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Another potential UK bomber doesn't explode; mass media seemingly uninterested

09:20 / 17.08.05

(found via the londonist)

London, Asharq Al-Awsat- A man burst into the Regent’s Park mosque in Central London during Friday prayers and threatened to blow himself up. Dr. Younis Ramadan al Teenaz, advisor to the Islamic Cultural Center and the Central mosque would not rule out taking the attacker to court. He also praised the Metropolitan Police and security forces as they quickly arrived at the scene and arrested the perpetrator who contrary to his claims may not have been carrying explosives. police are yet to confirm these details.

...

[Dr. al Teinaz] reiterated the Center and Regent’s Park Mosque wanted to express their solidarity with all the people of Britain, and Londoners in particular, after the terrorist attacks in July 2005.

has anyone else heard about this?
the is from the 14th, now three days ago.

i cant think of any reason not to publish a story like this other than that the painting of terror as a condition endemic to islam would not be well served by the exposure of such an incident.
it does rather point out that we are all in this together and that muslims are at as much risk as anyone.
am i being paranoid or is this the kind of thing the british public would rather not know about?

tony blair on the 15th said "The fact that we have had two attacks makes it more, rather than less, likely that we will have further attacks".
i count at least three, so was he just unaware of this incident?
or does he not feel it merits inclusion?
i would have thought anything that made britain seem more like a country under threat and in fear would have been to the advantage of his postion, but he seems to be happy to ignore it.

i can only see two explanations for the lack of coverage elsewhere.
either asharq alawsat are not being entirely truthful about the incident, or no one really cares unless central london WhiteFolks are in danger.
i'm not satisfied with either, to be honest, and would welcome your thoughts.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:38 / 17.08.05

This is the first I've heard of it.
Could have just been a nutter, but even so I can't see why (other than your two depressing suggestions) it wasn't more widely reported.

Tryphena Absent

11:27 / 17.08.05

If he wasn't carrying a bomb then it wasn't an attack... it should still have been better reported than it was.

12:22 / 17.08.05

As Nina points out, it wasn't an attack. Also, I wouldn't trust the source.

12:28 / 17.08.05

one might argue that it was an attack, albeit one without weapons of mass destruction. does terror necessarily have to be destructive?
more interesting to me though is why you wouldnt trust the source.
is that a gut feeling or have they a history of mendacious reporting?

ONLY NICE THINGS

13:27 / 17.08.05

I think that to describe somebody without a bomb as a potential bomber is at best unwise. This sounds more like "mentally ill man bursts into mosque". Simply causing terror does not make you a terrorist, nor does it make it a terror attack.

Slim: Could you expand, citing previous examples of unreliable reporting by this source?

14:17 / 17.08.05

Simply causing terror does not make you a terrorist, nor does it make it a terror attack.

i feel it would if your intent was to cause terror.
while i agree with your assesment of the incident as "mentally ill man bursts into mosque", i still feel it must have been more than a little uncertain for those present up until the point at which it became clear his potential for explosive immolation was nonexistent exactly what was going on.
on another note, if a mentally ill asian man had burst into a church or synagogue, would we not have heard more about it? might we not expect to be reading about the police executing someone again?

14:22 / 17.08.05

In my experience, some police forces try to discourage reports of people claiming to have fake bombs etc for fear of provoking copycat attacks.

This happened to me with an anthrax scare a few years back; I didn't spike the story as a result of police intervention but it didn't run. "Package delivered, not dangerous" is not a story unless it's the fact the Royal Mail delivered the package at all...

ONLY NICE THINGS

14:30 / 17.08.05

i feel it would if your intent was to cause terror.

BOO!

Sorry, not buying it. As NMA says, "man turns out not to have bomb after all" is not really a tale of terror.

Contrariwise, if, as appears to be the progress of events here, an Asian man had burst into a church, had been tackled by security and had been separated from the bag which may or may not have contained a bomb, and then the police turned up and shot him _anyway_, then that would be a story, but it's a gigantic stretch to assume that that would have happened.

15:33 / 17.08.05

BOO!
that's not intent to cause terror, dude.
that's intent to cause a wee bit of a fright.

ONLY NICE THINGS

15:52 / 17.08.05

I've got a BOOOOOOMB!

Better?

Here's my point. If I phone a mosque and tell them there's a bomb and there isn't, I'm not indulging in an act of terror. I may be causing terror, but I am not a terrorist. I'm a hoaxer, or a lunatic, or just a bastard. Same with this guy. He is not a terrorist, therefore how exactly is this an act of terrorism? Answer - it isn't. You're trying to create a strict equivalency that simply doesn't exist, and in doing so obscuring some of the other questions that might be more profitable, such as where the Police, who have supposedly been guarding mosques, were when this happened, what the non-bomber was seeking to achieve, how the judicial system is treating him...

18:43 / 17.08.05

Slim: Could you expand, citing previous examples of unreliable reporting by this source?

In the course of my work the past couple months I've come across a number of these Arab papers. Sometimes they're clearly biased and not, in my opinion, reputable sources of information. Other times they are. Because I don't know this paper's reliability, I'm prone to reject it.

19:23 / 17.08.05

In the spirit of transparency the title of this thread originally read: "Another UK bomber doesn't explode; mass media seemingly uninterested"

I suggested adding the word 'potential' to make it slightly more accurate...

ONLY NICE THINGS

20:27 / 17.08.05

Well, to be a potential bomber he'd have to have a bomb, wouldn't he?

In the course of my work the past couple months I've come across a number of these Arab papers. Sometimes they're clearly biased and not, in my opinion, reputable sources of information. Other times they are. Because I don't know this paper's reliability, I'm prone to reject it.

So, you have no specific information on the reliability or otherwise of this source, merely a belief that some of "these Arab papers" are unreliable? I hate to say it, dude, but as Barbelith's leading expert, we expect more.

In this case, for example, we might consider that there is no other news story on the Internet immediately available that corroborates this story, which may be an argument against. However, these things are hard to search for, especially as names in Arabic have a number of variant spellings - see this article on the Regent's Park Mosque and the ICC's disciplining of a press officer who suggested that the bombers were innocent.

Dr. Younes, Yunes or Younez (al) Teinaz, is a Senior Health Officer for Haringey Council. What is not mentioned in this article is his work in attempting to stamp out the import of illegal meat - see here. He's pretty much a pillar of the community, and it seems unlikely that he would corroborate something easily identifiable as false. However, as is reported in the article itself, reports on what actually happened remain confused. As we found in the reportage of many recent events. The events may become clearer over time.

More on the Islamic Cultural Centre, al Teinaz' employer, can be found on its website, here. It's not exactly Abu Hamza - its offices were originally donated to the Muslim people of London in 1944. Its director has condemned the July 7 attacks; what criiticism there is of him primarily revolves around his ties to Saudi Arabia and to Muhammad Jaber Fahiki, who is generally suspected of, erm, probably not helping the September 11 bombers, but certainly of keeping some questionable company.

Back at the paper, one way of judging its politics might be to check out its editorials.

10:14 / 18.08.05

Well, to be a potential bomber he'd have to have a bomb, wouldn't he?

Not necessarily. Just reasonable grounds of suspicion. Not that I think the grounds in the case outlined above were necessarily what i would describe as 'reasonable grounds for suspicion', nor that i think that the definition of 'reasonable suspicion' is an unproblematic term, it was just a lot better than the totally inaccurate title description that Toksik originally gave this thread...