From the Toronto Sun

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.” “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

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.”

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.”

A request for the Islamic Society of Toronto to speak about the books was not immediately returned.

Most of Maududi’s books — small and slim paperbacks — could be bought for as little as $1.

When one of the store’s managers was asked by a reporter who posed as a customer whether he stocked “Jihad in Islam” — arguably the most radical book of the bunch — he said he hadn’t carried it for years because the RCMP had been to his store to ask questions about why it would carry such a book.

Another manager said the store didn’t carry any of the six books on the reporter’s list.

But within 30 minutes, the reporter found Jihad in Islam and four others of Maududi’s stacked on a bottom shelf in the middle of the store.

When it was revealed to the store manager that it was a Toronto Sun reporter who bought those books, he was irate, saying he “will say nothing” before disappearing into an office at the back of the store.

Like the manager, the RCMP would not comment.