{"id":8542,"date":"2014-04-15T18:06:08","date_gmt":"2014-04-15T18:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=8542"},"modified":"2014-04-15T18:06:08","modified_gmt":"2014-04-15T18:06:08","slug":"ex-edl-member-who-vandalised-mosque-after-woolwich-says-hes-sorry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/ex-edl-member-who-vandalised-mosque-after-woolwich-says-hes-sorry\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-EDL member who vandalised mosque after Woolwich says he\u2019s sorry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A former EDL member who stormed a mosque in Essex in a revenge attack for the murder of British soldier, Lee Rigby in Woolwich says he\u2019s sorry.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Geoff Ryan, 44, embraced the Imam of Braintree Mosque and said: \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last year Mr Ryan entered Al Falah Centre armed with knives and smoke grenades, and even threatened to kill a worshipper.<\/p>\n

After serving half of his nine-month jail sentence, the builder and former member of the English Defence League (EDL) spent four hours discussing religion, extremism, politics and the events that took place in Woolwich in May 2013 with leaders of the Muslim community, and now insists on helping change negative perceptions of Islam.<\/p>\n

Mr Ryan said to four local Muslims that visited his home: \u201cI\u2019m sorry for what I did,\u201d after a chance encounter at HMP Chelmsford with Imam Kashif Ahmad, who volunteers at the prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think you\u2019ve been really decent about this whole thing and I thank you for coming round,\u201d added Mr Ryan, who had initially refused to meet at the mosque in Silks Way, saying: \u201cAfter what I did I don\u2019t have a right to set foot in your mosque.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows the mark of the four of you that you\u2019re prepared to come and speak to me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I did was wrong, but I must stress people cannot do that to our soldiers \u2013 that proper drove me over the edge.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were not to blame for that \u2013 that was collective punishment on my behalf and it was wrong, but the British people will not stand for our troops being abused either verbally or physically.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter our soldier was killed, I sat there and thought to myself, and I\u2019m not proud of it, but this was my thought process at the time \u2013 \u2018you can get to our soldiers, I can get to you just as easily\u2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cSimple as that, it\u2019s bad, but I was that livid at what happened to our soldier.\u201d<\/p>\n

Revenge attack<\/b><\/p>\n

As media outlets printed images and aired video footage of Lee Rigby\u2019s murder at the hands of two Muslims across the\u00a0world<\/a>, Mr Ryan began plotting a revenge attack on his local Muslim community.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

The killers of soldier Lee Rigby said their motives were to do with UK foreign policy.<\/p>\n

A few hours after Mr Rigby\u2019s death, he threw a smoke grenade through the downstairs window of the mosque forcing the only occupant, taxi driver Saruk Miah, onto the flat roof of the Al Falah prayer centre.<\/p>\n

Ryan then yelled \u201c******* come out, I\u2019m going to kill you. Let\u2019s see if Allah or God come to help you.\u201d<\/p>\n

Waving the knives, he then shouted: \u201cI\u2019ll kill you Muslims, I\u2019ll kill you before the police come, come downstairs, come out, I\u2019m going to cut your throat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Miah, who was about to start evening prayers, used his mobile phone to call police, who raced to the scene to arrest Mr Ryan.<\/p>\n

Reconciliation<\/strong><\/p>\n

The mosque\u2019s chairman Abdul Gaffor, Imam Kashif Ahmad and two Muslim converts Glenn Maskell and Jenny Wayne, agreed to meet at Mr Ryan\u2019s home where they talked about the Quran.<\/p>\n

Mr Ryan, who left the EDL because \u201cgetting drunk all the time and shouting insults doesn\u2019t get anything done\u201d, called on Mike Watts of Working Class Action, a campaigning group based in Birmingham, to attend the meeting.<\/p>\n

All six members of the group pledged to \u201cforgive and forget\u201d and committed to an open dialogue in order to understand each other\u2019s religion and cultures.<\/p>\n

Abdul Gaffor, a taxi driver in Braintree, said: \u201cWe believe we should forgive, then move on, so let\u2019s say that we\u2019ll talk again about our concerns and move forward that way.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe in England have so many different groups that it\u2019s time we start breaking down barriers in the local area, then we go from there. Let\u2019s take the labels off and bring the humanity together.<\/p>\n

\u201cThose people that killed another human being, there was anger on our side as well, we thought it was disgusting, and I said so myself on the radio that this was a barbaric act and the Muslims have nothing to do with this, it was those two people that did it.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom now on we just look forward. We Muslims are sometimes in a corner and we want to come out of that corner and be friends with everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cWhat I did was a criminal act and it won\u2019t be repeated by me and if I ever heard that someone was going to go down that road I\u2019d stop them. Acts of hatred and violence are not going to get anyone anywhere.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy actions didn\u2019t help Lee Rigby and it didn\u2019t help his family.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want politicians trying to speak for us and so-called Muslim spokesmen \u2013 just us, in the community, people that live side-by-side, we\u2019re all just trying to get through life.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd what I did was wrong, but I must stress people cannot do that to our soldiers \u2013 that proper drove me over the edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe what I did was extreme, it was a reaction to an extreme act. It\u2019s not about religion, what I can say is that I met four very nice people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"As<\/a><\/p>\n

As the meeting ended Mr Ahmed and Mr Ryan hugged.<\/p>\n

On the topic of extremism and whether he considered his actions in May to be an act of terror, Mr Ryan said: \u201cI don\u2019t consider myself part of an extreme right-wing group or anything like that, I\u2019m conservative in some views and quite liberal in others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mr Gaffor added: \u201cAt the time we didn\u2019t think it was terrorism, but something evil, it\u2019s hard as it terrified people, but now that we\u2019ve met we don\u2019t feel this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the meeting concluded Mr Ahmed handed Mr Ryan a box of Celebrations for his nine-year-old son, and they both hugged. Mr Ryan departing from the Imam with the Islamic greeting \u201cAsalaamu alaikum\u201d.<\/p>\n

Source<\/strong> – Essex Chronicle\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former EDL member who stormed a mosque in Essex in a revenge attack for the murder of British soldier, Lee Rigby in Woolwich says he\u2019s sorry. Geoff Ryan, 44, embraced the Imam of Braintree Mosque and said: \u201cI\u2019m sorry.\u201d Last year Mr Ryan entered Al Falah Centre armed with knives and smoke grenades, and …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[505,37,506,163,278,314,507],"class_list":["post-8542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-islamic-research","tag-edl","tag-islam","tag-member","tag-ticker","tag-uk","tag-west","tag-woolwich"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8542"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8545,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8542\/revisions\/8545"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}