The Wahhabis are our problem, not yours

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On Wednesday evening the Evening Standard ran an “exposé” on the central mosque in London, alleging that its bookshop was run by Wahhabis and that the mosque is run by Saudi Arabia. The specific accusation is that the bookshop sells DVDs by Khalid Yasin and one Shaikh Feiz which contains content the average white Briton might find offensive, among them that women are deficient in intelligence compared to men, that Jews are comparable to pigs and that Christian missionaries deliberately spread AIDS in Africa under the cover of vaccines for common dangerous diseases. You can find the article reproduced here.

The claim that the bookshop is run by a Wahhabi organisation, Dar us-Salaam, is true. When I first started attending that mosque, the bookshop was actually in the mosque foyer and sold a variety of books by mainstream Islamic publishers like Ta-Ha. Then, for some reason, Dar us-Salaam moved in and the book stands in the foyer disappeared. Dar us-Salaam is a well-known publisher of propaganda-laden poor translations of classical Islamic texts such as those by Khan and Hilali. Shaikh Nuh Ha Mim Keller noted that in one such translation, Muhammad Muhsin Khan inserted a seventy-three page introduction explaining the Wahhabis’ three categories of monotheism, something of which the original author, Imam Muhammad al-Bukhari, knew nothing.

The article quotes “Shaikh Feiz” thus:

Sheikh Feiz is seen imitating the snorting noises of a pig when referring to Jewish people, whom he says will be killed when the day of judgment arrives. He says: “This creature will say, ‘Oh Muslim’ behind me is the Jew. Come and kill him. They will be [makes snorting noises] all of them, every single one of them.”

This is, of course, a predictive prophecy about a forthcoming battle between Muslim and Jewish forces, not an attempt to inspire Muslims today to go and kill Jews today, but is routinely quoted as if it were just that. I suspect that the snorting noises were meant to represent the noises of dying, not the noises of a pig, although I have not seen the video. While there is a well-known passage in the Qur’an noting a group of Jews who were turned into apes and pigs for playing legal tricks to get around a ban on fishing on the Sabbath, that is not relevant to this quotation.

I’ve not watched the DVDs myself so I cannot confirm or deny what the Standard quoted from him or from Shaikh Yasin. What is obvious, however, is that none of them actually defend terrorism or try to inspire anyone to commit violent acts, which is what is illegal; they simply say things that Britons in general do not like. It appears that the investigators went after real extremist links and really only found a few controversial statements, some of them ugly and prejudicial and some which are just at variance with mainstream British culture, and made a big deal out of them. No doubt some of those who will be most offended by the few words they will hear from Khalid Yasin and Shaikh Feiz on Dispatches this coming Monday will be quite happy to hear insulting things said about religion, particularly about Islam. Besides, it stands to reason that a bookshop cannot screen every single item it sells for content which is illegal or offensive. If they did, companies like Waterstone’s and Borders would have massive screening houses to process the books quickly, which we would all know about (and there would certainly be fewer booksellers).

The real scandal about that bookshop is the fact that the only bookshop at the most famous mosque in the UK, which is not known to be a sectarian mosque, is run by a sectarian organisation. As stated in the article, the imams at the mosque are all Egyptian; specifically, they were trained at al-Azhar which is still a major centre for the teaching of Islam despite not having quite the authority it once did before the British and Gamal Abdul-Nasir messed around with it. (It never was a Muslim Vatican, but is often spoken of as if it were still.) Al-Azhar is not a Wahhabi institution; it does not take converts from the ghetto and turn them into preachers unlike certain other institutions.

The Wahhabis of the sort who run Dar us-Salaam are not terrorists and pose no real threat to anyone’s life and liberty. They are a sect who cause trouble within the Muslim community and which brands practices and beliefs which were actually mainstream until very recently (and in many places still are) as idolatry and heresy. They have in fact thrived under the present world order, which has allowed them to occupy, and operate unmolested in, the Hijaz while Muslims elsewhere are sometimes unable to even grow their beards or wear normal Islamic clothing; they barely lifted a finger to defend Palestine against the Israeli invasion and their rulers had so little confidence in their ability to save Kuwait from the Iraqi invasion that they invited the Americans to do it for them, with all the hideous consequences for the innocent Muslims (and others) in Iraq over the subsequent decade. In at least one conversation with one of their activists, I was told that it was not for the Muslims to establish an Islamic state anywhere; it was incumbent on us to establish tawheed (monotheism), meaning their version of it.

The scandal, and the ordinary Muslims’ battle, has been going on since at least the mid-1990s as was the case with Abu Hamza and others, but the ravings and other activities of Abu Hamza attracted attention only when they became an embarrassment to the government. Now that Abu Hamza and his ilk are all either in jail or out of the country, the media seem to be sniffing round for more scandals involving Muslims. Non-Muslims should be assured that the Wahhabis are not wider society’s problem but the Muslim community’s own.

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