On February 2, 2020, a 20-year-old named Sudesh Amman perpetrated a stabbing attack in London, injuring three people. Amman had been released from prison several days earlier, after serving three years on terrorism charges. This attack bears a close resemblance to the November 29, 2019 London Bridge attack, perpetrated by Usman Khan, also a released prisoner who had been jailed for involvement in terror.
Following the London Bridge attack, in which two people were killed, Egyptian liberal journalist Khaled Montasser published an article titled "Can a Terrorist Repent." In it, he wrote that terrorists are incapable of repenting since they are motivated by extremist ideas such as a rejection of nation-states, isolation from society and a desire to establish the Islamic Caliphate, and they rejoice at terror attacks perpetrated by Muslims in the West. He accused Europe, and especially Britain, of sheltering and cultivating Islamic extremists, including Salafis and activists of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is supported by Qatar, and allowing them to establish unsupervised schools and religious centers that become "bastions of backwardness" and "incubators of terror and extremism." He therefore urged Europe and Britain to wake up before they are overrun by the extremists and become extinct.
Khaled Montasser (Source: Al-Watan, Egypt)
The following are translated excerpts from his article:[1]
"London woke up to a disaster: British police confirm that two people were killed and three were wounded in a stabbing attack against passersby near London Bridge on Friday [November 29, 2019]... The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said: 'We will not let terror threaten our city and our unity... or disrupt our daily lives.'[2]
"I [regret to] inform you, dear Mr. Mayor, that you are deluded. These people will threaten your city whether you like it or not, and take your daily lives back to the stone age if you continue to delude yourself that the scorpion will carry the frog on its back and bring it safely to the shore.
"Sadly, Britain swallows the poison of the serpents [i.e., the Islamic extremists] when it cultivates them and showers them with love and compassion, while disregarding the warnings of several states… among them Egypt. Britain has allowed itself to be inundated with funds from Qatar, the sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the world. It has allowed [the extremists] to take over all areas of life, especially the written and visual media. It shelters murderers who use their terror pulpits, disguised as research centers, to launch missiles of takfir [accusations of heresy] and incitement. It released this terrorist [the perpetrator of the London Bridge attack] because he repented and renounced [terror]. It invited him to a dialogue [seminar for released prisoners] at the University of Cambridge, and he stabbed two people on London Bridge.
"Gentlemen, terrorists do not repent. Religious extremists will always continue to delude themselves that they are God's representatives on earth. The liberals in Europe all feel a kind of sympathy for the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, to the point of [embracing] helplessness and stupidity under the slogans of dialogue, integration and human rights. They do not understand that [extremists] do not recognize [the notion of] dialogue, for dialogue takes place between two different opinions. [There cannot be dialogue] between one opinion and another that is rejected out of hand, and [extremists] reject [other] opinions in advance, since [they believe that] they are speaking in God's name and that their opinions are divine decrees. They have a divine power of attorney [to speak in God's name]… a badge of faith and the keys to Paradise.
"They cannot be integrated into nation states, because they do not recognize [the notion of] nationality, but only the ummah [the Muslim nation], and their ambition is to establish a Caliphate without borders. They wish [to live in] ghettos that perpetuate isolation from and aggression towards the other. They are the ones who danced with glee when the Notre-Dame Cathedral burned down [in April 2019], and also after the [March 2016] Metro terror attack in Belgium and the [August 2017] car-ramming in Barcelona. They are the ones who turned the [9/11] attacks on the World Trade Center into icons of jihad! They do not recognize human rights, but only the rights of those who share their beliefs and ideas. They recognize only the right of the 'saved sect,'[3] which is allowed to exclude the other and even kill him based on vague accusations such as apostasy, unbelief and heresy. They wish to implement rules that have passed from the world and belong in a folklore museum.
"Europe is collapsing demographically due to its low birth rate, while these [extremists] breed like rabbits and spawn like crabs. Europe does not realize that the motto of these extremists is 'give me a finger and I'll devour your entire hand.' It allows [the extremists to establish] Islamic schools outside the framework of the [general] school system, which are transformed into bastions of backwardness and of plotting against the very existence of the state, as well as unsupervised religious centers that become incubators of terror and hothouses of extremism. It begins by approving [such schools], continues by letting [the extremists] take to the streets with megaphones, and eventually [they establish] volunteer groups and religious police units. If Europe does not wake up, it will become extinct and turn into Tora Bora."
[1] Al-Watan (Egypt), November 30, 2019.
[2] Khan's exact words were: "We will not let anyone divide us or disrupt our way of life. We will defend our values – and we will never let the terrorists win" (theguardian.com, November 30, 2019).
[3] This refers to a hadith of the Prophet Muhammad, according to which the Muslim nation will be divided into 73 sects, all of which will go to hell except for one. According to the common interpretation of the hadith, the saved sect is a group of righteous Muslims who follow the directives of Allah and Muhammad; extremist Islamic groups often attribute this description to themselves.
