"Hello?"
I say.
"There's
no time," the man on the other end of the line answers immediately. His
name is Gavin Boby. We have e-mailed before, but I introduce myself again,
explaining my background: education, photography and video experience, that
sort of thing.
Boby's
tone is measured and businesslike. "It sounds like you have skills that
could be of use. Muslims are very bad losers," he says matter-of-factly.
He'd like me to act as a witness, he tells me, videotaping his court
appearances and searching the Internet for "targets." The
conversation is taking me into uncomfortable territory; my voice wavers, and I
begin to flounder. Boby doesn't notice. "I'll send you instructions on how
we work," he says and hangs up. I have just become a Mosquebuster.
The
Mosquebusters, or the Law and Freedom Foundation as they're officially known,
are part of a new wave of anti-Islamic campaigners in England with links to
more established anti-immigrant groups such as England Is Ours and Stop
Islamisation of Europe. Like many of these groups, the Mosquebusters fear that
traditional British culture, laws, and values will disappear with the changing
face of Britain and worry that extremist interpretations of sections of the
Koran urge Muslims to kill non-believers and take slaves.
Until mid-February,
the Mosquebusters advertised for volunteers, under a campaign called "No
More Mosques," on the website of the ultra-nationalist English Defence
League (EDL), a group that organizes anti-Islamic street marches that often
decend into brawls, riots, and arrests. The EDL and other anti-Islamic groups
have no problem convincing their members to parade in public yelling insults
like "Muslim bombers off our streets!" and "Allah is a
pedophile!," but the Mosquebusters have a quieter, perhaps more insidious
approach: In offices and city halls, they are crafting legal cases against
mosque construction applications across the country. It's a war against Islam,
but one that often resembles a bureaucratic turf battle more than a clash of
civilizations.
 |
| Mosquebusters Leader Gavin Boby. |
From 9
a.m. to 5 p.m., he runs a planning application company in Bristol, in western
of England. He is a qualified barrister with undergraduate and graduate law
degrees. But what Boby really wants is "an army of people, about 500
across the country," as he says in one of his online motivational videos.
As I watched the recording from my flat in East London, while digesting one of
his instructional e-mails on bureaucratic mosque-busting, Boby leaned closer to
the camera, maintaining eye contact: "It is very important that mosques
are stopped."
Boby
launched the Mosquebusters website in 2011, but the group has been working
behind the scenes for longer. It offers legal expertise, pro bono, to anyone
disputing the construction of a mosque in England, and it has a growing web
presence. Boby relies on a handful of volunteers to help with his work; they
don't have a physical office but work from home communicating via e-mail, with
Boby alone. "I've tried using members of the EDL as volunteers before.
They're too reactionary," he says. When Boby needs to meet his
Mosquebusters or clients, he takes them for lunch, one-on-one, in London or
Bristol -- an offer he made to me as well when we talked by phone. Boby doesn't
speak with the press, so a chance to meet him would have been rare. But later
in the week, he had a change of heart; he e-mailed me questioning my motives
and asked me to disregard all prior correspondence.
* * *
Black and
white pictures of World War II fighter planes decorate the Mosquebusters'
website, boasting triumphs on fuselages. "Progress So Far... 10,"
reads the banner. To date, mosques in Blackpool, Bolton, Ealing, Huddersfield,
Kirkless, Luton, and York have been fought off by the Mosquebusters. A mosque
in Uxbridge, stopped initially by a Mosquebusters community petition, has now
landed back in court under appeal from the local Muslim community. It threatens
the Mosquebusters' otherwise flawless record.
On a Saturday in late January, I went to see the mosque in question. Located at the end of the Metropolitan tube line, Uxbridge is 20 miles from central London, buried in a largely white, working-class suburb. Walking half an hour south from the Metro stop to the contested Royal Lane Mosque, one passes a small commercial center, a throbbing road, damp underpasses, and sprawling estates. The town has the feeling of a place forgotten and fearful of change. It has a population of about 1,300 Muslims, just under 5 percent of its total residents.
Five
years ago, Royal Lane Mosque was the Irish Community Centre. Over time, the
Irish community's had waned, and there wasn't enough money to keep the center
open. The building lay derelict for three years, the wooden bar and
beer-stained carpets shut behind boarded windows. Two years ago, the Ahmadiyya
Muslim Association bought the building and began to renovate it. They repainted
the interior, laid down green carpets for kneeling, installed televisions and
speakers, and began to re-do the façade. The windows are now arch-shaped,
filled with frosted glass for privacy.
But after
spending $205,000 on the renovation, the association was denied permission in
September 2011 by the Hillingdon Borough Council to use the building as a
mosque. Local residents, with the help of a pre-prepared Mosquebusters
template, had put pressure on the council, arguing that the mosque's 10 parking
spaces wouldn't accommodate all visitors. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Association
built an extra two parking spaces and lodged an appeal a month later.
Brian
Fairless lives across the street from the Royal Lane mosque. He leans against
the door frame of the semi-detached house that he's lived in for over 20 years.
"I don't see why they couldn't have this mosque somewhere else, where
there's a larger Muslim community," he says, crossing his arms over his
thin chest. Fairless, 66, is retired and now spends one month out of the year
in Sri Lanka, donating his money and time to people affected by the 2004 Indian
Ocean tsunami. He fundraises in England, using the money to build shelters,
homes, and community centers for people of all religions. But he doesn't want
this one on his doorstep. "I don't want loud calls to prayer, and I don't
want my parking space taken," he says.
From the
street, the mosque is hard to spot. It sits back from the road behind a soaring
metal fence. Its brick exterior is painted off-white, and with no signs or
markings it blends into the grey winter sky. Groups of Pakistani men wait
sheepishly outside, looking shy and uncomfortable. Cars begin to arrive,
parking on the street, on the pavement, and in front of resident's windows,
waiting for the mosque gates to be unlocked.
Wrapped
in heavy coat, scarf, and wool hat, Sohail Quereshi, the mosque's imam, holds
whispered conversations with other worshippers. They are unsure whether to open
the mosque, unsure who might be watching from behind curtained windows. This is
the first time they're using the facility; usually, they rent the event hall
next door. The council still hasn't given its consent for the mosque's
operation, and the parishioners worry that this unauthorized service could
damage their community's reputation and negatively affect the status of the
appeal. Quereshi turns to me outside the gates and shakes my hand warmly as I
introduce myself. "We didn't know whether you were local press," he
says. "For them to see us using the mosque would be very damaging."
Eventually,
the men file in. Shoes are removed, stored in racks by the front door. Coats
are slung on plastic garden furniture. Inside, the space is split into two
large, clinically sparse rooms. One room has a polished marble floor; children
slide about in their socks waiting for table tennis and arm wrestling
competitions to begin. The second room -- the mosque proper -- has a thick,
striped green carpet. With the front door closed, the mood inside changes. The
members of the congregation mill around, shaking hands, joking, and eating
pizza off Union Jack paper plates. The pizza consumed, white blankets with red
and green embroidered patterns are laid on the cold marble. The 50 or so men in
attendance kneel in lines opposite Quereshi. Silence falls as they bow their
foreheads to the floor in unison.
* * *
It's not
religious practice, claim the Mosquebusters, it's parking. Or noise pollution.
Or building codes. And with downloadable petition templates, generic letters to
councilors, and free legal advice for begrudged locals, it's Boby's mission to
make it as easy as possible for your average, disgruntled suburbanite to join
in. If there's a trial or hearing about planned construction, Boby will come
down to the courthouse to provide free legal representation; if a mosque site
has been proposed, he'll arrange volunteers to paper a neighbourhood with
flyers. But the Mosquebusters aren't just a resource for aggrieved pensioners
-- the group actually wants its volunteers to spread out, actively trolling
city planning offices and public records for mosque applications. "It is
satisfying detective work, rooting around Islamic deviousness!" reads the
instructional e-mail sent to volunteers.
It might
seem that the Mosquebusters is a quixotic, xenophobic campaign limited to a
handful of small towns in England, but it has ties to other anti-Islamic groups
around the world. People from Australia, Canada, Germany, Scandinavia, and the
United States comment on the Mosquebusters website regularly, and the group is
often written about by far-right organizations. "Mosquebusters racks up
another win, all was needed was for someone to oppose it's [the mosques]
construction," crows Tundra Tabloids, a Scandinavian website that claims
to keep tabs on the political correctness that allows Islamic extremism to
flourish. "This is brilliant. I hope council was paying close
attention," reads a caption on MRCTV, a right-wing news website.
But as
the Mosquebusters have grown, they've earned some unwanted attention. As I was
reporting this story, Boby cut all ties with me, refusing to speak or meet for
interviews. The Mosquebusters web presence is now cleaner, straighter: Gone are
the war planes, the pictures of slam-dunking cheerleaders celebrating another
mosque closure. The organization's adapted "Ghostbusters" logo, a
caricature of the convicted Islamic terrorist Abu Hamza with a glass eye and
hook for a hand, is gone. And Mosquebusters no longer advertises for volunteers
through the English Defence League; a disclaimer makes clear that the two
groups have no official association.
Still,
Boby isn't backing down from his crusade against Britain's creeping
Islamicization. "Authorities need to know that the wind is shifting and
that when it has blown away the politically correct fog, they will be left in
full view," he says in his latest YouTube video, arguing that officials so
fear being seen as politically incorrect that they'll grant mosque applications
to anyone. And like any hard-working, ambulance-chasing, small-town laywer,
he's got his pitch down: "If anyone knows about an application for a
mosque, some phony community center or some
multi-faith-interfaith-harmony-institute, or a school or college, let me know."
(Rapid Islamization of Paris - Warning to the U.S.)
(CBN Interview with Mosquebusters's Gavin Boby.)