Jihadist Materials Being Distributed by the Islamic Circle of North America

Wow. Western journalists are finally recognizing that Mawdudi supported Jihad? I hope they can get their minds around this interesting fact: Mawdudi's books are regularly distributed on college campuses. I have multiple copies of Mawdudi's "Towards Understanding Islam" that were given to me by Muslims. I also have a copy of Mawdudi's commentary "Towards Understanding the Qur'an," which I purchased at ISNA's national convention a few years ago.

Muslims (even those we would consider moderate) love Mawdudi. And Mawdudi supports Jihad. Do the math.

TORONTO - An Islamic bookstore in east Toronto is selling books that urge Muslims to usurp the Western world and install an Islamic State in its place.

The books, written by deceased Islamic scholar Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi – are available at the Islamic Circle of North America bookstore in Scarborough.

“Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation that rules it,” Maududi wrote in Jihad in Islam. “Islam requires the earth – not just a portion – but the whole planet.”

Maududi was an influential Pakistani journalist, theologian and Muslim revivalist leader who wrote more than 120 books and pamphlets and lived from 1903 to 1979.

He is described in the preface of one of the books as an author who “provided the present-day revival of Islam with its intellectual foundations.”

Maududi’s books carry a common theme of Islam as a revolutionary “ideology and program which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and rebuild it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.”

“Jihad,” which he refers to in at least one book as a war against non-Muslims, is in fact “undertaken for the collective well-being of mankind” to establish “God’s order” in the world and create a “just and equitable social order among human beings,” he wrote.

Terrorism expert David Harris calls such material — antiquated or not — incredibly “problematic” to National security, but goes on to say that because of Canada’s freedom of expression legislation, police and the courts, in many cases, can’t do much about it.

“This is highly problematic,” said Harris, adding that with Canada’s ever expanding immigration of people from Middle Eastern countries - such as Egypt — the chances of importing people with radical ideologies also increases. “What we’re seeing now is not even a hint of what we will be living ... We’re going to see an expanding of these tendencies.” (Read more.)