The British are proving to be a unflappably tolerant group of people. Traditions of free speech aside, there is hardly another Western country that would tolerate the presence of Al-Muhajiroun, a militant Islamic group founded in 1986 in England by Sheikh Abu Bakri Mohammad, an asylum seeker from Syria. "England is the capital of the Islamic world," says Abu Bakri. "Trafalgar Square has become our Mecca." The group has been quite busy since 9/11 - 3,000 Al-Muhajiroun members found their way to Al-Qaida and Taliban forces in Afghanistan (seven of them are now at Guantanamo Bay), Richard "Shoe Bomber" Reid studied with the group before trying to blow up a passenger flight last December, and Zacharias "20th hijacker" Moussaoui studied with London sheikh Abu Qatada, commonly known as "bin Laden's ambassador to Europe". "[Zacharias] was clearly brainwashed by clerics in London," explained Mossauoui's distraught mother. Mainstream Muslim groups ignored the rally, sayiing Al-Muhajiroun's radical rhetoric doesn't represent the views of the majority of Britain's 1.5 million Muslims. Al-Muhajiroun's latest biting-of-the-hand-that-feeds-them was a pilgrimage to "Mecca", i.e. a rally in Trafalgar Square for 500 of the faithful, with 100 right-wing nationalists shouting anti-Islamic slogans waiting to greet them. Speakers at the "Rally for Islam" included Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, an extremist imam who was sentenced to death in Yemen for his role in terrorism. Four people were arrested after fights broke out.