Mick Hartley

Are we ready for the Undercover Mosque follow-up?

Women preachers are urging followers at one of Britain’s most influential mosques to kill homosexuals and view all non-Muslims as “vile”, according to a television documentary.

The London Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre, known as the Regent’s Park Mosque, is one of the most respected centres for moderate Islam in western Europe.

However, an undercover investigation by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme has found extremist preachers have held study circles there and are teaching followers a hardline version of the faith followed in Saudi Arabia, known as Wahhabism.

The documentary, to be broadcast tomorrow, is a follow-up to Undercover Mosque, which investigated a number of mosques and was made by the same team more than a year ago. That resulted in an investigation by West Midlands Police, who accused the makers of distorting sermons and inflaming tensions. Officers took no action against extremist preachers whose words were broadcast. Ofcom rejected the complaint and the force had to apologise to Channel 4. It agreed at the High Court to pay £100,000 for libel.

In the new documentary, a female reporter infiltrated women’s study circles. In one, a preacher using the name Umm Amira told followers: “We are not going to be like animals . . . or to be like the homosexuals, God save us from that, you understand? We have to take the judgment, the judgment is to kill them.”

Umm Amira is recorded as saying converts from Islam should also be killed. “He is Muslim and he gets out of Islam, he doesn’t want any more. What are we going to do? We kill him, kill, kill.”

In another study circle, Umm Amira describes Christians as “vile”. Another preacher, Umm Saleem, tells her congregation not to take British citizenship or become friends with nonMuslims….

The Muslim Council of Britain, of which the mosque is an affiliate, said: “Some of the statements are deeply offensive . . . [but] it would be very wrong, and quite unfair, to smear the whole centre.”

Smear? Do you smear someone by pointing out that they advocate murdering gays or apostates? The MCB have to turn any criticism into a personal attack: more evidence of Islamophobia, no doubt. 

Update: there's a fuller treatment of this in the Telegraph, written by the reporter who did the filming:

Regent's Park Mosque has a major interfaith department, which arranges visits from the Government, the civil service, representatives of other religions and thousands of British school children a year.

I watched as an interfaith group was brought in to meet the mosque's women's circle for a civilised exchange. But when the interfaith group wasn't there, the preacher attacked other faiths, and the very concept of interfaith dialogue.

One preacher said of Christians praying in a church: "What are these people doing in there, these things are so vile, what they say with their tongues is so vile and disgusting, it's an abomination." As for the concept of interfaith live-and-let-live: "This is false. It does not work. This concept is a lie, it is fake, and it is a farce."

Like many of the other women at the circle, I was soon invited to private sessions in houses around London, to "learn more" about Islam – or their version of Islam. Um Saleem was also at some of these sessions. Here, the women were given strict restrictions on their lives: it is reiterated that British Muslim women cannot travel far without a male guardian, cannot mix with men, and have to remain fully covered up at all times.

One woman in the audience queried the strict rulings that she cannot travel without a mahram – a male member of the family – escorting her. She asked: "Sister, if me and my husband, we can't go together, what do I do if I want to go?"

She was told she cannot travel by herself.

She asked again: "So what do I do?"

"You go with your husband," Um Saleem replied.

There were also restrictions on education or work opportunities. One woman, who works for the NHS, was told she should leave her job as it meant mixing with men and not wearing a full Islamic garment.

"You know that working in an environment that is not Islamic, working with the kuffaar, all this takes you away from the religion and hardens your heart and it would be lying to you if I say it's OK," Um Saleem explained.