On several occasions since late 2017 I have written here about the scandal of the Hamas supporter who was in a leading role at London’s Finsbury Park Mosque. I remarked about the incongruity of a mosque that likes to tell the rest of us that it is ‘moderate’ whilst having a supporter of a genocidal organisation on its management board. I also pointed out how, when this information was revealed in the Press, Finsbury Park Mosque the mosque blustered and evaded questions about the presence of Mohammed Sawalha on its board.

Now although Mohammed Sawalha has been involved with the political wing of Hamas, a group that is not banned in the UK, unlike Hamas’s military wing which is banned, it did look very odd that such a person like this should be heading such a high profile mosque? Any connection at all with Hamas by a Muslim leader is not going to give any organisation the veneer of moderation. At the time I did wonder whether the mosque’s blustering and evasiveness was part of an attempt to stall any Charity Commission investigation into the issue.

It seems that my assumption that this mosque was worried about the Charity Commission and what they might do to the mosque because of the presence of Sawalha, was correct. According to a report in the Times newspaper a few days ago, Mohammed Sawalha has stepped down from the board of Finsbury Park Mosque following an investigation by the Charity Commission.

I’m not sure that I buy the mosques excuse that Mohammed Sawalha, did not know anything about the background of Sawalha that could reasonably be termed questionable, such as being a Hamas supporter. Either the mosque was very remiss in how they checked the backgrounds of those in senior positions or they were bullshitting the rest of us like mad. My suspicions about Mohammed Sawalha and my lack of trust in what the mosque has said about him were somewhat confirmed by the discovery of a Daniel Pipes article from early 2005.

In this article Mr Pipes goes into much more detail about Mohammed Sawalha’s background and the existence of this article forces me to ask myself this question: If I can find background on this character so quickly and easily, why did not Finsbury Park Mosque do the same? This man has been part of the management of the mosque since 2005 and I find it very difficult to believe that the mosque didn’t know about this man’s background or that Mohammed Sawalha managed to hide his background in such an effective manner that the mosque didn’t know.

Here’s the short background article on Mohammed Sawalha by Daniel Pipes:

“Hamas link to London mosque“: Nick Fielding and Abul Taher inform us in The Sunday Times that Mohammed Kassem Sawalha, appointed as one of five trustees to help to run the recently reopened Finsbury Park mosque in north London, is a former military commander of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization. Sawalha’s link to Hamas emerged when he was named as a co-conspirator in a federal court in Chicago. Sawalha last week asserted that he still supports Hamas. Including its terrorist activities? “I have no comment on the question of military activity.” U.S. court documents indicate Sawalha was a leader of Hamas in the early 1990s on the West Bank. Sawalha has also been president of the Muslim Association of Britain, itself an Islamist organization. Barry Norman, the Metropolitan police chief superintendent who works closely with the new trustees, dismissed the news: “I am aware of the background, but if I took the view that I’m not working with this or that person I’d end up spending my whole life in my office.” (Feb. 13, 2005)

If Mr Pipes and his article are correct and Mohammed Sawalha refused to explicitly and publicly condemn the violence of Hamas back in 2005 then it is certainly correct to call Sawalha a Hamas supporter. In addition,if his connection with Hamas was known by researchers like Mr Pipes at that time, then if gives me grave doubts that the mosque was telling the whole truth when they denied that they knew nothing of his background. After all when the furore broke in 2017 about the presence in the mosque of Sawalha the mosque said that there were unaware of his connection with Hamas until the press reports about it started too come out. However as Sawalha has been involved in the mosque in one way or another since 2005, the mosques excuses about this issue seem to have been revealed to have been hollow.

The press, the police and people like Mr Pipes were aware of the background of Sawalha well over a decade ago which begs the question why didn’t the mosque management know this as well? Maybe they did know the background of Sawalha but just didn’t care and so let him stay? If the mosque didn’t know then they are woefully incompetent and if they did know then this mosque should no longer be considered as ‘moderate’.

The Charity Commission has done a good job here under what must have been enormous behind the scenes political pressure from both high profile Islamic individuals and the Islamopandering Left. However, the Commission has put enough pressure on the management of Finsbury Park Mosque to make Sawalha’s position untenable and forcing him to resign. Whilst I commend the work of the Charity Commission in investigation in this instance I believe that they have much more work to do when it comes to Islamic charities. If a scumbag like Mohammed Sawalha can occupy a position of influence for over a decade at such a high profile mosque, then how many other Islamic nasties are running other less high profile mosques?

h/t for Times article to Religion of Peace