Saudi has ‘clear link’ to extremism in UK: Report

A British think tank report has drawn a clear link between the Gulf state of Saudi Arabia’s continued funding and growing Islamist extremism in the UK.

A report published by the Henry Jackson Society this month said there was a "clear and growing link" among Islamist organisations in receipt of overseas funds, hate preachers and Jihadist groups promoting violence.

Henry Jackson Society, the foreign affairs think tank, also called for a public inquiry into the role of Saudi Arabia and other gulf states in fuelling extremism.

Saudi Arabia’s six decades long campaign to export hardline Wahhabi Islam has led to support for mosques and Islamic institutions that appear to have links to extremism, the organisation was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.co.uk today.

“The distribution of hardline and illiberal texts has been another way that Wahhabism has been promoted to Britain’s Muslim community,” the organisation’s report titled ‘Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK’ says.

“In the 1990s some literature was distributed directly from the Saudi embassy in London; particularly Mohammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab’s key text Kitab al Tawhid. This was a text that is believed to have been a key factor in the radicalisation of several of Britain’s Salafist preachers at that time, including Abdur Raheem Green,” according to the report.

“The report's release comes at a sensitive time with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt all accusing Qatar of supporting extremism - a charge the report says is hypocritical,” according to the BBC.