cannot attend their own weddings. Instead, two male relatives participate on their behalf. The religious colleges, mainly situated in the north of England, take students aged between nine and 21 to undergo five years of intensive training. Basic maths and science are taught alongside Islamic studies. Each college has between 250 and 300 students.

It is estimated that about 20 percent of Britain's 1.5 million Muslims now follow Deobandi teachings. These have so far focused on education rather than encouraging militant action.

But it is believed that the Saudis are refusing to finance new mosques unless they belong to the Taliban's Deobandi school of Islam.

Ron Graves, professor of Islamic studies at Wolverhampton University, said the increase in Deobandi teachings in Britain was a cause for concern. "The Deobandis are obsessed with fatwas. It's how they control their members and how they would like to control the rest of the Islamic world. Deobandis see their way as the only correct route and are political in their teachings."

Prof. Graves said the Taliban had put a more militant edge to their laws because of the political climate from which the movement emerged in 1994.

Second-generation Muslims in Britain could be tempted to do the same, he said. "If they are struggling to find an identity and remain isolated from British culture, they might find the more militant elements of the Deobandi sect the perfect form of rebellion."

The source of Deobandi teaching is a sprawling university in the small town of Deoband in Uttar Pradesh, northern India. The institution is the second largest in the Muslim world, with 3,000 students. It produces only religious leaders, the imams and mullahs, who leave after eight years of training and go on to teach or found their own schools. There are believed to be dozens of these in Britain.

Many British Muslims studied at Deoband until India recently imposed tighter visa rules. Most now attend an affiliated university, opened at Bury, Lancs. seven years ago, but some still travel to Deoband.

The vice-chancellor of the Indian university, Maulana Marghubu R. Rahman, a mullah in his late seventies, admitted that the schools' aims included propagating their fatwa-driven teachings "throughout the world., including England".

But Dr Zaki Badawi, of the Imams and Mosques Council, suggested that young Muslims in Britain were unlikely to embrace extremism. "Second-generation Muslims want to shed their cultural baggage which often has no relation to being in modern Britain."
 

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