The British Muslim family banned from entering the U.S. this week were on their way to meet relatives in California who prayed at the same mosque as terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, who murdered 14 people in San Bernardino this month.
On Tuesday, Mohammad Tariq Mahmood, his brother and nine of their children were pulled from a queue at Gatwick airport by British Border Agency guards and barred from traveling to the U.S. on the instruction of the country’s Homeland Security agency.
He has claimed that they were stopped from traveling to California to visit family and Disneyland merely “because they were Muslim”.
It has now been revealed that his relative in California, Muhammad Mahmood, prayed at the same mosque as U.S.-born terrorist Syed Farook and his Pakistani born wife Tashfeen – believed to be the Tablighi Jamaat-run Dar Al Uloom Islamiyah mosque.
The mosque – linked to the “Army of Darkness” group Tablighi Jamaat which itself has historical, indirect links to multiple terrorism cases – became the centre of the investigation surrounding the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, with Breitbart News reported from the scene early in December, revealing an extraordinary refusal of the mosque’s elders to co-operate with journalists.
Mr. Mahmood (the relative) is a U.S. citizen who runs an auto repair shop in San Bernardino. He told the BBC that he “did not know him [Syed Farook] personally” and would not have recognised the terrorist and could not recall ever speaking to him.
A comment from a Mr. Muhammad Mahmood from the same mosque just days after the attack in the Sacramento Bee reads: “It’s a sad thing… There will be a backlash, of course… Guess why: I’m a brown-skinned guy with a beard who is named Muhammad.”
Tablighi Jamaat is a Deobandi revivalist movement whose mandate is, according to its leading advocate Ebrahim Rangooni, to save the Muslim world “from the culture and civilisation of the Jews and the Christians…”
To this end, he has suggested cultivating “such hatred for their ways as human beings have to urine and excrement.”
On Wednesday, a British, Labour Party Member of Parliament wrote to Prime Minister David Cameron accusing Homeland Security of widespread discrimination. A spokesman for the Prime Minister then confirmed he was considering the issues and would respond in due course.
However, it was reported yesterday how a Facebook account, set up at the London address of the family, in the name of Hamza Hussain, has listed job titles such as “supervisor at Taliban and leader at al-Qaeda”.
Furthermore, on Wednesday it was revealed that Mr. Mahmood’s brother, also traveling, had been denied entry into Israel and detained eight years ago on a “lads” trip to Middle East with a “group of older gentlemen.”
American security agencies have also confirmed the brothers “hit positive for terror checks”.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman said that currently the “religion, faith or spiritual beliefs of an international traveler are not determining factors” when deciding if a person can travel to the US.
However, the spokesman explained, people can be denied entry for a variety of reasons including health-related issues, prior criminal convictions, security concerns or on miscellaneous grounds.
Breitbart London has previously reported on Tablighi Jamaat members performing orchestrated public relations stunts which claim institutional “Islamophobia”. In June of this year, a TJ member claimed he had been discriminated against for his Muslim name. In turned out he had hidden his affiliation with the terror-linked Markazi Masjid mosque from his curriculum vitae (resume).