Mosque leader on trial after allegedly calling for “Jihad by sword” while wearing black top emblazoned with words “Free Palestine, resistance is existence”
A mosque leader is on trial after allegedly calling for “Jihad by sword” while wearing a black top emblazoned with the words “Free Palestine, resistance is existence”.
Abu Bakr Deghayes’ twenty-minute sermon at Brighton Mosque and Muslim Community Centre last November was caught on CCTV.
The Old Bailey heard that, while calling for “Jihad by sword”, he gestured with a stabbing motion.
The congregation reportedly included teenagers and young men in their twenties, as well as older members, and it is understood that several in the audience began to fidget as the speech went on, with some walking out.
Ben Lloyd, prosecuting, told the court that the speech on 1st November 2021 “demonstrates the defendant to be an Islamic extremist. He is someone who believes in the use of violence in the cause of Islam, or at the very least, he was reckless as to whether people would be encouraged. It is not a speech given innocently or naively by the defendant.”
He added: “The defendant was quite clear, he said jihad was compulsory or an obligation. He said, ‘jihad by fighting by sword’. The prosecution case is clear and straightforward – by standing up at the front of a busy mosque, and by quite deliberately saying ‘jihad by fighting by sword’, the defendant was encouraging terrorism, encouraging violence in the name of Islam. If the defendant’s own words were not clear enough, he also made a stabbing gesture with his hands.”
Mr Deghayes, from Saltdean, Sussex, is originally from Libya, and spoke in English and Arabic, allegedly urging the congregation to ignore the British Government and its Prevent programme. He is claimed to have said: “Allah is more powerful than you. You, idiots. You non-believers, idiots. Allah is more powerful than you. The non-believer…is an idiot; he’s stupid. Jihad is compulsory upon you, you, you and you until the Day of Resurrection, whatever the British Government thinks, whatever Prevent thinks, whatever Israel thinks.
“Send to the sea. They can go and drink from the sea, Allah curse their fathers, OK? Jihad, jihad, jihad! Jihad is compulsory. Jihad by fighting by sword that means this jihad is compulsory upon you, not jihad is the word of mouth but jihad will remain compulsory until the Day of Resurrection. And my livelihood is under the shadow of my spear.”
He allegedly added that anyone who did not like what he said was an enemy of Allah, declaring: “Go fight Allah! Go Fight Allah!” Mr Deghayes denies encouraging terrorism. The trial continues.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s Antisemitism Barometer 2020 showed that over eight in ten British Jews consider the threat from Islamists to be very serious.
Image credit: Google
