Patrick Sookhdeo Faith, Power and Territory: A Handbook of British Islam (McClean,VA,USA:Isaac Publishing,2008) 360pp. 
Patrick Sookhdeo is always worth Reading on political Islam. He is the author of Global Jihad (see previous review) which provided a groundbreaking analysis of Islam and international relations. Dr Sookhdeo, who was until recently based in the UK, has now written an equally insightful book on British Islam. In Faith, Power and Territory he looks at how many modern expressions of Islam in Britain have both political and territorial ambitions.
The book demonstrates how, unlike Christian missions, Islamic missionary work (da'wa) aims not merely at encouraging a personal faith decision, but also at islamicising the social and political structures of society. Patrick Sookhdeo identifies attempts to 'contextualise' this da'wa to make it appear more acceptable to non Muslims in Britain. he observes for example that Islamists commonly refer to the creation of an Islamic state in Britain with the euphemism of creating 'a just world order', a practice based on the historic Islamic doctrine of taqiyya (saying one thing in public and another in private in order to advance the Islamic cause). The book also identifies specific Islamist strategies for achieving this islamisation of society, such as Islamist calls for the creation of 'no go' areas, where insults to Islam would not be tolerated.
Throughout this book Dr Sookhdeo demonstrates that 'territory' is central to the aim of Islamic da'wa, because once an area has once been subjected to Islamic control, whether in terms of a being a mosque, or some other form of Islamic control, it is regarded by Islamic conservatives as Islamic sacred space that cannot at any later date be 'reclaimed' for any non Islamic use:
"Any space gained is considered sacred. Whatever has been won for Islam is dedicated to Allah, and belongs to the Umma (i.e. Islamic community) forever. Non Muslims could at best be tenants on their former property. Any lost sacred space must be regained - even by force if necessary. So Islam can only be expected to expand its territory, never to move, exchange or yield anything it has already gained in the UK."
Local councillors on planning committees take note!
Sookhdeo observes that this has profound implications for the planned building of a mega mosque next to the planned Olympics site in London. A mosque which could accommodate 40,000 (or according to some local sources 70,000) worshippers - making it the largest religious building in the UK.
In this book Patrick Sookhdeo covers an impressive range of subjects including Islamic educational institutions, financial institutions, legal institutions, charities, lobbying and monitoring organisations, media and publications. In doing so he repeatedly demonstrates how the British government has naively given ground to the Islamist agenda in a whole range of areas. For example, he observes that the Halal Foods Authority that the government's Food Standards Agency works closely with, was in fact set up by the Muslim Parliament - a group that looked to the Iranian revolution as the 'ideal' Islamic model; Similarly, he observes that the current British government has actively pursued the creation of sharia compliant financial products, another aspect of the Islamist agenda, despite 70% of British Muslims having conventional mortgages. This naivety is even evident in the government's counter terrorism strategy. The Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) set up after the 7/7 London bombings as part of the government's Preventing Extremism Together (PET) programme consists of four organisations. One of these is the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Another is the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which whilst being an umbrella Islamic organisation has a strongly Islamist orientated leadership itself. His analysis of the present government's relationship with the MCB penetratingly exposes the present government's naivety in dealing in Islamic extremism:
"The UK has sought through the Muslim Council of Britain to empower the Muslim conservatives instead of seeking out the modernists and liberals within Muslim society. Effectively they have worked to consolidate the power of the imams and mullahs, something which very few governments in Muslim majority countries do..."
Dr Sookheo goes on to demonstrate that Islamist terrorism does not exist within a vacuum, but within the wider infrastructure that provides the ideology. Therefore focusing on violent groups, as the present government continues to do, will not solve the problem. The mainline Islamist ideology - which has the same ultimate aims as the terrorist groups - must be confronted and dealt with. He argues that:
"It must be recognised that there is a link between da'wa, radicalism and jihadist ideology."
The book concludes with a facsimile of what appears to be a Muslim Brotherhood document outlining a strategy to bring about an Islamic government in North America, a disturbingly revealing document that the book reproduces in both its Arabic and English formats. Section 4 of this strategy document, headed "Understanding the Role of the Muslim Brother in North America" clearly articulates the Muslim Brotherhood's understanding that Islamic mission (da'wa) involves gradual, though ultimately total, islamisation of the social and political structures of western society. It clearly indicates that political action is seen by Islamists as being as much of a strategy to achieve this end as violent jihad and indeed appears to suggest that it is a strategic foundation that must be laid before a violent jihad could be launched with any hope of sucessfully enforcing Islamic government on western society:
"The process of settlement is a 'Civilization-Jihadist Process' with all the word means. The Ikhwan (Arabic name for the Muslim Brotherhood) must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and 'sabotaging' its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God's religion is made victorious over all other religions. Without this level of understanding, we are not up to this challenge and have not prepared ourselves for Jihad yet. It is a Muslim's duty to perform Jihad and work wherever he is..." (page 7).
The document claims that so far 8 stages of this 'Civilizational-Jihadist process' have been completed. These are listed as:
"A. The Stage of searching for self and determining the identity.
B. The stage of inner build up and tightening the organization.
C. The stage of mosques and the Islamic centres.
D. The stage of building the Islamic organizations - the first phase.
E. The stage of building the Islamic schools - the first phase.
F. The stage of thinking about the overt Islamic movement - the first phase.
G. The stage of openness to other Islamic movements and attempting to reach a formula for dealing with them - the first phase.
H. The stage of reviving and establishing the Islamic organizations - the second phase.
We believe that the group is embarking on this stage in its second phase as it has to open the door and enter as it did the first time."
Sobering thought when one considers that some of the key organisations that the present government and Labour politicians are actively working with such as the MAB, look to the Muslim Brotherhood for their ideological inspiration.
