Islamist fund-raisers posing as charities

EXTREME Islamist groups are masquerading as charities to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in public donations, a Home Office review has found.

It showed that most of the money raised by the groups came from small public donations, usually by Muslims unaware of their real agenda.

These organisations may also be getting money from reputable charitable foundations and banks that think they are supporting real charities, the review found.

Money sent from overseas has also fuelled extremism in Britain, it reported. Foreign governments and individuals have paid for ‘highly socially conservative literature’ and extremist preachers in mosques and other Islamic institutions.

Foreign cash has also been used to indoctrinate individual extremists who have since become of ‘concern’ to the authorities.

The revelations appeared in a 13paragraph summary of the report published yesterday by the Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

She said the full classified report was not being published to protect national security and because of the ‘volume of personal information’ it contained.

She added that ministers would ‘raise issues of concern’ with foreign governments, including presenting them with evidence of where money was going. No countries were named in the report.

But the Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron said ministers should iden- tify the foreign powers involved. ‘Instead of supporting the perpetrators of these vile ideologies, the Government should be naming and shaming them, including so-called allies like Saudi Arabia and Qatar if need be,’ he added.

Shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said: ‘The public has a right to know if any governments, foreign or domestic organisations or individuals are funding extremism in this country, and what the UK Government intends to do to prevent that.

‘Of course security intelligence should not be compromised but this is easily achieved by redaction and other means.

‘The Government would never have commissioned this report if it considered this problem insurmountable.’

The review into the ‘nature, scale and origin’ of the funding of Islamist extremist activity in the UK was commissioned in November 2015 by the then prime minister David Cameron.

It found the most common source of support for Islamist extremist organisations in the UK is small, anonymous public donations.

Miss Rudd said: ‘In some cases these organisations receive hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. This is the main source of their income. Those giving may not know or support the organisations’ full agenda.

‘Some Islamic organisations of extremist concern portray themselves as charities to increase their credibility and to take advantage of Islam’s emphasis on charity. Some are purposefully vague about their activities and their charitable status.’

The report concluded that for a ‘small number’ of extremist organisations, overseas funding is a ‘significant source of income’.

Miss Rudd said the Charity Commission will bring in new rules forcing charities to declare where funding from overseas comes from.

The Saudi kingdom practises and promotes a strict form of Islam, Wahhabism, which critics say fuels terrorism around the globe.

‘The public has a right to know’