On Monday October 29, 2007, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia arrived in Britain for the beginning of a state visit. His retinue followed in five separate planes. As soon as the monarch arrived, he created controversy by claiming that Britain had ignored intelligence warnings given by Saudi Arabia before the suicide bomb attacks of 7/7 (July 7, 2005) in which 52 people were killed. Abdullah intimated that if Britain's intelligence services had taken note of the warnings, the events of 7/7 would not have taken place.

U.K. government officials issued denials. Information presented on the website of MI5 on April 30^th this year stated: "The Saudis provided information about possible planning for an attack in the U.K. which was materially different from the attacks that took place in London on 7 July."

Apart from this controversy, and the inevitable protests about abuses of human rights in Abdullah's feudal kingdom, a report was published on the day of his arrival which has attracted widespread media attention. The center-right think tank called the Policy Exchange issued the results of an investigation into extremist material, much of it provided by Saudi agencies, appearing in British mosques. The 202-page report is entitled "The Hijacking of British Islam: How extremist literature is subverting mosques in the U.K."

Four groups of moderate Muslims had been sent to almost 100 mosques and Islamic establishments in various British regions between 2006 and 2007. In a quarter of these establishments, extremist literature was found. Eighty books and pamphlets were collected, and of these 38 were in English, 36 in Arabic and 6 were in Urdu.

Schools and Charities

The report noted that extremist literature was found in the King Fahd Academy on Bromyard Avenue, Acton, West London. This is directly funded by Saudi Arabia's monarchical regime. This establishment educates children aged from 5 to 16, and has already been exposed several times in the U.K. media for having extremist texts. The Policy Exchange researchers found that the 19^th  century anti-Semitic forgery known as the ???Protocols of the Elders of Zion??? was being described as authentic in one of the school's textbooks. The textbook claims that the tenets of the Protocols ??? such as using gold and pornography to subvert the masses ??? have already been implemented by Jews.

As documented in the report (pp 51-58), textbooks produced under the aegis of the Saudi government encourage contempt for non-Muslims. One such text, called "Al-Tawhid" (monotheism) was produced in 2004 by the Saudi Ministry of Education, Learning and Educational Advancement. It states: "One of the great requirements for hating the unbelievers and showing enmity towards them is to stay away from their ceremonies and celebrations." The book advises against "using the solar calendar, because it establishes their Christmas holiday."

A book by the same Saudi ministry, produced in 2006-7, is entitled "Sharh Kitab al-Tawhid" (Commentary on the Book of Monotheism). The Kitab al-Tawhid is the only surviving book written by the founder of Saudi Wahhabism, Muhammad Ibn Abd al-Wahhab (1703-1792). The "Commentary" teaches students at King Fahd Academy that if non-Muslims do not convert to Islam, then they must be fought:

"The basis of Islam is the divine unity. This requires bearing witness that 'There is no god but God'; it therefore is incumbent on the people of Islam that their aim in jihad is to guide mankind to Islam, and to enter into it. It is, therefore, preferable to call them to Islam before fighting them, even if the summons had already reached them before that. But if it had not already reached them, it is necessary to summon them before fighting them."

Another book at the King Fahd Academy, aimed at 12-year-olds and produced by the same Saudi education ministry in 2005-6, is called ???Al-Hadith wa'l-thaqafa al-Islamiyya??? (Prophetic tradition and Islamic culture). This book tells children that women complain too much, are never satisfied by their husbands' "favors," and are weak. It advises against mixing of the sexes socially (khalwat, which is punished in Saudi Arabia by lashes). A book on the Hadith produced by the Saudi education ministry in 2005-6 and aimed at 13-year-olds states: "The Jews and Christians are the enemies of the Muslim, and they will never be pleased with the Muslims."

The Al-Muntada Al-Islami Trust is a registered charity (No: 293355) based in Parsons Green, West London. It was founded in 1986 and though it gains tax-emption from the British government, its area of benefit is "not defined" in its official records. It has branches in 20 African and Asian countries and promotes fundamentalist Islam.

Various books were found at this charity headquarters. One book called "Loyalty and Enmity" (published by Al Firdous Publications in 1993) cites scholars such as Ibn Taymiyyah and Muhammad ibn Ibrahim Al ash-Shaykh to advise that rulers who do not follow Islamic principles should not be followed. Another publication found at the charity advises: "A true believer loves the believers and takes them for friends, and shows hate towards the disbelievers and does not take them for friends." Yet another book tells readers: "Jihad is considered as the peak of Islam, and of the best acts or worship. Some scholars went as far as considering it as the sixth pillar of Islam."

A book on fatwas, produced by The Permanent Council for Knowledge and Edict Research in Saudi Arabia, was found at the charity. This book advises Muslims not to vote for non-Muslims and states "It is impermissable for a Muslim to seek judgment from a non-Muslim government." The second volume of this publication tells Muslims that they should not take holidays in non-Muslim countries, or to take citizenship in a country such as America, governed by non-believers.

The report notes that the King Fahd Academy has been visited by Prince Charles, and has previously claimed that it has removed books that refer to Christians as "swine" and to Jews as "apes and pigs.". The school caters to 1,000 pupils, and has been in existence since 1978. When Colin Cook, a teacher who had been at the academy for 18 years, filed a complaint for unfair dismissal, some unsavory allegations were made at his tribunal.

Mr. Cook was sacked in December 2006. He claimed that Saudi textbooks described Jews as "repugnant" and Christians as "pigs". He said that he had heard pupils saying they wished to "kill Americans" and also idolizing Osama bin Laden. In January 2007, the female principal of the academy, Dr. Sumaya Alyusuf, claimed that the Saudi curriculum had been dropped. The Policy Exchange report indicates that this has not happened.

In May 2006 U.S. research group Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom published a 39-page report entitled Saudi Arabia's Curriculum of Intolerance. This examined textbooks created by the Saudi Ministry of Education, and found that these propounded "a belief that Christians and Jews and other unbelievers have united in a war against Islam that will ultimately end in the complete destruction of such infidels." Specific excerpts of passages from the books can be found here.

Following the 2006 publication of the Freedom House report, the Saudi education minister, Dr. Abdullah bin Salih Obeid, held a press conference with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, in which he claimed that Saudi education was being subjected to root and branch reform. The recent Policy Exchange report indicates that such reforms have not included the Saudi books provided to children at the King Fahd Academy.

It should also be noted that the problem may be happening in at least one Saudi-funded school in the United States. On October 17^th of this year, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom published a report. This highlighted concerns about the Islamic Saudi Academy with campuses in Fairfax and Alexandria in Northern Virginia. The report's authors recommended that if the Saudi-funded school did not hand over copies of its textbooks for examination, it should be closed down. The report stated: "Significant concerns remain about whether what is being taught at the (school) promotes religious intolerance and may adversely affect the interests of the United States."

On Monday this week, it was announced that officials from Fairfax County were examining copies of the textbooks at the academy, which educates 1,000 students. The review of the books was requested by County Supervisor Gerald Hyland.

Mosques

The British Policy Exchange report highlights extremist literature, much of it Saudi in origin, which has been found at two British mosques which have prestigious reputations and were built with Saudi funding. These are the Regents Park Mosque (pictured) and the East London Mosque. The Regents Park Mosque (called the Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Center) was built at a cost of $13 million, with funds including a donation of $3.95 million from the Saudi monarchy. It was built on land donated by King George VI in 1944. Construction began in 1969 and the mosque opened officially in 1977. It has been a registered U.K. charity (No: 231920) since 1965.

One of the books found at the Regents Park Mosque was entitled ???Four Essays on The Obligation of Veiling.??? This states that women "are obligated to stay in their homes and are forbidden to come out from them." It advised: "It is not permissible for a woman to ride in her car alone with a driver that is not a mahram (relative, spouse) to her because this is from the prohibited forms of privacy." The book stated that women should never go out with perfume, nor uncovered. It avowed that Muslim men had the power to force women to wear the veil. Additionally, a woman must cover her feet and even her fingernails when outside the home.

Another book from the mosque is ???Fatawa Islamiyah ??? Islamic Verdicts, volume 1??? co-authored by the Saudi Permanent Council. This book reviles Freemasons for their links to Jews, and criticized Sufi Muslims and members of the peaceful Ahmadiyyah sect (who are barred from doing pilgrimage to Mecca). Volume 5 of this book series advocates polygamy, states that a boy as young as 10 can marry, and forbids Muslim woman from marrying a Christian or "other disbeliever." Such a marriage is to be annulled, until the husband proves he has converted to Islam. However, "if he apostasizes after that, his head should be chopped off according to the Hadith: 'Whoever changes his religion, kill him'."

The same book recommends that a Muslim employer who has a Muslim worker who does not pray should first urge the employee to pray. When that fails, the employee should be fired. Volume 8 of the same book's series states: "There are different kinds of Jihad ??? with one's self, wealth, supplication, teaching, giving guidance, or helping others in good in any form. The highest form of Jihad, however, is with one's life...Jihad with one's life is the highest form."

Volumes 1, 5 and 8 of ???Fatawa Islamiyah ??? Islamic Verdicts??? were also found at the East London Mosque on Whitechapel Road. Another text was found at this mosque, with the intriguing title "Women Who Deserve To Go To Hell."

The East London Mosque was completed in 1985. Adjoining this mosque is now a six story community center, which was officially opened in June, 2004. The community center cost $20 million to construct. At least $2 million was donated by Saudi Arabia. When it was opened, the star speaker was a Saudi. Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudays (Sudeis) is the senior imam at the grand mosque at Mecca.

Sudeis is a hate-spewing anti-Semite. He has called Jews "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs" and also "infidels, distorters of [others'] words, calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers...the scum of the human race 'whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs???' These are the Jews, an ongoing continuum of deceit, obstinacy, licentiousness, evil, and corruption..."

The chairman of the East London Mosque is Bangladesh-born Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari. In 2005, Bari was confronted by BBC journalist John Ware about his invitation of Sudeis to the opening of the mosque's community center. Bari's response to charges that Sudeis condemned followers of other faiths was evasive to the point of dishonesty. Ware asked: "Do I take it that if you were satisfied he had said such things you would not have invited him over?" Bari replied: "Well of course if it was proved that he exactly said this thing that you mentioned then why do you invited people who would be saying like this?" Video of Ware's conversation with the evasive Dr. Bari can be found here.

Dr. Muhammad Bari has, since June 4, 2006, been the head of the Muslim Council of Britain. As I wrote earlier on FSM, the MCB's leadership has acted in an advisory capacity for the Labour government, even though its luminaries have Islamist tendencies. The MCB was co-founded in 1996 by Kamal Helbawy, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, shortly before the Labour Party was elected in May 1997.

There are 400 mosques and Islamic Institutions which claim to be represented by the Muslim Council of Britain. These include mosques and institutions listed in the Policy Exchange report, such as the Muslim Cultural Heritage Center (Al-Manaar) in West London. Here, a book by the Saudi Office for Da'wah in the UK, called "Loyalty and enmity concerning relations between Muslims and non-Muslims" was found. This book states: "it is mandatory to hate and dislike the unbelievers and polytheists, to never ask them for support against the Muslims, to never follow their example in any thing, to never obey them in matters of religion, to never imitate them. Actually it is mandatory to stay far away from them and to separate from them, and to do what is necessary in terms of jihad and its like against their fighters."

Another Saudi book, which claims to be a "gift" from the Saudi King Fahd, was found at the Al-Manaar center. This volume, entitled "Correct beliefs, their opposite, along with the treatise of the Divine presence" argues that it is permissible to kill apostates. Another book at the center, published by the Saudi Ministry of Affairs-funded Office of Da???wah in Britain, is called "Women and their scheming enemies." This argues that among the worst enemies of women are the Jews who "are of all people the keenest on corrupting humanity, and on destroying their beliefs and values. The reason why they work so hard to corrupt humanity is that they cannot see an existence for themselves except through the destruction of others, or corrupting them." The Muslim Council of Britain is affiliated with other mosques listed in the report.

When John Ware compiled his 2005 BBC documentary, he mentioned that the MCB supports a group called the Markaz Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith, which has 41 mosques and faith schools under its influence. In 2005 its website claimed that Muslims should "be different from Jews and Christians" whose "ways are based on sick or deviant views." In January this year, a documentary on Britain's Channel 4 showed that at the Ahl-e-Hadith headquarters, the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham, Saudi-trained preachers incited hatred of homosexuals, contempt for non-Muslims and argued for separation from non-Muslims. The Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia frequently had video-link appearances at this mosque. Bizarrely, West Midlands Police turned their attentions from the Saudi-trained hate preachers featured in the documentary to consider prosecuting the documentary makers.

The Markaz Jamiat Ahl-e-Hadith featured in the Policy Exchange report for having extremist literature on its premises. The book "Correct beliefs, their opposite, along with the treatise of the Divine presence" was found at the Green Lanes Mosque, as well as at the Islamic Center of Edinburgh, Scotland, and at Birmingham's Central Mosque.

The author of the Policy Exchange report, Denis MacEoin, is critical of the Muslim Council of Britain and other similar "representative" bodies for allowing texts of hate to be in the mosques with which they are affiliated. He states on page 7:

"The Government and other authorities should reassess whether it is right to place even a measure of responsibility for the future direction of policy towards Britain's Muslim communities in the hands of groups such as the MCB [Muslim Council of Britain] and the Islamic Foundation in Markfield, which are implicated in this report."

The Islamic Foundation in Markfield, near Leicester, was noted for promoting material by Syed Abul Ala Maududi (1903-1979), the Indian-born founder of the Jamaat-e-Islami Party, an extreme Islamist group with branches in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Maududi's ideas are said to have influenced Sayyid Qutb, ideologue of the Muslim Brotherhood. The foundation in Markfield was founded by Khurshid Ahmad, a senior figure in Jamaat-e-Islami.

In July 2006, Dr. Muhammad Abdul Bari welcomed Bangladeshi Jamaat-e-Islami lawmaker Delwar Hossein Sayeedi to the East London Mosque. Sayeedi is a fanatic who has said that American soldiers should become Muslims or die. He supports the persecution of Ahmadiyyahs in his country and has called Hindus "excrement." Bari never explained why he welcomed Sayeedi to his mosque community center, nor has the British government explained why Sayeedi was given a visa. In 2000, Sayeedi's supporters beat up five Bangladeshi elders in Britain.

As was expected, senior members of the Muslim Council of Britain condemned the Policy Exchange report before they had time to read all of its 202 pages. Inayat Bunglawala of the MCB said: "Bookshops sell a variety of publications and we live in an open, democratic society where it is not illegal to sell books which contain anti-Western views." Bunglawala in 1993 described terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman as "courageous," a month before Rahman organized the first attack on the World Trade Center. When Rahman was arrested, Bunglawala said Rahman had only been apprehended because the blind Sheikh had called "on Muslims to fulfil their duty to Allah and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere."

Bunglawala has also said that the BBC is "Zionist-controlled". Shortly before 9/11, Bunglawala called Osama bin Laden a "freedom fighter". In August 2005 Bunglawala defended his comment, saying "At the time he was." Bunglawala has also said: "Maududi is a very important Muslim thinker."

It is strange that the MCB has had such a close relationship with the Labour government, considering the nature of its leadership. In August 2006 this group was one of many that signed an open letter blaming the British government's foreign policy for encouraging terrorism and extremism. In June 2006 the MCB had pressured the government to abandon its plans to outlaw forced marriage, even though at least 200 British Muslim girls annually undergo this abuse of their rights.

Dr. Bari's predecessor as head of the MCB was Iqbal Sacranie, who was knighted by Tony Blair in June 2005. Sacranie had said after Salman Rushdie's death fatwa that, "Death, perhaps, is a bit too easy for him...his mind must be tormented for the rest of his life unless he asks for forgiveness to Almighty Allah...??? Malawi-born Sacranie argued in 1996 that Osama bin Laden should be allowed to visit London to preach. At the time, Sacranie called bin Laden an "Islamic scholar." He has called Sheikh Yassin, founder of terror group Hamas, a "renowned Islamic scholar". Sacranie attended a memorial service for Sheikh Yassin, which was held in Regents Park Mosque.

Sacranie condemned the Policy Exchange report, saying: "The majority of Muslims will totally dismiss this because it is written by the Policy Exchange, who have an agenda to denigrate the mainstream of Islam in this country. If there is any material which falls foul of the law, then the law should take its course. We cannot accept messages of hate ??? there is zero tolerance on that. But it is irresponsible to target religious texts and take them out of context. These texts can be found not just in mosques but in ordinary bookshops ??? the report overlooks that."

Younes Teniaz of the trust that runs the Regents Park Mosque argued that the bookshop on its premises was run independently. He said: "The bookshop is franchised to a separate organization. These books express their authors??? opinions and not those of the London Central Mosque Trust." The same argument was used when Channel 4 revealed in January that the same bookshop had on sale DVDs which supported armed Jihad and expressed hostility for Christians and non-Muslims.

Birmingham Central Mosque was mentioned in the report. The chairman of this mosque, Dr. Muhammad Naseem, has also condemned the report, even though he allowed extremist preacher Riyadh Ul Haq to be the senior mam at this mosque for years. Ul Haq's sermons argue that Muslims should be separate from non-Muslims. Dr Naseem himself is an extremist. He has argued that homosexuals should be killed. He has also condemned legitimate anti-terror operations carried out in Birmingham.

The Saudi government is using its wealth and influence to fund Muslim schools and mosques around the world. Saudi Education Minister Abdullah bin Salih Obeid appears to have reneged on his 2006 promise to overhaul the literature used in these establishments.

Perhaps the last words should come from Denis MacEoin, author of the report. He states:

"The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should also be pressed to give full disclosure as to the extent and character of the support which it provides to a range of Islamic institutions in the United Kingdom. The British Government must demand a far greater level of transparency from Saudi charitable institutions operating in this country - and these should be monitored, regulated and held to public account on a regular basis. Finally, the public must be told whether Islamic preachers and teachers in the United Kingdom are granted diplomatic status, as in the US - and if so, how many of them enjoy this."

"The Government and other authority figures - including politicians, members of the Royal Family and those in positions of influence more generally - need to set a higher standard for their public partners and stakeholder organizations. They must insist that those Islamic partners and stakeholders remove such extremist literature from their midst, even when they did not publish or distribute it themselves. The authorities should also urge that umbrella bodies must not tolerate such materials appearing in locations associated with affiliated bodies. For example, the Metropolitan Police Service and the Association of Chief Police Officers should reassess their willingness to embrace bodies such as the Muslim Safety Forum - the self-designated 'advisory body... on issues concerning British Muslims' - when some of their affiliate organizations have not cleansed their premises of the literature featured here. The terms of engagement with these bodies need now to be re-examined - and a proper audit conducted as to what is to be gained and lost by such engagement."