Moderate fundamentalism

Last night, the so-called moderate Regent’s Park Mosque was revisited by Channel 4 in Undercover Mosque: the Return. "So-called" because what followed showed anything but.

This was a follow-up to last year’s Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches documentary in which a reporter carried out secret filming in British mosques whose public faces are presented as moderate while, in private, its Muslim preachers campaign against integration into UK society, condemn democracy and praise the Taliban for killing British soldiers.

Last night’s sequel displayed plenty of Islamic hatred and intolerance towards anyone who isn’t Muslim. It showed a female Muslim preacher, Um Saleem, at London’s Regent’s Park Mosque claiming that a Muslim must hate as well as love. This same female preacher waved about an Islamic text, which advocated the killing of ex-Muslims, adulterers, homosexuals and those who support them, and said, “This is a very good book.”

We also saw her talking to non-Muslim schoolchildren and college students, who were visiting the mosque as part of its pretence at promoting integration and understanding. However, as soon as the visitors had left, she started condemning all non-Muslims, saying that Muslims should not integrate with them.

We were shown Saudi religious rulings being handed out in the UK to British Muslim women. We were told of the billions of dollars that the Saudi royal family have been pumping into preaching extremist Islamic teachings throughout the West.

Despite assurances given last year after the exposé of the unacceptable goings on at the Regent’s Park Mosque, we saw that its bookshop was still selling offensive Islamic publications: books of Islamic verdicts (fatwas) and DVDs preaching vile and disgusting views about Islamic punishments, such as chopping people’s hands off, beheadings and crucifixions, and how they should be available all over the world once a Sovereign Islamic State has been created. This is the bookshop that claims to promote peace, respect and tolerance.

While all this is going on behind the mosque’s closed doors, as the documentary clearly showed, British government ministers are laughing and joking and rubbing shoulders with those who run it. Why?

You can see some of the footage from the documentary here at Little Green Footballs.

(We have carried a number of posts mentioning these programmes; you can get to them here, which will take you to all posts that mention it, including this one and any future ones.)