"The normal situation is to take money from the kuffar [non-believer]. You work, give us the money." — Anjem Choudary
A radical Islamic cleric who lives off the British welfare state has
been filmed urging his followers to quit their jobs and claim
unemployment benefits so they have more time to plot holy war against
non-Muslims.
Excerpts of the speech, published by the London-based newspaper
The Sun
on February 17, have drawn renewed attention to the growing problem of
Muslims in Britain and elsewhere who are exploiting European welfare
systems.
In the video, Anjem Choudary -- a former lawyer who has long
campaigned to bring Islamic Sharia law to Britain and other European
countries (
here,
here and
here) -- is recorded as saying that Muslims are justified in taking money from non-Muslims.
Speaking to a group of Muslim men, Choudary mocks non-Muslims for
working in nine-to-five jobs their whole lives. He says: "You find
people are busy working the whole of their life. They wake up at 7
o'clock. They go to work at 9 o'clock. They work for eight, nine hours a
day. They come home at 7 o'clock, watch
EastEnders [a British
soap opera], sleep, and they do that for 40 years of their life. That is
called slavery. ... What kind of life is that? That is the life of the
Kuffar [a non-Muslim]."
Choudary urges fellow Muslims to learn from revered figures in
Islamic history who only worked one or two days a year. "The rest of the
year they were busy with Jihad [holy war] and things like that," he
says.
Choudary continues: "People will say, 'Ah, but you are not working.' But the normal situation is for you to take money from the
kuffar [non-Muslims]. So we take Jihad Seeker's Allowance."
At this point, Choudary takes a page from the late
Anwar al-Awlaki, killed by a CIA drone strike in Yemen in September 2011. In a 2006 sermon entitled, "
Allah is Preparing us for Victory,"
al-Awlaki said that robbery and extortion of non-Muslims was the
strategy the Islamic Prophet Mohammed prescribed for conducting Jihad,
the central mission of Islam.
Al-Awlaki said: "Leave the farming to the people of the book [Jews
and Christians], you go and spread the religion of Allah [through
jihad]; they will farm and they will feed you; they will pay
Jizya [extra tax], they will pay
Kharaaj [tribute], if the sustenance of the Prophet Mohammed was through
Ghaneema
[plunder] it must be the best and better than farming, business,
shepherding and better than anything else because Mohammed said: 'My
sustenance comes beneath the shadow of my spear.'"
Accordingly, the British-born Choudary states that Muslims are entitled to welfare payments because they are a form of
Jizya,
an extra tax imposed on non-Muslims in countries run by Muslims, and a
reminder that non-Muslims are permanently inferior and subservient to
Muslims.
In
another video, Choudary says: "We take the
Jizya, which is ours anyway. The normal situation is to take money from the
kuffar.
They give us the money. You work, give us the money, Allahu Akhbar
[Allah is great]. We take the money. " He then adds: "Hopefully there's
no one from the DSS [Department of Social Security] listening to this."
Choudary, who is married and has four children, enjoys a rather
comfortable lifestyle that is being paid for by British taxpayers, year
after year. In 2010, for example,
The Sun reported that he takes home more than £25,000 ($38,000) a year in welfare benefits.
Among other handouts, Choudary receives £15,600 a year in housing
benefit to keep him in a £320,000 ($485,000) house in Leytonstone, East
London. He also receives £1,820 council tax allowance, £5,200 income
support and £3,120 child benefits. Because his welfare payments are not
taxed, his income is equivalent to a £32,500 ($50,000) salary.
By comparison, the average
annual earnings of full-time workers in Britain was £26,500 in 2012.
According to
The Sun,
the university-educated Choudary is "notoriously vague about whether he
works or has other money coming in. He is understood to be employed by a
Muslim organization on a shoestring wage, which allows him to claim
income support and free time to spread his message. Asked during a radio
interview this week if he worked, he replied: 'Well, what I do is my
business. I don't think it is important.'"
During an interview with BBC Radio 5 on February 17, Choudary was
equally evasive on his sources of income. (The radio interview begins at
00:57 in the
video linked here.)
Although analysts are divided over the question of how many followers
Choudary actually has, no one disputes the fact that he is far from
alone in exploiting the British welfare system.
Consider the issue of polygamy. Although the practice is illegal in
Britain, the state effectively recognizes the practice for Muslim men,
who often have up to four wives (and in some instances five or more) in a
harem.
Social welfare experts believe there are at least
20,000 bigamous or polygamous Muslim unions
in England and Wales. If the average size of such a "family" is 15
people, these numbers would imply that around 300,000 people in Britain
are living in polygamous families.
According to British law, a Muslim man with four wives is entitled to
receive £10,000 ($15,000) a year in income support alone. He could also
be entitled to more generous housing and council tax benefits to
reflect the fact that his household needs a bigger property.
The result is that the more children produced by Muslim polygamists,
the more state welfare money pours in for their wives and themselves. By
having a string of wives living in separate homes, thousands of Muslim
immigrants are squeezing tens of millions of British pounds from the
state by claiming benefits intended for single mothers and their
children.
Those women are eligible for full housing benefits -- which reach
£106,000 ($250,000) a year in some parts of London -- and child benefits
paid at £1,000 ($1,500) a year for a first child, and nearly £700
($1,000) for each subsequent one.
Welfare payments are also sent abroad to support children who live outside Britain.
In December 2010, the deputy leader of the Labour Party,
Harriet Harman,
said that Muslim immigrants who send a portion of their welfare
payments to families back home are "heroic." She also said the
government should make it easier for them to send the money home, and
called for tax refunds to encourage more immigrants to follow suit, "in
particular those who paid for their children to be educated in the Third
World."
Another point of contention involves British taxpayers who are
spending millions of British pounds to house unemployed Muslim
immigrants in luxury homes across the country.
In August 2012, for example, Palestinian refugee
Manal Mahmoud
was given a new taxpayer-funded property after she and her seven
children trashed a £1.25 million townhouse they had been living in in
Fulham, West London. Mahmoud, who came to Britain in 2000 with her
husband before they split up, says, "I am entitled to live in a house
like this, even if I don't pay for it -- and get benefits."
In July 2010, Somali asylum seekers
Abdi and Syruq Nur
and their seven children, after complaining that their home in the
Kensal Rise area of Brent was in a "poor" area, were given a £2.1million
house in Kensington (one of Britain's most exclusive addresses) at a
cost of £8,000 a month to the taxpayer. After Nur lost his £6.50-an-hour
job as a bus driver in 2009, the family is totally dependent on state
benefits. The new home is believed to be one of the most expensive
houses ever paid for by housing benefit
In February 2010, it emerged that
Essma Marjam,
an unemployed single mother of six, receives more than £80,000 a year
from British taxpayers to pay the rent on a £2 million mansion in an
exclusive London suburb located yards from the house of Paul McCartney.
Marjam also receives an estimated £15,000 a year in other payouts, such
as child benefits, to help look after her children, aged from five
months to 14.
Marjam said, "I moved here at the beginning of the month as I'm
entitled to a five-bedroom house. I was in a three-bedroom council house
but I needed a bigger place once my new baby came along. So the council
agreed to pay the £1,600 a week to a private landlord as they didn't
have any houses big enough. I'm separated from my husband. He's a
solicitor in Derby, but I don't know if he's working at the moment. He
doesn't pay anything towards the kids. Things are quite difficult
between us. The house is lovely and very big, but I don't have enough
furniture to fill it."
In November 2009, it was reported that former Somali asylum seeker
Nasra Warsame,
her seven children (aged from two to 16) and her elderly mother are
living in a luxury £1.8 million five-story house in central London.
Annual rent for the house costs British taxpayers £83,200.
Warsame's husband, Bashir Aden, and another of their children, are
living in a separate property in nearby Camden. He said they live
separately because the family is too big to fit under one roof. His
two-bedroom flat is also paid for by housing benefit. Both homes are
equipped with statutory plasma televisions and computers.
In October 2008, it emerged that
Toorpakai Saiedi,
a mother of seven originally from Afghanistan, was living in
£1.2million seven-bedroom luxury house in Acton, West London, paid for
by British taxpayers. At the time, she was receiving £170,000 a year in
benefits, including an astonishing £150,000 paid to a private landlord
for the rent of the property, equivalent to £12,500 a month.
Saiedi's son Jawad, a student who admitted he spent most of his time
driving around in cars and playing billiards, said, "When the council
chose to put us here we did not say no. If someone gave you a lottery
jackpot, would you leave it? When I heard how much the council was
paying, I thought they were mad."
British taxpayers have footed the bill for the Moroccan-born Najat
Mostafa, the second wife of the Egyptian-born Islamic hate preacher
Abu Hamza, who was extradited to the United States in October 2012. She has lived in a
£1million, five-bedroom house in one of London's wealthiest neighborhoods for more than 15 years, and she raised the couple's eight children there.
Abu Hamza and his family are believed to have cost British taxpayers
more than £338,000 in benefits. He has also received £680,000 in legal
assistance for his failed US extradition battle. The cost of keeping him
in a British prison since 2004 is estimated at £500,000.
Fellow hate preacher
Abu Qatada,
a Palestinian, has cost British taxpayers an estimated £500,000. He has
also won £390,000 in legal aid to avoid deportation to Jordan.
The Islamic preacher
Omar Bakri Mohammed,
a Syrian, obtained £300,000 benefits before being exiled to Lebanon.
The money was provided to raise his six children, including
Yasmin Fostok, a single mother who makes a living as a pole-dancer in London nightclubs.
In February 2013, a judge in London
acquitted two brothers from Pakistan
who swapped houses in an effort to defraud British taxpayers out of
£315,000. The Pakistani couples, who have 11 children between them,
submitted bogus tenancy agreements for 16 years.
Judge Neil Sanders said, "The two men dishonestly represented through
their wives to the London Borough of Redbridge that this was a genuine
rental arrangement." But, he said: "You have both worked hard in terms
of making a life for yourselves and in many ways the greatest punishment
is the loss of your good name."
As for Anjem Choudary, he was also filmed saying that
Islam will take over Europe.
He said: "Now we are taking over Birmingham and populating it. Brussels
is 30% Muslim, Amsterdam is 40% Muslim. Bradford is 17% Muslim. These
people are like a tsunami going across Europe. And over here we're just
relaxing, taking over Bradford, brother. The reality is changing. We are
going to take England: the Muslims are coming."
Soeren Kern is a Senior Fellow at the New York-based Gatestone Institute. He is also Senior Fellow for European Politics at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estratégicos / Strategic Studies Group.Labels: Britain, Conflict, Controversy, Corruption, Human Relations, Immigration, Islamism, Societal Failures
