Young British Muslims rush to buy war video

A MUSIC video glorifying Osama bin Laden and containing images of the September 11 attacks in New York has become a big hit with young British Muslims, the Observer newspaper said on Sunday.

The song Dirty Kuffar (non-believer) by a young British rapper who calls himself Sheikh Terra rails against Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush, calling on believers to “throw them on the fire”.

“I do not know of any young Muslim who has not either seen or got this video. It is selling everywhere.

“Everyone I meet at the mosque is asking for it,” said Mohammed al-Massari, an exiled Saudi dissident.

The Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights in Saudi Arabia, a group run by Mr Massari who came to Britain in 1994 after being imprisoned by the Saudi regime, also distributes the four-minute video on its website.

The song starts with images of US marines in Iraq cheering as one of them shoots a wounded Iraqi and finishes with images of the hijacked planes flying into the World Trade Center towers in New York with sounds of the rappers laughing.

One of the video’s most brutal images shows an Islamic fighter in Chechnya executing a captured Russian soldier with a Kalashnikov.

Another image shows photographs of US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice with the words ‘still slaves’ superimposed across their bodies. “I believe the lyrics are only metaphorical. It is not like this is a fatwa,” said Massari.

Meanwhile, Mr Bush defended the invasion of Iraq as a “war of necessity”, saying he was not surprised by attacks on US troops there.

Mr Bush acknowledged that US-led forces scouring Iraq have failed to find the weapons of mass destruction at the core of this controversial decision to go to war but insisted Saddam Hussein posed a deadly threat. “The evidence we have uncovered thus far says we had no choice,” he said.

Asked whether he was surprised by the extent of deadly attacks on US troops in Iraq, Mr Bush replied: “No, I’m not.” But he blamed such strikes on terrorists and loyalists from Saddam’s defunct regime.

Looking ahead to the November 2 presidential election, Mr Bush forecast “I’m not going to lose” but shrugged off a congressional ally’s prediction US forces would capture Osama bin Laden before the political contest.

“I have no idea if we will capture or bring him to justice,” he said.