The conviction of the first woman under the UK Terrorism Act shows that dabbling with extremist literature is dangerous and damaging to the Muslim population.
23-year-old Samina Malik from west London became the first woman in the UK convicted under the Terrorism Act 2000 when she was found guilty at court this week.
The jury heard how her poems, which were published on the internet under the pseudonym the “Lyrical Terrorist,” had eventually landed her in trouble with the law and linked her work to terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda.
The “Lyrical Terrorist”
Malik worked as a shop assistant at Heathrow Airport, but led what prosecutors called a double life by posting poems she had written on to the Internet.
She denied her lyrics promoted or condoned terrorism and that she did not intend to act upon what she had written. Yet she also admitted visiting extremist websites and that a second screen name she used, Bint al Shaheed, means “daughter of the martyr”.
The Poems
One poem, entitled The Living Martyrs, said: “Let us make Jihad/Move to the front line/To chop chop head off kuffar swine.”
A second poem, How to Behead, read “It’s not as messy or as hard as some may think/It’s all about the flow of the wrist”.
In a third poem called Raising Mujahideen Children, she wrote “Show the children videos and pictures of mujahideen and tell them to become strong like them”.
Malik was also accused of being a member of various extremist organisations which helped to organise and distribute literature for Islamic terrorist groups.
The Court Case
Samina Malik said that the poems were “meaningless” but the jury heard how her extremist literature praised Osama Bin Laden, supported martyrdom and discussed beheading. There was also some handwritten written evidence found where she wrote: “The desire within me increases every day to go for martyrdom.”
In her defense, Malik said that she had come up with the screen name the “Lyrical Terrorist” to post her work online because she thought it “sounded cool”.
However on searching her house, police discovered a “library” of extremist Islamic literature including The Al-Qaeda Manual and The Mujahideen Poisons Handbook, as well as a bracelet and a handwritten note appearing to support jihad. She also listed her interests as “Helping the Mujahiddin in any way which I can,” on social networking website Hi5.
The Harm to Community Relations or Being Too Harsh on a Muslim?
Malik was spared jail and instead given a nine months suspended sentence as arguments continue about whether the case should have reached court.
Muhammed Abdul Bari, Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain, criticised the way the case was handled, saying that it should not have been taken as seriously. He believes that young people do silly things, get temporarily hooked by different things as they grow up and download objectionable material from the internet, but her intentions were not to harm anyone else.
Yet the Crown Prosecution Service argued that the material associated with Malik could be used by someone planning terrorist activity. The sheer volume of material she possessed and created was harmful in itself.
Whatever this case highlights, it has broken new ground in the battle against terrorism and extremist organisations and well as damaged community relations. Whether she intended to cause harm or not, if she had stayed away from such a large volume of potentially damaging material she would not have found herself in trouble at all.
