The rise of the Muslim Boys
By David Cohen
http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/articles/16372042?source=Ev
ening%20Standard

[Joe] Shades of Clockwork Orange, with the Alex lingo leavened not with Russke, but with Arabic.


Winston emerges menacingly from the kitchen, a meat cleaver in
one hand and a kitchen knife with an eight-inch blade in the other.
"I love knives," he says, his eyes gleaming as he begins to slash
the air inches from my face.

"Guns make a f***ing noise, but knives go in," he pauses, "
silentlike, easy." He begins stabbing the wall and hacking the
plaster, and then, just as suddenly, stops, seemingly sated, like an
addict who has had his fix.

He holds up his blades to inspect them. "F***ing quality," he says,
and deposits them unceremoniously his trousers. Winston, 21,
black and from south London, licks his teeth as he paces around
the stripped-bare flat on a Peckham estate that serves as one of his
gang's many secret hideouts. He speaks in his gang's uniquely
coded lingo.

"Knives is f***-all. Later, my bruvs will be back from their
robberies with our skengelengs [guns] and cream [money]. Later
there be MACinside-10s [sub-machine guns] all over the floor,
laid wall to wall. And moolah! We count it - 10 grand, 20 grand.
Then, after midnight," he adds, matter-of-factly, "me and my
bruvs go to mosque to pray."

Winston's casual depiction of a lifestyle of crime tightly bound up
with religious observance would normally be regarded as
paradoxical, but in his case it is what defines him. For Winston is
a member of the Muslim Boys, a gang, the black community says,
unlike any that has operated before in south London.

Until now, the Muslim Boys have never allowed any members to
be interviewed. Ex-convicts and youth workers who know some
of them personally warned us: "It's too dangerous. They'll shoot
you on the spot."

But an Evening Standard investigation - involving dozens of
interviews and finding go-betweens with underworld connections
who would agree to take us into one of the many dens of the
Muslim Boys - has for the first time thrown light on this street
phenomenon.

They number in their hundreds, according to some estimates, with
ages ranging from 15 to 30, and their hallmark is extreme
violence, with automatic and semi-automatic machine guns their
weapons of choice. But what makes them unique is that they are
so-called "converts", whose perverted interpretation of Islam is
central to their identity as killers and criminals. Their stamping
grounds are the estates of south London, where they hole-up in
safe houses, living ascetic lives in stark contrast to the "blingbling" lifestyle of other gangs.

Detective Chief Superintendent John Coles, in charge of the Met's Operation Trident team, which investigates black-on-black
shootings, confirmed that " the Muslim Boys are responsible for at
least two execution-style murders in the past eight months", as well
as scores of robberies and attempted murders. "We have taken out
most of the hardcore," he says. "We arrested 20 of them. The
majority were sentenced for crimes ranging from murder to
shootings to possession of firearms and drugs."

The shooting of PC Liam Morrow, shot in the legs in Bromley in
December, has also been linked to the gang. A 19-year-old youth
has been charged with attempted murder.

Coles believes, nevertheless, that the Muslim Boys have been
"over-hyped", that there are "less than a hundred", and that they
are nothing more than "nasty, ordinary south London criminals
who have adopted the Muslim Boys name to make them sound
bigger and more fearsome than they really are".

But Lee Jasper, the Mayor of London's senior advisor on policing,
vehemently disagrees. He says: "The Muslim Boys pose one of the
most serious criminal threats the black community has ever faced.
The police tell me they have never seen anything like this gang
before. They speak in an almost impenetrable code, they use
heavy firepower, are forensically aware, unbelievably violent and
extraordinarily disciplined. They're as tough to crack as the IRA."

Our investigation reveals that Jasper's concerns are shared by
many - including youth workers dealing with vulnerable teenagers
in south London.

The Muslim Boys, they say, are notorious for intimidating imams
into opening their mosques in the early hours of the morning so
that they can pray, often right after committing crimes, and for
their "forced conversions", carried out at gunpoint, of black youths
to Islam. At least one local young man, Adrian Marriott, thought
to have resisted such a conversion, is believed to have been
murdered "as an example to others".

At greatest risk of being forcibly recruited are "feral kids", the
kind identified by outgoing Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir
John Stevens as being left to fend for themselves without adult
supervision, and who already operate on the fringes of criminality.

This is how gang member Winston describes "conversion". "You
got to be Muslim to be in our group," he tells me. "If you not
down [cool] with Muslim, we visit your home, maybe strip you
naked in front of your f***ing mother, we put a gun in your
mouth. We give you three days [to change your mind], then, if you
not down with it, we f* * * ing blow."

The existence of the gang is a cause of profound concern within
the Muslim community. The precedent set by Richard Reid - the
infamous " shoebomber" who prayed at Brixton mosque, and who
was both a black convert and a criminal who became a terrorist -
is one they don't want repeated.

Last month, the Brixton and Stockwell mosques moved to
publicly distance themselves from the gang, saying - without
actually naming the Muslim Boys - that there are "criminals
masquerading as Muslims" who threaten the good name of their
religion.

Abdul Haqq Baker, chairman of Brixton mosque, said: "What we
are seeing is a new phenomenon that I have not seen in my 15
years as a Muslim." He added that TV scenes of militant uprisings
in the Middle East are presenting a distorted view of Islam that
appeals to criminals. "Keep away from our mosques," he pleaded.

Lee Jasper, speaking in his capacity as chair of the Lambeth
police consultative group, says that "the story is potentially
explosive", but that he is speaking out because he has become
"increasingly frustrated" at the "lack of adequate police action".

"So far," he says tersely, meeting me face-to-face in central
London, "police arrests have not made a dent in this lot. There is
barely a major estate in Lambeth or Southwark - and increasingly
in Lewisham - not dominated by the Muslim Boys. The problem is
that the police treat them like an ordinary criminal gang, which
they are not. I've asked them to increase their level of policing to a
level appropriate for serious organised crime. But the Met has
refused to raise its game."

Jasper's deepest worry - that "the leaders of the Muslim Boys
could be a criminalised front for terrorist extremists" - is voiced
by many with links to the south London underworld.

Trident's John Coles acknowledges these concerns, but says, "we
have found no evidence whatsoever of a link to terrorism".

Nevertheless, questions remain: if their crime spree is not funding
a lavish lifestyle, what are the Muslim Boys doing with their
ill-gotten gains?

The story of the rise of the Muslim Boys started 15 months ago,
when a hardcore of Afro-Caribbean "Muslim converts" began
violently "taxing" the south London criminal community. Dressed
in long, flowing black leather coats, as in the film The Matrix, and
initially dubbed "the Taliban Terrorists", these were ex-convicts
who had been turned on to Islam in prison, and who began to use
the austere discipline of Islam to fashion a criminal network with
a "higher" purpose.

Their first targets were other criminals - especially local drug
dealers and pimps - who were ordered to pay "protection money".
If the dealers refused, they were held at gunpoint, often facing the
muzzle of a MAC-10.

In the early days, there were about 25 hardcore members, plus 40
" footsoldiers". They had come out of a gang called the SMS, the
South Man Syndicate, and now began to rope in other crews, such
as The Brotherhood and the Stockwell Crew, evolving into an
umbrella crew called the PDC, Poverty Driven Children. To this
day, gang members refer to themselves as PDC, regarding the
Muslim Boys as a term used by outsiders.

By January 2004, the gang had managed the unique feat of uniting
the bitterly divided south-east black criminal-fraternity against
them. City officials became aware of a war brewing, says Jasper.

"The police were warned: either you take them out, or we do. If
you don't move on these guys, all hell will break loose."

Police arrests, it is claimed, have failed to break the gang. Instead,
the Muslim Boys are believed to have prospered, recruiting inside
Feltham, Brixton and Wandsworth prisons, as well as on the
outside, and their numbers have leapfrogged from dozens to
hundreds. It has helped that the Yardies, once the most feared
gangsters in London, have become marginalised, and the Muslim
Boys are said to have stepped into the breach.

Wayne Rowe, 39, an ex-prisoner working as a Brixton community
liaison officer, explains their appeal. "For many poverty-stricken
kids growing up alienated on estates, often without fathers, the
Muslim Boys have become a seductive, alternative family."

One who was nearly seduced was Michael, 31, a youth worker for
a south London charity, who thought of joining the gang after
growing up alongside many of their older brothers. He says they
have jumped on the al Qaeda bandwagon. "Since 9/11, Muslims
have become demonised as the number one enemy and alienated
black kids feel a kinship with this. The war in Iraq has taught
them that those with the biggest guns rule, and so they have the
biggest guns."

The trend of black youths converting to Islam has gathered pace in
the past three years. Omar Urquhart, 34, imam of the Brixton
mosque and himself a black convert to Islam, says: "Sixty per cent
of their 500-strong community are black converts."

Unlike religions that have lengthy, formal conversions, the
process in Islam can be instant. You neither have to convert in a
mosque, nor in front of an imam, says the Muslim Council of
Britain. All that is needed is that, in the presence of two other
Muslims, you voluntarily make a declaration of faith "that none is
worthy of worship except Allah" and that "Muhammad is the
messenger of Allah".

But the conversions administered forcibly by the Muslim Boys
are, says Imam Omar, totally anti-Islamic, as is their violent,
criminal lifestyle.

Last June, the imam had to step in personally after Adrian
Marriott - having been hounded by the gang to convert with
bullying visits to his home - was found shot several times in the
head, in parkland off Barrington Road, Brixton.

"I had to approach the family of the murdered boy and assure
them that these criminals have nothing to do with real Islam, or
with our mosque," he says. Three men in their early twenties have
been charged with Adrian Marriott's murder.

The Standard's attempts to reach a member of the Muslim Boys
initially came to nothing, with warnings that contact was "not
possible". But suddenly, one afternoon, I am told: "A middle-
ranking member will see you." I am driven down the Old Kent
Road to a poverty-stricken estate - whose name I am obliged to
keep secret - and led upstairs to a dingy-looking flat.

There, lithe and athletic, and fiddling incessantly with his knives,
Winston speaks to me, often lapsing into his strange "lingwo", as
he calls it, for over an hour. When the time feels right, I ask him
about Adrian Marriott. "Yeah, I went to school with him, grew up
with him." he says, spitting out each word with venom.

Why was he shot? I ask. "His name came up, innit. He was
involved in this Muslim Boys t'ing. He did something that doubled
back on his people. So they killed him. Shot in his mouth and his
throat."

HAVE you killed anyone? I press him. "I've stabbed people," he
says. "Everyone I know has." Ever shot anyone? "Not at close
range. My other bruvs have, obviously. But I ain't, " he half-
smiles, " 'cos I got a little bit of heart. I don't mind f***ing
someone up, but I won't blow them in the mouth. I turn my head
when I see them things happen, bruv. It happens."

Winston, who has done time in Feltham and Bullingdon prisons
for burglary, armed robbery, GBH and affray, says his life of
crime started when he left home and school at 14.

"My father, f*** him, he was a low-life drug addict. He held up
banks and went to prison when I was 12. I never knew the lovely
life - you know, nine-to-five, kids, settle down. My life is the
grime. Look at this s***-hole. I'm on the run. This year I've lived
in 15 places just like this."

Winston invites me to look around the flat, which he calls "the
slumberdrop" and resembles a bolt-hole in a war zone. In the
bedroom, there is a bed with a cardboard box stuffed full of
clothes; the second bedroom, piled top to bottom with rubbish,
cannot even be entered; and the living room has no carpet, just a
foam-rubber sofa without upholstery and a small television.

"This is where we do everything - count the money, sell the drugs,
hide our guns," he boasts. The picture Winston paints is of an
affiliation of gangs - all "converted Muslims" - holding up banks
and post offices, trading guns and "taxing" drug dealers, then
returning days later to share the booty with affiliates. According to
Winston, gang members fan out beyond London to towns such as
Reading and Bristol.

If this is true, then Winston and his fellow Muslim Boys are
responsible for a national crime wave whose significance extends
way beyond south London.

Aren't you worried about the police catching up with you? "The
police are f***-all - they don't bother me," he shoots back. "The
people I worry about is the gangs. This t'ing of being a Muslim is
a new t'ing. It used to be that being in a gang was an individual
t'ing. You could come in and leave the next day. But this Muslim
t'ing is for life. The only way I can get out of this is if I done a
certain amount of murders, then I can get out at the last one."

When I ask Winston whether he believes in Islam, he prevaricates.

"Sort of," he says. "I converted when I was in prison. I found it
relaxing, we got better food. Now we all go to mosque together. If
I refuse, they blow [shoot] me, innit. I pray twice a day: before I
do crime, and after. I ask Allah for a blessing when I'm out on the
street. Afterwards, I apologise to Allah for what I done."

Winston becomes angry when I show him the Brixton mosque's
denunciation of his crew as "bogus Muslims", crushing their
statement in his fist. "F***ing cheek!" he says. "Mocking us.
There be retribution for this!"

Winston is now agitated again and he begins playing with his
knives, laying them in patterns at his feet. "You lucky the other
bruvs not here yet," he says. "They pick you up and throw you
straight off the f***ing balcony."

One final question, I say. Where does your money go? "To the
f***ing laundry, innit," he says, licking his teeth. Is there any
connection between your gang and al Qaeda? He glares at me.
"That's a deep piece of info. I support Bin Laden. I wouldn't ask
that question, bruv - it's rude, it's dangerous, it's ..."

Time to leave. There are moments when words do not come easily
to Winston, when he prefers to let his hands do the talking, and
right now, they are being frighteningly expressive.