An imam in Rochdale has warned that the “tentacles of Isis” are spreading far and fast through the Muslim community as it emerged that a local Labour councillor’s son was among nine people from the town arrested on the Turkish-Syrian border.
It is not yet clear why Manchester University politics student Waheed Ahmed, the 21-year-old son of Rochdale councillor Shakil Ahmed, had travelled to Hatay province in Turkey. He was detained by Turkish authorities on Wednesday as part of a group believed to include his aunt, Zadia Bi, two of her sons, one of the son’s wives and children aged one, three, eight and 11.
But Irfan Chishti, an imam from the Rochdale Council of Mosques, who has worked for the government’s anti-radicalisation programme Prevent, said he was very worried about young people in Rochdale being radicalised by Islamist hardliners.
Before his Friday sermon at the Chashtiah mosque on Milkstone Road in Rochdale, Chishti said he would warn his congregation against radicalisation and urge them to resist the lure of Islamic State. “No one is immune to it. The tentacles of Isis really are spreading so quickly, not just into homes but into palms, via the internet on phones. We have got smartphones that are making us dumb. Isis is not in any way Islamic and we need to push back harder to say it’s not. We have to be pushing this message shrewdly to counter Isis’s narrative,” he said.
At the Bilal mosque in Rochdale, Mohammed Mushtaq, a mosque committee member, delivered a special message to parents and young people, according to local Labour councillor Sultan Ali, who was cabinet member for community cohesion until last year.
Read more:
http://report24.co.uk/article/146709/isis-tentacles-spreading-in-muslim-community-warns-rochdale-imam
