Death was on Abu Hamza's mind.
"Seek the way of death, try to do actions that subject you to death," the Muslim cleric told his audience, mostly young men, as they sat at Friday prayers. "If you die to defend your religion, you are a martyr. ... Die honorably, don't die humiliated."
This was not Gaza or Fallujah. This was Finsbury Park in north London, on a road outside a mosque that was raided by anti-terrorism police over a year ago and has been shuttered ever since.
Abu Hamza al-Masri, universally known as Abu Hamza, turned to the resistance fighters in Iraq.
"They are keen to die honorably for the sake of God and religion," Abu Hamza boomed into a microphone, watched by about two dozen police officers, the same number of journalists and a good many unenthusiastic local residents. "It's a culture we're proud of."
Abu Hamza is different things to different people in Britain. To the police and government, he is a dangerous man connected to Islamic terror groups; they are trying to strip him of his citizenship and deport him to Yemen, where he is wanted on terror charges. To the British tabloid papers and their readers, he is public enemy No. 1, vilified daily and known as Hook (he says he lost his hands fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and often wears a menacing-looking metal hook on one hand). To his followers, he is a talismanic source of inspiration and righteousness. And to most Muslims in Britain, he is their worst nightmare -- the most visible face of Islam in a country currently suffused with anxiety and sometimes hostility toward the nearly 2 million Muslims, a community that for the most part is trying to live normal, law-abiding, integrated lives.
"Anyone living here who blatantly displays anti-British sentiment should be either prosecuted and incarcerated, or -- if from foreign shores -- immediately packed off from whence they came," columnist Jane Moore wrote recently in the Sun tabloid, echoing the sort of sentiment that Muslims in Britain fear has become commonplace.
But even as the Muslim establishment in Britain tries to point out that Abu Hamza and his ilk are a small minority, leaders acknowledge that the radicals' message is striking a chord among some disaffected British Muslims.
"The danger is they're trying to tap into a genuine grievance in our community," said Inayat Bunglawala, spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, the largest Muslim group in the country. Britain's involvement in the invasion of Iraq and the belief that Britain is increasingly pro-Israel are two major issues, he said. "Which is why their words do resonate among some sections of the Muslim community, yes."
Since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims in Britain have come under close scrutiny from the police and intelligence service, MI5. Muslim leaders say the scrutiny amounts to harassment and discrimination. Of the 537 people detained under new terrorism laws by the end of 2003, Bunglawala said, only six have been convicted of terrorism offenses, two of them non-Muslims. The majority of the 537 arrested, he believes, were Muslims, although there is no official breakdown by religion.
Resentful young Muslims, community leaders say, are being turned by the police's treatment of them toward figures like Abu Hamza.
"More alienation, more hatred is actually being nourished," said Massoud Shadjareh, chairman of the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which campaigns against what it perceives as police discrimination. Shadjareh, however, is seen by many in the Muslim community as an extremist himself. "The reality of the situation is, thank God, that there hasn't been a single incident of terrorism in Britain committed by a Muslim ... It seems there is an agenda to create a fear of a section of the community ... We haven't had any bombing but we are getting attacks on mosques."
On April 29, Muslim leaders pointed to that day's release of all 10 suspects who were arrested the previous week in connection with an alleged plan to attack a major soccer stadium in Manchester. The arrests made the front pages. The releases were buried on the inside pages of most newspapers.
A spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers dismissed the claims that the police are acting in a discriminatory way. Speaking on customary condition of anonymity, the spokesman said the police try to allay concerns of Muslims by regularly talking to all the communities locally and nationally "to make clear we're not targeting Muslims, we're targeting terrorists."
The spokesman also said about 50 percent of those arrested under terrorism laws were charged with terrorist offenses or other criminal offenses, held on bail, given cautions, or directed to the immigration services. That 50 percent, he said, is "not an unfavorable comparison" with non-terrorism-related arrests.
While Shadjareh is correct in saying there have been no terrorist attacks committed by Muslims in Britain, the police insist they have prevented attacks through their arrests. They also point to people like Briton Richard Reid, convicted in the United States of trying to explode a shoe bomb in December 2001 on a trans-Atlantic flight, and French-born Morrocan Zacarias Moussaoui, who is accused of helping to plot the Sept. 11 attacks; both men attended sermons at the Finsbury Park mosque, which used to be Abu Hamza's base.
Another visiting preacher at the mosque was Omar Bakri , who is the head of an extremist group called Al-Mohajeroun. Bakri, who has described himself as Osama bin Laden's representative in Britain and is still calling bin Laden "a great man," was linked in a court case in London earlier this month to a suicide bombing in Israel.
The wife of one of two British Muslims who took part in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv last year attended one of Bakri's lectures about "The Psychology of the Suicide Bomber" shortly before her brother made his final journey to the Middle East, the court heard. Bakri's cell phone number is written at the foot of her notes, the prosecutor told the jury.
At a recent meeting in the working class East End of London, Bakri sat behind a desk in a community center and addressed a room of about 60 Muslims on, again, the Psychology of the Suicide Bomber, apparently his favorite topic of the moment. The Syrian-born sheikh was jovial at times, thundering at others, lecturing attending journalists for being non-Muslims. Non-Muslims, or kafirs, "will always be foolish and ignorant because God said so," Bakri noted.
Like Abu Hamza, Bakri dwelt at length on the topic of death and martyrdom. He explained that Muslims should welcome death to get to paradise. He described heaven, which would await all martyrs: Each would have a palace so large it would take more than a hundred years to ride from one end to the other on horseback, and inside would be endless luxurious rooms, each with diamonds and baths in which would wait beautiful young women.
The young men laughed excitedly, apparently liking the sound of heaven in comparison to their earthly lives in Bethnal Green, where racism, unemployment and chastity are some of the challenges they face.
Bakri and Abu Hamza usually make a point not to cross the legal lines that would lead them to prison.
"The Muslims in the UK are the most peaceful community. Islam forbids us to fight anybody," Bakri told his audience. "Muslims abroad, that's a different story."
There is considerable debate within the British security services and the Muslim community as to how dangerous Bakri, Abu Hamza and their supporters are. Although clearly a small percentage of the community, they are attracting some committed followers.
"Lots [of British Muslim men] did go to Afghanistan prior to 9/11," said one moderate Muslim leader, speaking on condition of anonymity. He said he personally knew people who had trained in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and had passed on this information to the police. These men are now under close police surveillance, he said, for fear they are acting as sleeper terrorists.
These men tend to congregate around Abu Hamza and Bakri, he said. "I would be surprised if they didn't recruit" terrorist volunteers, the Muslim leader said of the two radical clerics.
Besides the perceived police discrimination and what Muslim leaders say is an unprecedented level of physical and verbal attacks on Muslims, some of the major political decisions of the British and American governments are also firing up young British Muslims.
Bunglawala attends his local mosque in Ilford, Essex. Recently, someone pinned up 15 photographs taken from video footage shot by the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, from inside the besieged Iraqi town of Fallujah.
People at the mosque gathered around the images, which are truly shocking. They show Iraqi children, apparently killed during the American siege of the city, which lasted most of April. Hundreds of Iraqi civilians are said by witnesses to have died. The images have not appeared inAmerican and British news organizations.
Arabs and Muslims all over the world have been passing on these pictures from the Al-Jazeera Web site to each other, Banglawala said.
As they stood gazing at the pictures, congregants at the mosque "equated those killings with terrorism," Banglawala said. "Many Muslims are tired of only being defensive when our own government is terrorizing many Iraqis. There's a feeling that enough is enough. I certainly heard a lot of support and admiration for the resistance."
Whether that support will translate into volunteers like Reid or Omar Sharif and Asif Hanif, who left England to become suicide bombers in Israel last year, is what concerns both the Muslim community and the British authorities.
Unearthing potential terrorists takes intelligence, and so the police have relied heavily on informers from within the Muslim community. This tactic is a standard form of intelligence the world over but it has nevertheless caused further animosity toward the police and discord within the frequently fractious Muslim population itself.
Shadjareh said that nearly every Muslim picked up by the police is offered money to turn informer.
Amid the trials, the arrests, the fear, the radical preaching and the moderates marching to proclaim Islam's love of peace, some august British institutions are trying to further understanding rather than suspicion.
Eton College, Britain's most famous private high school, recently announced the hiring of its first Muslim cleric in its 564-year history. At the start of the next academic year, Monawar Hussein, 34, will take up his post at the school that has produced 19 British prime ministers and has educated numerous royals. The school also will start offering Arabic language lessons.
The young imam has no time for the likes of Abu Hamza and Bakri, part of a radical element that only really appeared in the country in the 1980s. "All they're doing is using the faith to further their political agendas," said Hussein, who is currently a student, commodities broker and owner of a gas station.
His appointment, he said, is "groundbreaking, it's historical." And when he shows up to teach the future leaders of the country that once ruled much of the Islamic and Arab worlds, he will tell them about a very different Islam from that preached by the men who appear nearly every day in the British papers.
"Islam embraces diversity, love and compassion," he said. "It's about caring for other people."