A very London story. A Muslim Brotherhood chief linked to Hamas funding is living quietly in a leafy avenue in Willesden. From Jewish News:
One of the Muslim Brotherhood’s most senior leaders, accused by the US of funnelling cash to Hamas through two sham charities, has been found living in north-west London, just a few minutes away from a busy synagogue and two Jewish primary schools.
Neighbours in Willesden, north-west London, know Mahmoud Al-Abyari as a softly-spoken, bespectacled old man living on the corner of a leafy avenue, according to the Mail on Sunday.
No doubt he keeps himself to himself.
But most residents are unaware that Abyari has been identified by the United States as the Secretary-General of the Muslim Brotherhood General Secretariat. According to the US Treasury, he has played an important role in raising and transferring money to Hamas….
The revelation that Al-Abyari remains free to move around London despite US sanctions is likely to raise concerns in the Jewish communities of Willesden, Cricklewood, Dollis Hill, and Brondesbury Park.
One local told Jewish News: “I actually walk to shul on the road where this man has been living. It’s a very mixed area, and thankfully, despite the tensions of the last few years, people still largely get along.
“But it hardly inspires confidence knowing that a man accused of being one of the most senior Muslim Brotherhood leaders—and of fund-raising for Hamas—is living here.”
Al-Abyari has worked to cultivate his image as a senior Muslim commentator, regularly giving interviews to Arab satellite channels from London on topics ranging from Palestine to Middle Eastern politics.
The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 by Egyptian imam and schoolteacher Hassan Al-Banna, with the ultimate aim of uniting the Islamic world under a single caliphate governed by sharia law.
Its one-time Palestinian leader, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, founded Hamas in 1987 as an offshoot of the Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood is banned in Egypt and several other Arab countries, and there have been repeated calls over the years to ban it in the UK.
To no avail.
In response to confirmation that Al-Abyari was living in north-west London, Robin Simcox, the Government’s former Commissioner for Countering Extremism, said: “The US government has shown a greater willingness to take action against the Muslim Brotherhood than we have. The Muslim Brotherhood’s ethos is a direct challenge to our democratic values. We can no longer serve as a refuge for them and their activists.”
It’s not quite Karl Marx writing The Communist Manifesto in the British Library, but tolerant London does have a proud/lamentable tradition of providing a home for intolerant philosophies that aim to destroy us.
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