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| Britain |
| Hamza’s mosque in need of big repairs |
| 2003-03-08 |
| Cut short The mosque where Abu Hamza, the Muslim cleric, preached will need extensive repairs and could be closed for another year. The new trustees of Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, claim the imam neglected the building so badly during his five-year occupation that at least £70,000 will be needed to bring it back into use. The damage includes a crack in the dome, wrecked toilets and general disrepair. Mr Hamza and around 30 of his followers took over the mosque in 1997, four years after it was built. He was initially invited in to help remove another trouble-making group, but he never left. Allah akhbar! Those guys must've been some ugly SOBs... During the next five years it was claimed he and his supporters took over the mosque, turning it into a hotbed of extreme Islamic views and opposition to Britain, America and non-Muslims. Despite numerous attempts in the courts costing thousands of pounds, trustees found it impossible to break his stranglehold on the congregation. Mohamed Moreea, 63, a newly-elected trustee, said: "It is not that Hamza deliberately damaged the building, it is just that he failed to carry out any basic maintenance." "He's a hook-handed t***, but he'll come round and smash my toilet if I cuss him too bad." Abu Aziz, spokesman for Mr Hamza, dismissed the claims. "This is a load of rubbish," he said. "These trustees are meaningless and worthless. They have proved that by closing the mosque down and forcing people to worship in the street." "If you meet them on the street, kill them and take their money - yeah, yadda yadda yadda." |
| Posted by:Bulldog |
| #2 Abu Hamza's dome is cracked also, so he did not see anything out of the ordinary. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2003-03-08 22:49:00 |
| #1 Its apparent that he had his mind more on Jihad than taking the responsibilities of running a Mosque seriously. I've been a board member of a church before, and was never more serious about making sure the Church was better off when I left than when I arrived. To me, this is a serious shirking of religious responsibility that was not in keeping with any kind of religous faith. The Finsbury Park muslims learned the bitter lesson that fanaticism and devotion are not always the same. |
| Posted by: Ptah 2003-03-08 20:09:28 |