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Report calls for public inquiry of Saudi Arabian terror funding

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Report calls for public inquiry of Saudi Arabian terror funding

Saudi Arabia has made a multimillion dollar effort to export Wahhabism across the Islamic world and the West, including the UK, where it has funded mosques and Islamic educational institutions which in turn host Islamist extremist preachers and facilitate the distribution of extremist literature, according to a new report.

Wahhabism, the dominant strand of Islam in Saudi Arabia, emphasises a literal interpretation of the Koran.

The Henry Jackson Society’s report, Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK, has highlighted the need for a public inquiry into the foreign-based funding of Islamist extremism and has recommended legislative changes to track UK-bound foreign funds.

Report author Tom Wilson found a growing body of evidence on the considerable impact that foreign funding has had on advancing Islamist extremism in Britain and other Western countries.

The report concludes that:

  • The foreign funding for Islamist extremism in Britain primarily comes from governments and government-linked foundations based in the Gulf, as well as Iran.

  • Foremost among these has been Saudi Arabia, which since the 1960s has sponsored a multimillion dollar effort to export Wahhabi Islam across the Islamic world, including to Muslim communities in the West.

  • Influence has also been exerted through the training of British Muslim religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, as well as the use of Saudi textbooks in a number of the UK’s independent Islamic schools.

    • Mr Wilson writes that “A number of Britain’s most serious Islamist hate preachers sit within the Salafi-Wahhabi ideology and are apparently linked to Islamist extremism sponsored from overseas, either by having studied in Saudi Arabia as part of scholarship programmes, or by having been provided with extreme literature and material within the UK itself.”

    The report recommends that the new commission for countering extremism announced in the Queen’s Speech last month could

    make addressing the financing of Islamist extremism from overseas a matter of priority.

    At present, the report states, “it remains unclear what the government intends to do practically to address and counter the influence of foreign funding responsible for driving Islamist extremism in Britain”.

    It adds that lawmakers could consider new legislation which would specifically aim to create more transparency in this area “by setting down parameters under which groups receiving financing from abroad would be obliged to publicly declare such funding”.

    The author also notes that existing laws are available to disrupt terror financing, including the Terrorism Asset-Freezing Act 2010.

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