The Charity Commission for England and Wales had in the past a bit of a piss poor reputation when it came to dealing with questionable Islamic ‘charities’. During the New Labour years and especially prior to the Islamic attacks on London on 7/7, the Charity Commission seemed to take a bit of a ‘hands off’ approach to dodgy Islamic organisations.

Thankfully, this dire state of affairs seems to be changing. The Charity Commission is now not just intervening in badly run Islamic charity organisations where terrorism has been encouraged by appointing new management, which is what they did in this case from Barking and Dagenham in East London, but are now going further and being more proactive. The Charity Commission is now undertaking unannounced spot checks on Islamic charities and they seem to be starting to open up some pretty nasty cans of worms.

As a result of a Charity Commission visit and investigation a Staffordshire Islamic organisation has been forcibly closed by the Commission after they were found to be preaching support for the proscribed terror group ISIS and had ISIS supporting materials on the premises. Whilst it is good to see this particular mosque and Islamic organisation shut down, I suspect that there may be many more who are also linked to support for terrorism. Islam is after all not exactly the most peaceful of belief systems so we should expect that there may be other Islamic charitable organisations that are stoking the fires of hatred.

According to a report on the Birmingham Live website, when it came to the police’s notice that Islamic hate preachers had been operating in premises controlled by the Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust last year. It appears that the Imam there had been convicted of supporting ISIS therefore the Commission opened an investigation into the activities of the Trust. They found that the Trust had been ‘condoning’ and ‘supporting’ terror.

Birmingham Live said:

A charity responsible for running a mosque in the Midlands has been dissolved amid claims it was “facilitating terrorism”.

The Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust was found to be “condoning” – and “supporting” – terror, it has emerged.

A probe into the Trust, which ran a mosque in Tunstall, Staffordshire, was opened last year.

It was launched in 2018 by the regulator after Kamran Hussain preached hate.

The radical Imam was later convicted of six charges of encouraging terrorism and two of encouraging support for a proscribed organisation – the Islamic State.

The two trustees Fazal Ellahi and his son Isbar Ellahi have now been barred from running a charity.

Birmingham Live added:

The Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust was set up in 2003 with the aim of ‘educating all people, particularly children and young people, in the Muslim religion and Urdu language and the advancement of the Muslim religion through collective prayer meetings and otherwise’.

As part of the investigation, the Charity Commission carried out an unannounced visit and scrutinised material seized by the police including bank statements.

I wonder how many Muslims have been radicalised and who may still present a threat to the rest of us since this disgusting organisation was set up? As they’ve been operating for sixteen years, they could be behind all manner of extremism that has not yet come to light?

What’s really frightening and concerning about this case is that the hate preaching Imam was not just a one off incident. Apparently according to the press article, the encouragement of extremism and terrorism was going on for months and months. As this organisation has existed for so long we don’t know whether the incitement of terror goes back even further than a few months,it could be that the organisation was doing this below the Charity Commission’s radar for years?

Although I welcome the Charity Commission’s actions in this Staffordshire case, I believe that the time has now come for the Charity Commission to take an even more critical view of the various mosques, Islamic centres and educational trusts that have charity registration. It is very possible that the Staffordshire case is merely the tip of a very large and nasty iceberg and we could be facing the prospect of a large number of these organisations being fronts for extremism of one form or another. The Charity Commission needs to put the big boy boots on and start kicking down some Islamic doors, because I doubt that the Fazal Ellahi Charitable Trust is the only Islamic charity in Britain encouraging religious extremism, violence or support for terror.