Here’s an interesting scenario. If you ran a business, it doesn’t matter in this case what the business is, it’s a generic business, would you spend large amounts of money that the business has earned on people who would wreck your business by insulting customers or treating customers badly, or who did things that would bring your business into disrepute? I’m guessing here that you would not. You would never employ people who told potential customers that your products were crap or that going to your competitors was a good idea. You, I could reasonably and accurately assume, that giving money to people who would wreck your business would not be very high on your list of priorities.
However giving money to hate filled societal and cultural wreckers in various extremism linked mosques is what the local and national governments and the administrative classes of Britain have been doing. According to an investigative report in the Jewish Chronicle thousands upon thousands of pounds of taxpayers money has been splurged on mosques that have hosted preachers that have called for Muslims to kill Jews or become involved in Jihad and given instructions on how to stone women to death.
The Jewish Chronicle said:
The Government has vowed to stop giving taxpayers’ money to mosques that host antisemitic hate preachers after a JC investigation revealed that at least four had received grants totalling millions of pounds.
The largest grant was a £2.2 million award to a Birmingham mosque which has hosted a speaker who has described Jews as “people of envy” who “killed the prophets and the messengers”.
In a viral video, its leading imam was filmed teaching how adulterous women should be stoned to death. The money has now been “paused” pending official inquiries. Three other Muslim centres with a history of offering pulpits to extremist speakers have also received large sums, the JC can reveal.
Finsbury Park Mosque in north London, which hosted an Egyptian imam who pledged to “liberate” Al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem from the “filth of the Jews”, received almost £300,000 from the Labour-controlled Islington Council between 2017 and 2022.
The mosque’s general secretary, Mohammed Kozbar, praised Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the wheelchair-bound founder of Hamas who was killed by Israeli missiles in 2004, as a “martyr” on a visit to Gaza in 2015.
Lewisham Islamic Centre in south London, whose chief imam Shakeel Begg once called on young Muslims to “go to Palestine and fight the Zionists”, was given £540,000 between 2015 and 2020, in what its accounts describe as “local authority grants”.
Following the revelations, Communities Secretary Michael Gove and Home Secretary Suella Braverman are demanding tighter “due diligence” checks by both central and local government, the JC understands.
It is absolutely astonishing just how much money has been splurged on organisations that are clearly not conducive to the public good. What’s even more worrying is that Cabinet Ministers don’t seem to have been aware of what has been going on. We have a situation where government departments and local government are shovelling money at some of the worst nutters from the world of Islam but the situation has not been brought to the attention of ministers earlier. It’s as if those we elect to national government have lost control of what their civil servants and local government is doing with respect to Islamic institutions. Some of the recipients of this public money, such as Shakeel Begg’s mosque, are not exactly unknown when it comes to Islamic extremism yet the local Labour council threw money at this mosque. Begg for example is a known Islamic extremist and once lost a libel case against the BBC who referred to him as such. Begg and those associated with him and his mosque should be persona non grata when it comes to receipt of public money yet Lewisham Council thought him and his organisation fit and proper to receive taxpayer cash.
What we have at present with regards the funding of Islamic organisations is truly the equivalent of a business hiring someone whose core intent is to wreck the business. It’s utterly shameful that this has happened and illustrates just how out of touch ministers are with both the Islamic extremism problems of Britain and the issue of the extremists fellow travellers in position of grant making authority in both local and national government and administration.
“… Shakeel Begg’s mosque, are not exactly unknown when it comes to Islamic extremism yet the local Labour council threw money at this mosque. Begg for example is a known Islamic extremist.”
I suspect the explanatory phrase here is “‘… local Labour Council…”.
In the first place most politicians won’t ever have read the Koran (never mind the rest of the Islamic canon) so the only (mis)understanding of Islam they have is from what “everybody knows” (a logical fallacy) at best, or else what they have been told by those with most to gain by presenting a Bowdlerised version of Islam’s teachings.
Second: many Labour local associations are likely “in hock” to the the local Muslim community in those parts of the Country where there is either a Muslim plurality or majority (my local area is “70% diverse” according to some, so the English account for no more than 30% of the population, the rest being – what I believe I should call – POCs, mostly South Asian, mostly Muslim).
Third, orthodox Muslims are not exactly known for truth-telling, they often say what is deemed most beneficial to Islam (a “greater Good” in their eyes) for a given audience.
There are many documented examples of how the orthodox Muslims say one thing when speaking to a non-Muslim audience and something very different when speaking to a Muslim audience. The Islamic doctrines of Takkiya (though actually a misnomer), Kitman, Tawriya all enable anything from outright lies to misdirection towards the Kaffir if such will “benefit Islam” (at least in the view of the speaker/writer).
Thus sometimes these actions may be the result of genuine ignorance (as a result of being duped by Muslims), sometimes wilful ignorance (as in the “That’s Islamophobic” reaction to any critique of Islam) and sometimes wilful connivance for, presumably, votes gained and/or services rendered.
Some interesting points there especially where there is an intersection between local (often Labour Party) politics and Islamic communities.