I hold a very deep suspicion about the activities of Islamic charities and the reason I am suspicious is due in part to the nature of Islam itself. A violent ‘faith’ that regularly produces violent individuals and which has a culture of hatred towards non-Muslims is almost guaranteed to make use of any weapon to attack those outside of Islam or even attack heterodox Muslim groups.

One of the weapons that Muslim groups have consistently used are the provisions of UK charity law which includes education and the promotion of religion as two of the legally defined charitable aims and allows groups to gain tax advantages by claiming charity status as these are doing good works for society. Normally, at least when it comes to non Muslim entities, allowing religious groups the privilege of charitable status is not that much of a problem for society and many of these groups run food banks, provide education and undertake other work that is best done voluntarily by the subject.

A lot of the small charities that operate in the UK are the living embodiment of what Edmund Burke called ‘the little platoons’ that we attach ourselves to and work for and I believe that of well run charitable enterprises enhances the strength of society. The small charities serve as organisational vehicles by which genuine good works can be done. Although individual Britons may agree or disagree with these legally sanctioned aims, at the end of the day having a church or a synagogue or a Sikh temple having charity registration status is unlikely to kill anybody.

However, ‘not killing anybody’ is not something we can say with confidence about either Islam or the growing number of Islamic charities that exploit UK charity laws to gain both fiscal advantage and the credibility with the public that a charity registration number gives them. Because Islam itself is a violent ideology then we should not be surprised when Islamic charities turn out to be very bad eggs indeed.

The Civil Society website (formerly Charity Finance magazine) is carrying an interesting and worrying story about a Muslim charity called the Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust. The Charity Commission, the government body charged by Parliament with monitoring and regulating charities in England and Wales, is investigating this organisation following the conviction of an Imam from a Birmingham mosque run by the Trust for terrorist offences. What is worrying about this case is not just the existence of a terror supporting cleric associated with the Trust but the cavalier way that the Trust dealt with charity law. As is usual for this blog the report by Civil Society is in italics where as this blog’s comments are in plain text.

Civil Society said that the Charity Commission had frozen the bank accounts of the Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust due to a number of irregularities that have emerged about the running of the charity. These irregularities include the conviction of one of their Imams for six terror offences which related to encouraging terrorism in sermons to children . Civil Society said:

Trustees of the Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust were also told that their charity must stop working with children. The charity, which exists to advance Islam and teach Urdu, was removed from the Commission register in 2009 after it failed to engage with the regulator or submit accounts, but it continued to run a mosque in Birmingham.

So this organisation failed to even pretend to follow the laws established to ensure that charitable organisations are fairly and properly run. This is par for the course with some of these Muslim organisations, after all the laws they are supposed to follow with regard charity governance are only ‘kufar’ laws aren’t they? I’m very very surprised that after being removed from the charity register in 2009 that nobody asked awkward questions about those involved and what else they were involved in. Were not alarm bells rung about the mosque that those behind this closed charity were operating and why has it taken until now to freeze the accounts of this organisation? Surely non compliance with requirements to submit accounts and engage with the charity regulator should have screamed ‘dodgy, dodgy, dodgy’ to anyone with even the modicum of knowledge of how charities work and how companies limited by guarantee work? It appears from the report in Civil Society that even though this Trust had its charity registration removed they were still given an awful lot of leeway to continue trading and operating.

Civil Society added:

The Commission stepped in last year after being made aware of offences committed by the Imam at the mosque operated by the charity. The offences resulted in a conviction of six counts of encouragement of terrorism and two counts of encouraging support for a proscribed organisation in relation to a series of sermons and classes for children he gave at the mosque. “The Commission engaged with the charity in 2017 after being made aware of offences committed by the imam at the mosque operated by the charity,” the regulator said in a statement.

Why are the Charity Commission only stepping in now to freeze accounts and why did they leave it eight years from charity status removal to taking this recent action? Surely even a fool could see that the failure to engage properly with the Charity Commission may have indicated that there were greater problems lurking below the surface with this Trust?

Belatedly, the Charity Commission is embarking on an investigation of the Trust following the conviction of the Imam for terror offences. According to Civil Society the Charity Commission will investigate the following regulatory concerns:

The management and oversight of staff, use of the charity’s premises and safeguarding procedures by the trustees

Whether the trustees have properly exercised their legal duties and responsibilities under charity law in the administration of the charity

The financial management of the charity, particularly in regards to maintaining and preserving accounting records

Whether there has been misconduct and/or mismanagement by the trustees, including failure to comply with the charity’s own governing document

So, it looks as if this charity is suspected of using its premises for questionable purposes and not having a proper legally required safeguarding policy, not following charity law per se, financial mismanagement, destruction of financial records and riding roughshod over the organisation’s own governing document. This is the sort of thing that should have got this charity closed down years ago. The fact that it was allowed to continue operating, albeit not under a charity number, for so many years after initial suspicions were aroused should make us ask a lot of awkward questions of the Charity Commission. The primary question to be asked is why this organisation was allowed to continue to operate and maybe unlawfully give the impression to the public that they were a real charity when they should have been closed down and their assets returned to donors? The secondary question that the Charity Commission should ask is whether this organisation was treated with kid gloves because it was a Muslim one? Also why are the Commission ‘engaging’ with an organisation that their own records state is an organisation that has ‘ceased to exist’. There is something really murky going on here and answers are most definitely required. As a former trustee for a small arts charity I knew that misbehaviour by trustees or failure to submit documentation to the relevant authorities would result in the organisation losing its charitable status pretty quickly. Closing the charity down and forbidding them from running a Birmingham mosque should have been done much sooner than it has done. I suspect that the Charity Commission and possibly Companies House as well, has given this organisation chance after unjustified chance because it is a Muslim organisation. Not acting swiftly is going to give the public the impression that the Charity Commission ‘goes easy’ on Muslim organisations primarily because they are Muslim and will be taken as yet another example of how there is a double standard towards Islam in Britain’s public life and in our public institutions.

This Muslim organisation has taken the piss out of our laws and promoted jihad terror to children and should not be allowed to have their misdemeanour’s brushed under the carpet. I get the distinct impression that the Charity Commission would have done just that had it not been for the terror conviction by the Birmingham Imam in question and that is something that we should all be concerned about. We should also be worried about how many other Muslim ‘charities’ are behaving in the manner that this one is alleged to have behaved. How many other mosques and Islamic educational entities are promoting terror but have either not yet been caught yet or are managing to hide their true nature from the authorities? Britain’s Islamic charities are a scandalous boil that needs most urgently to be lanced.