Livingstone blames UK policy, defends Muslim cleric
7/21/2005 6:30:00 AM GMT

London Mayor Ken Livingstone, left, seen with Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi

Western "double standards" as well as decades of British and American interference in the oil-rich Middle East led to July 7 bombings, London Mayor Ken Livingstone said.

Mr. Livingstone told BBC radio on Wednesday that the attacks would not have taken place if Western powers left Arab states free to decide their own fate after World War I.

While denouncing the London attacks that left at least 56 killed, Mr. Livingstone said that Western countries have been interfering in the Middle East over fears of losing their fuel supplies.

"I think you've just had 80 years of western intervention into predominantly Arab lands because of the western need for oil. We've propped up unsavory governments, we've overthrown ones we didn't consider sympathetic.

"And I think the particular problem we have at the moment is that in the 1980s... the Americans recruited and trained Osama Bin Laden, taught him how to kill, to make bombs, and set him off to kill the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan.

"They didn't give any thought to the fact that once he'd done that he might turn on his creators," he said.

The London Mayor also criticized the "double standards" by Western powers. "A lot of young people see the double standards, they see what happens in Guantanamo Bay, and they just think that there isn't a just foreign policy," he said.

"Totally unrepresentative"

Mr. Livingstone also criticized news agencies that represent British Muslims in a "totally unrepresentative" manner.

He also defended a leading Muslim cleric whom he invited to speak at a conference in Manchester next month.

Some people have alleged that Sheikh Youssef al-Qardawi encouraged "suicide bombings" and manipulated the minds of the suspected London bombers.

"What Sheikh al-Qaradawi pointed out was, given that the Palestinians do not have jet fighters and do not have tanks, they only have their bodies to use. I do not think he is actually urging people to go out and become suicide bombers," Mr. Livingstone said.

"All information I have received is that [he has] condemned the London bombings unequivocally as wholly incompatible with Islam."

Sheikh Qaradawi, also a trustee of the Oxford University Center for Islamic Studies, had strongly denounced the attacks. “We were dumbfounded by the grave news of the London bombings which killed tens and wounded hundreds of innocent people who committed no crime,” he said after the bombings.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said that it is unacceptable that Israel goes on “indiscriminately destroying homes simply because a [Palestinian] bomber came from that area. I don't believe in an eye for an eye. I don't believe in that punishment.”

Sheikh Qradawi also called for distinguishing between the Israeli occupation and the Jews themselves. “We do not fight Israelis because they are Jews, but because they took our land, killed our children and profaned our holy places,” he said.

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