Remember, "Islam is Peace"

Books calling for the beheading of lapsed Muslims, ordering women to remain indoors and forbidding interfaith marriage are being sold inside some of Britain’s leading mosques, according to research seen by The Times.

Some of the fundamentalist works were found at the bookshop in the London Central mosque in Regent’s Park, which is funded by the Saudi regime and is regularly visited by government ministers. Its director, Ahmad al-Dubayan, is also a Saudi diplomat and was among those greeting King Abdullah when he arrived in Britain last night for his official state visit.

Extremist literature, including passages supporting the stoning of adulterers and waging violent jihad, was also found on sale at many other mosques regarded as mainstream institutions.

Just because they support violence doesn't stop them being mainstream. This is Islam we're talking about, after all.

More than 80 books and pamphlets were collected during a year-long project in which researchers visited 100 mosques across Britain.

One book, Fatawa Islamiyah, which urges the execution of apostates, was found in bookshops at Regent’s Park mosque and at the huge East London mosque in Whitechapel. Muhammad Abdul Bari, the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), is the chairman of the East London mosque.

The researchers said that they found further controversial works during visits to mosques in Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Oxford and High Wycombe.

The Times has learnt that five of the books that were acquired by researchers had been also found in searches during Scotland Yard antiterrorist investigations since 2001. About half of the books collected were in English – raising questions about the emphasis placed by the Government in combating extremism by training more English-speaking imams. The other publications were in Arabic or Urdu. The report, The Hijacking of British Islam, is published by the conservative Policy Exchange think-tank and was written by Denis MacEoin, a Fellow at Newcastle University and expert on Islamic issues.

The researchers found hardline material at a quarter of the 100 mosques visited during the project.

The report said: “On the one hand, the results were reassuring: in only a minority of institutions – approximately 25 per cent – was radical material found."

Well, call me an Islamophobic scaremonger (please do, I'll take it as a compliment!), but 25% of institutions seems like a rather worryingly significant minority to me. After all, just think how panicky the left gets over the BNP, an organisation which does not advocate killing anyone (except possibly convicted murderers and child abusers), and does not support the subjugation of women. From the anguished squawking you hear from the likes of al-Beeb and The Guardian, not to mention all three big parties, you'd think the SS were goose-stepping through Parliament Square every time the BNP win a council by-election in Blackburn or Calderdale. And yet the news that "only" one out of every four mosques is openly stocking such ripping reads as Women Who Deserve to Go to Hell ("1. The Grumbler … the woman who complains against her husband every now and then is one of Hell"), or Islamic Verdicts ( “And if he apostatises after that, his head should be chopped off, according to the Hadith: ‘Whoever changes his religion, kill him’”) is described as "reassuring". This, I think, tells you rather a lot about Islam.