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Muslim Charities Forum takes legal advice over DCLG funding loss

Muslim Charities Forum takes legal advice over DCLG funding loss

Categories: Latest News

Tuesday January 20 2015

The website Civil Society, which covers news relating to the third sector, reports that two British Muslim which recently had their funding withdrawn by the Government are to challenge allegations that they have not complied with Government guidelines.

The Sunday Telegraph a week ago ran a story about the British Muslim charities and their “links to a group alleged to fund Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood political movement”.

The charities, umbrella group Muslim Charities Forum, and Islamic Help, were not notified of the withdrawal of funding and were alerted to the decision by Communities Secretary, Eric Pickles, via a statement released on the departmental website.

The Muslim Charities Forum is taking legal advice in relation to the allegations and the decision to withdrawn project funding. It has also lodged a “serious incident report with the Charity Commission in response to this, and is continually updating the regulator of any developments.”

Civil Society notes that the MCF “was due to receive £138,030 this month from the DCLG for the Faith Minorities in Action project, having received about £110,000 in 2014 for its work.”

Islamic Help, which has expressed “surprise, dismay and anger” at the decision is still unaware of what it has done to provoke the situation.

In his statement declaring the loss of funding to the charities, Pickles said “I hope this action illustrates our resolve to cease funding any organisation that supports or is linked to individuals who fuel hatred, division and violence. We will fund only those programmes and organisations that actively encourage integration and uphold fundamental British values.”

But Islamic Help say that they have “not been informed by any government department or Faith Action who the individual in question is.”

A spokesman from Islamic Help told Civil Society: “We utterly refute any accusations of being linked to or of playing any part in promoting extremist views or extremism. We are dismayed by the decision to stop funding for the project in question which is baffling, unjustified and unreasonable.

“The government has not only contributed to the very atmosphere of ‘Islamophobia’ that it claims to be combating but has harmed its own objective of promoting integration and British values.”

In a different letter, one sent to 1000 mosques across the country, Pickles wrote that “the Charity Commission has published a toolkit for charity leaders to help protect their organisations from abuse by extremists.”

When government departments can revoke funding without disclosing evidence of wrongdoing by the Muslim charity concerned, and the Charity Commission canplace 55 Muslim charities under investigation for ‘extremism and radicalisation’, and its chairman describe Islamist extremism as the “deadliest threat” charities face without being able to name a single one to support his case, the toolkit to “help protect their organisations from abuse by extremists” would do well to address abuse suffered by Muslim charities at the hands of the state.

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