“The way forward can never be the ballot. The way forward is the bullet …”; “We spread Islam by the Sword and so what, and today we are going to spread by the Kalashnikov and there is nothing you can do about it.”; “Is there any peace treaty between us and Hindus and Indians? No, so you can go to India and if you see a Hindu walking down the road you are allowed to kill him and take his money.”
“I do not incite murder, it’s not my policy to incite murder, I only preach Islam and secondly I’m not a racist, I do not hate anyone, I only hate crimes against humanity.”
“Whosoever shall solicit, encourage, persuade or endeavour to persuade, or shall propose to any person, to murder any other person, whether he be a subject of her Majesty or not, and whether he be within the Queen’s dominions or not, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable to imprisonment for life.”
“The largest words possible have been used – “solicit” – that is defined to be, to importune, to entreat, to implore, to ask, to attempt to try to obtain; “encourage”, which is to intimate, to incite to anything, to give courage to, to inspirit, to embolden, to raise confidence, to make confident; “persuade” which is to bring any particular opinion, to influence by argument or expostulation, to inculcate by argument; “endeavour” and then, as if there might be some class of cases that would not come within those words, the remarkable words are used, “or shall propose to”, that is say, make merely a bare proposition, an offer for consideration.”
“I deal with where the Jihad is to take place at pages 69 and 70 by making it clear that it’s on the battlefield. I deliberately use that word, “battlefield” so that audience would understand that acts against, for example, embassy buildings as in the Sudan or on a bus or on a train are not. I meant by battlefield where the conflict is taking place, not where civilians would be found but on the battlefield alone.”
“… that’s a decision for them to make for themselves. I as a cleric merely lay out the principle. I cannot specify where for each of them … it’s not applicable however, this definition of Jihad, to fighting in this country because in this country there is no oppression of Muslims. Its not applicable to going to America to carry out fighting there because America is not the battlefield. Jihad belongs to a battlefield, and the battlefield is what is happening in Kashmir … that is an example of a battlefield … and I make it clear to my audience that if they want to go there to fight, even if that involves killing the enemy, that would be an act within their faith provided of course that they also do the other things within the meaning of Jihad. That’s to say not killing women or killing labourers just killing the military who are killing the people there.”
“What is murder? Murder is the unlawful killing of another person done with the intent to kill, or at the very least to cause really serious injury. It incorporates within it ‘unlawful’. ‘Unlawful’, means without lawful justification or excuse for the killing. If it happens by accident, it would not been unlawful. If it is done in necessary and reasonable defence of yourself or another, then … it would be lawful, and it would not be unlawful. Usually, consideration of lawful defence of oneself or another gives rise to considerations applicable to the act of killing – proof by the parties seeking to prove that it was an unlawful act that took the life of another, disproving a defence raised that it was done in necessary and reasonable self-defence or defence of another. Ordinarily, the considerations of that would be looking to see if that act was, in the first instance, necessary; to see whether the risk that caused the taking of the life of another, said to be in self-defence, could have been avoided at all; looking to see whether that act was, in reality, not defending oneself or defending someone else, but an act done, in truth, in retaliation, or in punishment, or by way of revenge, or paying off old scores. If you, considering that individual act, were sure that it was one of those as the reason for it being done, then of course it would not be or could not be said to be a necessary act that caused that life to be taken … lawfully. Even if there was the necessity to defend oneself or somebody else, the second question that has to be asked is whether the act done that took a life in self-defence or the defence of someone else was reasonable; that the act of self-defence was proportionate to the threat posed. Those are the considerations that ordinarily go to the jury’s consideration of whether the taking of life in necessary and lawful self-defence excused or justified the taking of that life. You will have to consider whether, in relation to proof, what the defendant was urging is the unlawful killing of another; whether a general solicitation or encouragement to kill – to kill as the Crown allege here unbelievers, or Jews, or Americans, or Hindus – in the terms that the Crown assert that the defendant was so soliciting and encouraging others … whether general solicitation or general encouragement of this sort … [there then follows a passage in the transcript which is difficult to follow].”
“The soliciting or encouraging the unlawful killing of who? Well – anyone, whether here, in this country, or anywhere else in the world … The prosecution do not have to prove that anyone was solicited or encouraged to murder as a result of what the defendant said, but the prosecution must prove that that was his intention when he uttered those words, knowing, as it is alleged he would from the fact that those words were recorded, that the tape recordings would afterwards be offered to the public for sale. Therefore, the prosecution have to prove in respect of each of the first 5 counts which accuse the defendant of soliciting to murder, first of all, that the defendant said the words that the prosecution allege … There is no problem there. There is no issue raised before you but that those were the defendant’s words. The second issue: the prosecution must prove that in respect of each of those first 5 Counts the words that the defendant used were a solicitation of or an encouragement to persons to murder those specified; in Count 1, a person or persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith, the solicitation being recorded in ‘Jihad DAT’; in Count 2, persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith, in particular Indian Hindus, the solicitation being recorded in ‘Jihad’; … in Count 4, a person or persons who did not believe in the Islamic faith – Americans and Jewish people – that solicitation, the Crown assert, recorded in the tape labelled ‘Declaration of War’. Thirdly: that the killing being solicited or encouraged was unlawful. That is to say not accidental, or being done in necessary and reasonable self-defence or defence of another – in other words not justified or excused in law. Fourthly and finally: that the defendant intended the words he used by way of solicitation or encouragement – in other words, those to whom he spoke either in person or on the tape recordings – to murder the person specified in each of those 5 Counts. In other words, you have to give consideration to his state of mind at the time he uttered those words … What was going on in his head at the time he uttered those words; in other words what his intention was.”
“The defendant’s claim to be to be able to justify any utterance of his with reference to the Koran or the Hadith or a scholarly interpretation of either during the 1400 years since the prophet Mohammed, as the defendant believes but many others do not – that belief that he gave the word of God – may well have a bearing on why he said what he did. It may well have a relevance to your consideration of his intention in saying what he did, but it does not of itself afford him a defence in law to any charge, if having considered what he said and his explanation to the police and his explanation to you as to why he said it, that the use of those words in the circumstances he spoke them are proved to be contrary to the law of this country and thus an offence – no more or less than a similar citation from anyone else’s holy book including the Bible would be.”
“The Crown’s case about this recording is that in the plain ordinary meanings of the words used by the defendant to the study circle who heard the words at a public meeting, to anyone who cared to attend that public meeting at which the words were uttered, to anyone hearing the words on a tape thereafter, this was the defendant, as the Crown put it to you, preaching murder. That is to say … soliciting or encouraging those he addressed to kill the ‘Kuffar’ – that is to say the persons who do not believe in the Islamic faith. The prosecution case is that this is, as are the other four tapes, the subject of the soliciting to murder Counts, the defendant making it clear that military Jihad is a compulsory duty which includes the lessening of the Kuffar here or abroad and his attempts to you to suggest that the killing should be confined, that is to say to take place only on the battlefield where Muslims are being oppressed does not stand up to scrutiny because principally he does not make that clear and if he does not make it clear, how is that to be apparent to his audience, either the audience in the study circle to whom he was actually uttering the words or the audience who would in the future listen to the tape.”
“whenever you give a speech or a talk on Jihad or mention a Kuffar, you mean those Kuffars who have engaged Muslims on the battlefield. That was my meaning by the use of those words, to which he adds, ‘My audience wouldn’t have misunderstood that’. Those citations are derived from the well-known Hadith, and he refers to page 25 in the defence bundle, chapter 858 and the footnote to them. He says, ‘That is my understanding and that of a billion Muslims and I was not in those passages telling them – my audience – anything that they didn’t know already and it doesn’t apply and wasn’t intended to apply to the killing of unbelievers not on the battlefield. Were that to take place, that would be buying a ticket to hellfire, because what you did would not be lawful and it would be considered murder’.”
“Yes. I meant what I said, but in this sense, that here I am speaking about the unbelievers who wage war on Muslims in Serbia, East Timor and Palestine, wherever oppression and violent oppression of Muslims is taking place. I do not respect anyone with blood on his hands especially the blood of women, children and innocent persons, and this is the context that I was speaking in.”
“What is asked of you now is this: a calm, critical but unemotional appraisal of the evidence that you have been asked to consider over the days that we have sat together as judge and jury. You are not concerned with questions such as, is this prosecution fair? You are only asked to say by your verdict, is it proved that the defendant committed all or any of the criminal offences with which he is charged? To that end, the questions that you have to ask yourselves, and answer are these: in relation to Counts 1 – 5, the allegations of soliciting to murder, considering each of them separately – are we sure that the words that the defendant used solicited or encouraged others to murder, that is to say, to kill unlawfully … those persons being those who did not believe in the Islamic faith; Count 1, ‘Jihad DAT’ those who do not believe in the Islamic faith, and in particular Indian Hindus; Count 2 in ‘Jihad’ those who do not believe in the Islamic faith; Count 3 in the ‘Rules of Jihad’, those who do not believe in the Islamic faith; [Count 4]: Americans and Jewish people in ‘Declaration of War’ … If you are sure that he did in each instance, then the next question is, “Are we sure that that is what he intended when he used those words”