Omar Bakri Muhammad

Omar Bakri Muhammad is the founder of Al-Muhajiroun.
==Background==
Bakri was born in Syria in 1958.Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, HarperCollins, 2006, p.105. He left that country in 1982, following the Assad regime's repression of the Muslim Brotherhood revolt in which he had taken part.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.273. He founded Al-Muhajiroun in Saudi Arabia in 1983.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.244. Following the proscription of Al-Muhajiroun in Saudi Arabia, Bakri fled to Britain in 1986.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.245. 
==Hizb-ut-Tahrir leader==
Bakri subsequently became leader of the British branch of Hizb-ut-Tahrir.Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, HarperCollins, 2006, p.105. He was arrested in 1991 after saying that John Major was a legitimate target for assassination as a result of the Gulf War.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.273. He was not charged over the incident.Sean O'Neill and Daniel McGrory, The Suicide Factory: Abu Hamza and the Finsbury Park Mosque, HarperCollins, 2006, p.113. 
During the 1990s he supported the KLA in Kosovo.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.245. The American intelligence writer John Loftus has claimed he was working with British intelligence at this time.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.244. 
==Forms Al-Muhajiroun==
Bakri split with Hizb-ut-Tahrir in early 1996, when he formed his own separate Al-Muhajiroun organisation.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.273. 
Journalist Mark Curtis reports that in the late 1990s, Bakr claimed to be operating in Britain under a 'covenant of security' with the British state.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.243. This must be treated with some caution as it is sourced to a MEMRI report.Yotam Feldner, Radical Islamist Profiles (2): Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad - London, MEMRI, 25 October 2001. MEMRI in turn cites an interview with Bakri by Patrick Goodenough for a news site associated with the US conservative movement, CNSNews.com.Patrick Goodenough, UK Muslims Being Trained in US for Jihad, CNSnews.com, 24 May 2000.
Bakri left Britain for Lebanon a month after the 2005 London bombings. The Home Secretary Charles Clarke announced in 2006, that he would not be allowed to return to Britain.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.274. Mark Curtis suggests that this was an arrangement designed to conceal potentially embarrassing past links between Bakri and the intelligence community.Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam, Serpent's Tale, 2010, p.275. 
==External resources==
*Mahan Abedin, Al-Muhajiroun in the UK: An Interview with Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, Jamestown Foundation, 25 May 2005.
==Notes==
Bakri Muhammad, OmarBakri Muhammad, Omar