The horrifying murder of British soldier Lee Rigby on an east London street this week has left many concerned about copycat attacks or retaliation because of at least one suspect’s connection to an extremist group.
The former leader of a banned Islamist group called al-Mujajiroun identified Michael Adebolajo as one of the two men who brutally hacked Rigby to death on Wednesday.
Adebolajo, a 28-year-old British man of Nigerian descent, is allegedly the man seen in an amateur video following the knife attack in the area of Woolwich.
The man in the video, holding a knife and a meat cleaver in his blood-covered hands, said the slaying was “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” He was reportedly acting out of anger for British military involvement in Muslim countries such as Afghanistan.
That has prompted a right-wing group, whose members were caught tossing bricks at mosques following Rigby’s murder, to plan a rally to call for the deportation of Islamic extremists.
The English Defence League (EDL),which is well-known to be anti-immigration, is planning to protest next Monday on Downing Street – home to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron – and, as the Mirror reports, they want people like Adebolajo sent out of the country.
The only problem with that is Adebolajo is British – born and bred.
Mirror columnist Susie Boniface, under the pseudonym Fleet Street Fox, points out EDL’s founder Tommy Robinson (born Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) is the son of Irish immigrants.
In the column “Keep Britain Tidy: If we’re kicking out extremists, let’s start with the EDL,” published Friday, Boniface equates the EDL taking on extremism to fighting intolerance with more intolerance.
“As someone who lives in London, I’d like to thank the English Defence League… for nominating one of the most cosmopolitan capital cities in the world as a repository for narrow-minded, blinkered hate, violence, misogyny, homophobia and people with a generally medieval attitude about their fellow man.”
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Guardian commentator David Lammy suggests the EDL is no better than groups such as al-Muhajiroun for preying on disadvantaged and disillusioned young people and indoctrinating them with extremist ideologies.
As Robinson’s views don’t represent the majority of the Christian or non-Muslim British public, Adebolajo’s do not represent those of all Muslims.
Richard Kemp, also in the Guardian calls Adebolajo’s belief that Western forces are responsible for the slaughter of Muslims “dangerous ignorance.” On Friday, he wrote many more Muslims in Afghanistan are killed by other Muslims than by NATO forces.
“The overwhelming majority of the Taliban’s victims were the result of deliberate targeting and indiscriminate use of improvised explosive devices and suicide attacks, some carried out by children,” he wrote.
Kemp referenced United Nations statistics showing 81 per cent of civilian deaths in 2012 were attributed to the Taliban and similar groups, compared to eight per cent of deaths caused by NATO and Afghan forces.
WATCH: Video of Michael Adebolajo at a 2007 rally
Adebolajo’s views are not shared by the majority of British Muslims and various Muslim groups have spoken out to condemn Rigby’s murder.
Mehdi Hasan, political director for Huffington Post UK, wrote in the Telegraph that Adebolajo and the other suspect, identified as 22-year-old Michael Adebowale, were “supposedly Muslim.”
“Islam doesn’t permit the killing of innocents. Jihad is permissible only in self-defence and if sanctioned by a legitimate government,” Hasan wrote.
He echoed the Prime Minister, who called the murder “a betrayal of Islam.”
The Mirror’s Paul Routledge opined “This is not a Muslim atrocity. It was a terrorist atrocity committed by men with twisted ideas of Islam.”
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