New Imam Calls for Help in Catching Bombers
By CRAIG S. SMITH
Published: July 9, 2005
LONDON - The new imam at the Finsbury Park mosque, once a hotbed of radical Islam, had a message for those who gathered for prayer on Friday, a day after four bombs killed at least 49 people: help identify the bombers, he told them. Show your anger at what happened here.
His call to cooperate was a stark and deliberate contrast to a former imam, Abu Hamza al-Masri, now detained and facing extradition to the United States to face terrorism-related charges. Under his leadership, the Finsbury Park mosque became a recruiting center for jihadists for holy wars from Bosnia to Afghanistan.
It is that image the residents of this North London immigrant neighborhood are working hard to shed, eager to demonstrate to an increasingly anxious country that they are not to blame for the attacks on Thursday and that Finsbury Park has rid itself of extremists....
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The struggle in Finsbury Park reflects the broader divide between two Muslim worlds in Britain - the majority of moderates and the radical Islamists who live among them. For years, a relatively small band of radical Islamists hijacked Finsbury Park's image and threatened its economic rejuvenation.
But the moderates are reclaiming the mosque. They installed a new board of trustees who brought in the new, moderate imam. The mosque now offers a course on Islam for non-Muslims. The neighborhood's other, smaller mosque has thrown open its doors in an aggressive program to show London and the world that they do not harbor terrorists. It holds regular "open mosque weekends," in which all comers are invited to tour the mosque, watch videos about its charitable programs and eat from a buffet of halal food....
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/international/europe/09muslim.html 
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