Radical books in London libraries
By Richard Watson, Correspondent, BBC Newsnight
By Richard Watson, Correspondent, BBC Newsnight
Public libraries serving the densest population of Muslims in London have been inundated with extremist literature, according to a report.
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Its main author Douglas Murray told BBC2 Newsnight: "This is a collection that is warped towards one particular extreme interpretation of Islam."
Most controversially, several books written by two of Britain's most notorious terrorist sympathisers were found in public libraries.
Two books by Abu Hamza al-Masri, who used to preach at Finsbury Park mosque, are in the collection, as is one book by Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, whose lectures inspired two of the London bombers. Both men have been convicted of incitement to murder, but not on the basis of these writings.
The former Islamist Ed Hussain, who grew up in Tower Hamlets, said: "The shocking thing is that this stuff is available and there are people out there borrowing it.
"The worry is how many of those people - it might be a small number, but small enough to cause carnage - who are then prepared to literally act upon those teachings."
Mr Murray said: "Taxpayers' money should not be used to fund extremism... after all the library system is meant to educate and inform, not to cause separatism and bigotry."
'Hatred of women'
The Tower Hamlets collections also include multiple works by the founders of modern political Islam, Sayed Qutb and Sayed Abdullah Maududi, and a large number of texts from Saudi scholars, promoting the Wahhabi fundamentalist school of thought.
These, the report says, refer to "incredible hatred of women, incredible hatred of non-Muslims... and of Muslims who are not part of the Wahhabi tradition".
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