Mick Hartley

There’s an article in the latest Private Eye on the Newsnight/Policy Exchange affair. This, if you recall, was the spat caused by a Newsnight programme back in December on the subject of a report issued by the Policy Exchange think-tank, “The Hijacking of British Islam”. The report looked at extremist literature available in British mosques, and concluded that:

* Most of the extremist literature is published and distributed by agencies linked to the Saudi Arabian government.

* Some of the most high-profile and prestigious mosques in Britain are among the worst offenders; in many of them, it is openly available.

* Separatist literature is distributed at the East London Mosque – which is closely associated with the Muslim Council of Britain (which purports to be the main body representing British Muslims).

Pamphlets, books and leaflets obtained from mosques and Islamic centres contain an assortment of shocking statements including:

* “Jihad against a tyrant, oppressors, people of bid’ah [Muslim innovators], or wrongdoers. This type of jihad is best done through force if possible.”

* “The Jews and the Christians are the enemies of the Muslim.”

* “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.”

Although some of the hate literature is in English, a proportion is written in Arabic. The translations commissioned by Policy Exchange have been independently verified.

Many of the publications encourage British Muslims to segregate themselves from non-Muslims. So-called unbelievers are to be treated as second-class and avoided wherever possible.

There are also repeated calls for gays to be thrown from mountains and tall buildings and for women to be subjugated.

Among the literature available are extracts from the notorious anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (published by the Saudi Ministry of Education), and other publications peddling bizarre conspiracy theories alleging that birth control is a plot against Muslims and Arabs, and that pornography is spread as part of a Jewish plot to corrupt Muslims.

The BBC were offered an exclusive preview of the report in October, but sat on it. The rest of the media, meanwhile, reported the report’s findings. Then in December Newsnight ran a 17-minute slot alleging that Policy Exchange had forged the receipts from the bookshops, with the clear implication that this was all an exercise in Islamophobic hate-mongering.

Charles Moore wrote a powerful piece in the Telegraph:

Of course, any allegations about receipts are, in principle, a serious matter for a think-tank.

Policy Exchange bases its work on evidence, and so its evidence must be sound. The BBC did not give the think-tank the chance to investigate its complicated allegations properly. Policy Exchange will now do so.

But the real oddity of all this is that the actual contents of the report have been validated.

Extremist literature was available in the mosques, and in some cases still is. The mosques could not dissociate themselves from the literature and, in most cases, did not even try to: they jumped on the receipts instead.

One mosque insisted that the next-door bookshop selling extreme stuff had nothing to do with it, yet the extremist books in question which the shop sells are by a former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (author of a famous essay in which he literally asserted that the Earth is flat) who was a founding sponsor of the mosque!

I don’t blame Newsnight for reporting questions about receipts, though I deplore their methods. I do blame them for trying to kill the much, much bigger story about the hate that is being preached in our country.

Policy Exchange researches all sorts of public policy – police reform, school choice, housing, as well as on Islamist extremism. Next week comes its big report on improving philanthropy. I find it repellent that the might of the BBC is deployed to threaten and bully a charity in this way.

More important, however, is the fate of Muslims in this country.

It is not often realised that the British citizens most persecuted by Islamist extremism are Muslims themselves.

The researchers that Policy Exchange used to find the extreme literature were all Muslims – no one else could pass unnoticed in a potentially hostile environment.

Because their safety was and is threatened, the think-tank protects their anonymity. On air, Newsnight revealed where some of them were.

Yesterday an Islamist website repeated this and called for supporters to help hunt them down. The BBC has unintentionally exposed them to the risk of harm.

What these brave Muslims undeniably found was evidence of widespread, obnoxious material that is a risk to decent Muslims and to British social order.

The BBC chose, in effect, to side with their extreme opponents and to cover up the report, because of an obsession about a few pieces of paper.

This latest Eye article is, in effect, little more than a rehash of Moore’s piece from six weeks back:

Somewhere in London eight British Muslim researchers have gone to ground; and a far-right Muslim outfit that helped fund the Nazi apologist David Irving wants to know where they are. How did this come about? Because no less an authority that the BBC’s Newsnight had unmasked the eight as “zio-con frauds”, as the Muslim Public Affairs Committee called them on its website.

[David T at Harry’s Place has a couple of posts about the MPAC, yesterday and today and mentions the Irving connection.]

The “zio-con frauds” gibe was from a piece written in December, and this is, I assume, the Islamist website that Moore was referring to.

So, a little late to join the party – but it’s interesting to hear that lawyers are now getting involved:

Furious Conservatives say they’ve no option but to sue or to take a dossier on Peter Barron, Newsnight’s editor, to the BBC’s senior management. Either way the dispute promises to be one of the most vitriolic of 2008…