Didsbury Mosque issued a statement responding to recent accusations that the mosque hosted extremists, and that it had not done enough to stop the Manchester Arena bomber, Salman Abedi.
The statement issued on Tuesday said the mosque is responding to misleading comments by one of the lawyers (John Cooper), who is representing the families of the victims in the investigation, confirming that the Didsbury Mosque did not support the violence or did anything related to the attacks, and the attempt to link a mosque Didsbury extremism is to divert attention to focus on the real failures of these very agencies that have a duty to protect people and prevent these attacks.
The statement described what happened as one of the repercussions of the British government’s decision to work with some Libyan groups to remove the Gaddafi government, which encouraged some Libyans in Manchester to go and fight in Libya, creating an extremist environment in Manchester.
It added that Didsbury Mosque is aware of such a foreign policy, and has done its best to keep extremism out of the mosque since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
The statement called for better communication with the authorities, stressing that the mosque will write to the head of the investigation with special recommendations on how to think about these attacks in the future, and said that this “barbaric” act has nothing to do with Didsbury Mosque, Islam or the Qur’an.
