Terrorism in UK funded by Saudi Arabia, claims a UK based Think Tank group

A leading think tank in UK, in its rabble-rousing attack on Saudi Arabia has blamed the country for providing monetary aid to the terrorist and radical groups in UK. Saudi Arabian Embassy in UK has rejected the accusation and called it baseless and without evidence. Saudi Arabia has been a major trade partner of UK in the Gulf region. However, in the past few years a lot of criticism has been forthcoming from political circles in UK, over the security agreement between UK and Saudi Arabia.

‘Henry Jackson Society’ (HJS), one of the leading think tank groups in UK published a new report on Wednesday. In its report “Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK”, information has been published on monetary funding of extremist groups and organizations in UK. The Arab countries and their government related organizations have been blamed in the report for funding the Islamist extremist in UK.

The report claims that Saudi Arabia has been a leading country among the Gulf countries in funding and since 1960’s has been promoting “Wahabi” ideology among Islamic countries and Muslim society in the West. These efforts are promoted by funding heavily the places of worship and educational institutions in UK. The think tank has accused that radical clerics have been sheltered in the institutions and literature on radical thoughts is being circulated.

The report further states that many extremist clerics posing to be of wahabi ideology have trained themselves in Saudi Arabia. The think tank group mentions that there have been instances where the youths from UK have joined the terror groups in Iraq or Syria who have been funded by gulf countries and related institutions.

Two years back, the then British Prime Minister David Cameron had ordered a report to be prepared on extremist groups in UK. The report has yet not been prepared and the political circles view it as Prime Minister Theresa May’s opposition to it. Given this background the think tank group directly accusing Saudi in its report has created a lot of fluster in UK.