Radical Islamic Cleric’s Authentic Tauheed Website Continues To Radicalize
(New York, N.Y.) – The terrorist attack in Streatham, London, carried out by Sudesh Amman has brought again to the forefront the radicalizing, violent teachings of Islamist propagandist Abdullah al-Faisal. Reports indicate that Amman possessed copies of Faisal’s sermons prior to the attack, which are readily available to the public through Faisal’s Authentic Tauheed website. The website currently archives more than 700 radical lectures calling for violence against religious minorities and allows his followers to communicate in a private chatroom. Faisal’s teachings have been linked to numerous other acts of terror, as well as plots to attack U.S. financial institutions and the London Stock Exchange in 2010. He is currently awaiting U.S. extradition in a Jamaican prison.
“As Faisal remains in a Jamaican prison awaiting U.S. extradition, his online presence through Authentic Tauheed continues to promote his mission to spread hatred, bigotry, and violence,” said Counter Extremism Project (CEP) Executive Director David Ibsen. “Faisal is an internationally banned Islamic propagandist who is directly affiliated with countless acts of terror. Amman’s radicalization by Faisal’s online propaganda serves as yet another proof point that Faisal’s radical teachings online must be permanently removed before they cause further harm.”
CEP has noted that Authentic Tauheed’s web registrar is through Go Montenegro Domains, which is directly affiliated with GoDaddy. The two companies are operated by the same individuals and share headquarters in the same building in Scottsdale, Arizona. In late 2018, CEP wrote several letters to GoDaddy, asking the company to cease facilitating, enabling, and protecting a website that has inspired real world violence. Still, GoDaddy continues to provide services to Authentic Tauheed. The company’s decision to do so is inconsistent with its own Terms of Service, which it clearly cited after a prolonged public outrage as a reason for taking down other extremist websites, namely the white supremacist-oriented Daily Stormer and altright.com. Though Authentic Tauheed has been inactive since 2017, the site and Faisal’s lectures remain online and accessible to the public, including those with malicious intent.
The CEP report Abdullah al-Faisal’s Ties To Extremists examines the global influence and violent radicalization efforts by Faisal. He is a U.S.-designated Islamist propagandist who has recruited for ISIS and facilitated travel to ISIS-held territory. After ISIS declared its caliphate in June 2014, Faisal called on Muslims around the world to support it and praised the concept of hijra, migration to the Islamic state. In 2017, Jamaican police arrested Faisal after U.S. authorities indicted him for trying to recruit an undercover NYPD officer to the terror group. Faisal’s lectures, websites, and videos have incited “untold numbers of people around the world to take up the cause of jihad,” according to the U.S. government. CEP documented a total of 50 extremists who have been linked to Abdullah al-Faisal.
Although Faisal was born in Jamaica, it was in the U.K. where he built his reputation as an Islamist cleric in the 1990s. British authorities first took note of Faisal in 2001 after discovering recordings of his lectures in the car of convicted rapist Richard Chinyoka. One of Faisal’s associates, Mohammed Abdul Ahad, is a convicted British pro-ISIS propagandist. Ahad appears to run the organization IslamicTruth1 Dawah Propagation International (IT1DP), which shares the same U.K. Registered Charity Number (1147041) as a U.K. charity known as the Shah Baquibillah Orphanage Trust, which reportedly operates in the London borough of Tower Hamlets as well as in Bangladesh. CEP has repeatedly reached out to the Charity Commission of England and Wales to get Shah Baquilbillah’s charity status revoked for its clear ties to terrorism.
To read CEP’s report Abdullah al-Faisal’s Ties To Extremists, please click here.