MP: Investigate Mosques

By Marc Shoffman - Thursday 18th January 2007


Jewish politicians are demanding an official investigation after a television documentary revealed anti-Semitic DVDs on sale at London's most prestigious mosque.

The Channel 4 Dispatches programme also revealed that speakers were preaching hatred against Jews at Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham – one of the country’s biggest.

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Despite condemnation of the Undercover Mosque investigation by mainstream Muslim groups such as the Muslim Council of Britain, Jewish MPs have questioned how religious leaders could not know what was happening on their premises.

West Midlands Police and the Metropolitan Police are investigating the content of the programme, which was broadcast on Monday.

Both mosques are seen as representative of mainstream Islam, but they have refused to take responsibility for the lectures.

Green Lane Mosque claimed the building had been rented out, and Regents Park Mosque said its bookshop is owned by a separate company, Darussalam publications, based in Saudi Arabia.

TJ visited Regents Park Mosque, also known as the London Central Mosque, this week only to find the bookshop closed.

Congregants were wary of strangers and initially refused to comment but those willing to speak said the community was angered by the documentary and described it as “a load of nonsense.”

Conservative MP Lee Scott said the findings were suspicious. He told TJ: “I was appalled by some of the things we saw, it must be investigated, I want to know what this stuff was, and why it took a TV documentary to expose it. The mosque must know what is happening inside its building.

“Materials relating to hatred towards Jewish people are illegal, it must be clamped down on, and the sellers must be prosecuted.”

Labour MP Louise Ellman backed calls for an investigation. She said: “It’s deeply disturbing that this preaching of hate is still going on. There should be a further investigation into the bookshop and what these people are preaching.”

Mark Gardner, Director of Communication at the Community Security Trust said: “This was a valuable expose of extremism and anti-Semitism, which should be condemned regardless of their source.”

The manager of the mosque bookshop, Hafiz Waheed, said the offensive DVDs had been removed, but admitted other materials by the same preachers are still available. He admitted that he only checks the first ten minutes of the recordings.

The programme claimed Wahhabism, a Saudi Arabian form of Islam which calls for the establishment of an Islamic state, is being preached across the UK.

Channel 4’s reporter attended sermons given by Abu Usamah at Green Lane Mosque, who described Christians and Jews as “Enemies of Islam.”

On one DVD available at the Regents Park Mosque bookshop, Changing the World Through Da’wah, Sheikh Khalid Yasin, told his audience: “We don't need to go to the Christians or the Jews debating with them about the filth they believe. Muslims have been ordered to do brainwashing because the kuffaar (non-believer) they are doing brain defiling.”

Another DVD, Signs of the Hour, shows Sheikh Feiz describing Jews as pigs. He said: “This creature will say Oh Muslim behind me is the Jew come and kill him. They will be (snorting), every single one of them.”

Many of the DVDs cited in the programme were produced in Australia and distributed worldwide by Islam 1 productions.

The company’s director, Lebanese-born Subi Alshaik, said his company had been unaware of the inflammatory nature of some of the DVDs and would “remove them from the shelves”.

However, the items are still available online, but Alshaik claims these will be removed when the web manager returns from holiday.
The revelations come almost three years after a police raid on Finsbury Park Mosque uncovered weapons for potential terrorist use such as guns and a CS gas canister.
It presents a blow to the government’s vow to crackdown on terror and cut funding from extremist groups. A Communities and Local Government spokesperson said: “We do not pretend that there are not those in Muslim communities peddling completely unacceptable messages but these individuals are a minority.

“Most Muslims are proud to be British and are law-abiding citizens contributing to the business, cultural and social fabric of society.”

The Three Faiths Forum often works with the Regents Park Mosque. The group’s coordinator Sidney Shipton said it was a “sad” situation and vowed to speak to the centre’s director, but insisted there were plenty of mainstream Muslims not shown in the investigation.

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