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British extremists urge Muslims to fight US

A group of Islamic extremists in the United Kingdom have called on young Muslims to fight the United States and its allies, even as a majority of British Muslims condemned Tuesday's attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.

At a meeting of the Al-Muhajiroun, an extremist organisation in Birmingham, a group of 50 young men and women was encouraged to travel to Afghanistan and give their lives in the "defence of Islam".

"Martyrdom operatives will be rewarded in heaven," one speaker declared, according to a report in The Daily Telegraph on Monday.

Others on the platform at the meeting, in the suburb of Sparkbrook, asked: "Who are the real terrorists?" They called on the audience to oppose any Western reprisals against Osama bin Laden.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohamed, founder of Al-Muhajiroun, had openly courted controversy in Britain when he supported the bombings of the United States' embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998

"I am very happy today," he said after Tuesday's attack.

Although Al-Muhajiroun was believed to have a membership approaching 1,000, mainstream British Muslims insisted that its hardline views were wholly unrepresentative.

According to the report, one speaker of the Sparkbrook meeting accused the Americans of widespread "butchering" of Muslims from Chechnya to Iraq.

PTI

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