The Islamist network hiding in plain sight

What recent reports, investigations and scandals reveal about a problem Britain refuses to confront

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Charity Commission building

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Here’s a story unfolding in Britain that deserves a lot more attention.

Over the weekend, The Daily Telegraph broke the news that the FBI in America believe that one of the largest Muslim charities in Britain, the Al-Khair foundation, has been used to bankroll the banned Islamist terrorist group Hamas.

The FBI claims the Foundation, which is a partner of the UN refugee agency, has been used as a front to send money to Hamas under the guise of ‘humanitarian aid’.

Last week, its global director, Mohammad Yousef Hasna, was arrested in London and now faces extradition to America on charges of financing and conspiring to support terror activity.

While the Al-Khair Foundation has distanced itself from Mr Hasna, the sheer scale of the organisation means that we should all be watching the case closely.

Last year, the Foundation reported an income of some £74 million. In the last five years, it has claimed more than £9 million from the British state in Gift Aid. It runs Islamic schools in Britain. It delivers welfare programmes. It has worked closely with the British government. And then last Friday, the Charity Commission opened a full statutory inquiry into the Foundation and restricted its financial transactions.

I do not know if Mr Hasna is guilty.

And I do not know whether the Al-Khair Foundation has engaged in criminal activity, or violated its legal duties as a charity.

We will have to let the inquiry, and the FBI investigation, take their course.

But what I do know is that this story should not be viewed in isolation because it points to a much bigger problem that very few people in Britain are willing to discuss.

It is what we might call the Islamist charity complex.

Because for years now, Britain, like many other Western nations, has been failing to deal seriously with a broad and diffuse subculture of organisations, networks, and charitable foundations that seemingly operate under the respectable banners of ‘charity’, ‘community representation’, and ‘social cohesion’ but which behind the scenes are indirectly or directly providing support to Islamist extremists.

Just look at what we have learned through a string of official reports.

Eleven years ago, the British government’s official review of the Muslim Brotherhood — an organisation that is still legal in Britain but banned in countries such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Russia — revealed how this highly secretive organisation has not only been operating in Britain for fifty years but has become deeply embedded in our country’s charitable sector.

As the official review noted:

‘A complex network of charities associated with the Muslim Brotherhood has developed here over many years. Whilst some of these seem to be raising funds only for the Brotherhood in the UK others have been linked to Hamas … Though never publicly acknowledged by the Muslim Brotherhood charities in the UK are an important part of the Hamas and Brotherhood infrastructure in this country’.

In fact, that particular report not only warned that groups and people in Britain linked to Muslim Brotherhood ‘held out the prospect and ambition of an Islamic state in this country as elsewhere’, but concluded the Muslim Brotherhood and its allies were wielding ‘significant influence’ on student organisations, groups claiming to represent Muslims, some mosques, and charities.

Astonishingly, despite that review concluding that ‘aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to British values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security’, David Cameron refused to ban the organisation. As of today, the only mainstream party committed to proscribing Muslim Brotherhood is Reform UK.

That review was eleven years ago. Now fast forward to 2023, when William Shawcross published his independent review of the counter-terrorism ‘Prevent’ programme.

Yet again, he too found that many charities and civil society organisations in Britain are failing to challenge Islamist ideology.

Even worse, Shawcross pointed to charities and civil society organisations that were openly promoting Islamist ideology and associating with known extremists.

Such as the leader of a Prevent-funded civil society group who was found to have publicly sympathised with the Taliban in Afghanistan and described militant Islamist groups – whose military wings are banned in Britain– as the “so-called ‘terrorists’ of the legitimate resistance groups”.

Pointing to these and other shocking examples, Shawcross warned the British state that it has become far too focused on individual terrorist groups while ignoring the way in which non-violent civil society organisations, including charities and community projects, are helping to cultivate Islamist narratives and networks.

In particular, he pointed to networks around Hamas: “Going beyond proscription, the government should pay greater attention to the pernicious impact of Hamas’s support network in the UK. These companies and charities operate legally”.

Then, three years later, in 2026, came a third major report which found remarkably similar things. Published by Lord Walney, former advisor to the government on political violence, the report points to several charities operating in Britain which exhibit ‘patterns of ideological alignment, structural linkage, and interaction with institutions and individuals associated with the Iranian regime’.

We’re talking about senior figures in UK-based charities who support the likes of Hezbollah or Hamas. Charities promoting ideologies that are aligned with the Iranian regime’s revolutionary worldview, or which organise rallies and events that advance this anti-Western ideology, and feature anti-Semitism. And charities that despite all this are claiming HMRC Gift Aid or even Covid-19 grants, backed by British taxpayers.

What all this amounts to is yet another shocking example of suicidal empathy — forcing the hardworking, law-abiding, decent British people to subsidise civil society groups that are directly or indirectly promoting Islamist ideologies and movements that would, if given half a chance, destroy Britain and/or transform it into some kind of Islamist caliphate.

Suicidal empathy is the Charity Commission formally investigating the Islamic Centre of England over alleged ties to the Iranian regime while the very same charity, astonishingly, is allowed to sponsor visas for migrants coming to Britain.

Or the British state giving nearly £500,000 in GiftAid to an organisation like the Islamic Human Rights Commission Trust, which is being investigated by the Charity Commission for alleged links to the Iranian regime and making inflammatory views.

Time and time again, in these reports, we read of charities, foundations, and civil society groups, often subsidised by the British people, being used to promote ideologies, movements, and narratives that are not just incompatible with British values but fundamentally opposed to key aspects of our national life.

Clearly, none of this means that every Muslim charity or foundation is suspect, or aligned with extremism.

Nor does a statutory inquiry mean there has necessarily been wrongdoing. As I say, we will have to wait for the various inquiries and investigations to run their course.

But what is becoming clear is that dismissing all these cases and controversies as isolated incidents is no longer plausible.

Because in Britain there is now a seemingly well-organised infrastructure or ecosystem of charities, foundations, schools, religious institutions, cultural groups, and more that is undermining our own nation from within.

In only twelve years, we have had an official report warning about how the highly secretive Muslim Brotherhood is exerting significant influence over our national life, an independent review warning that the very same civil society groups that are supposed to be countering terrorism are promoting extremist ideologies, a former government advisor warning that hostile states like Iran are wielding influence through civil society groups, and now also, to return to the story this weekend, a major investigation into one of Britain’s biggest Muslim charities over alleged links to the Islamist terrorists Hamas.

Some politicians have grasped there is a problem. Earlier this year, in March, the government announced plans to give the Charity Commission, the main regulator, new powers to close down charities that ‘promote extremism’.

But I’m really not convinced this is enough, or that this issue is getting the attention it deserves. If, for example, a series of official reports revealed that right-wing extremists were using charities and foundations to funnel support into their groups I suspect there would be an intense national debate and a very strong policy response.

But on this issue, once you look past a handful of whistleblowers and one or two people who have produced reports, there is just deafening silence.

For the last two years, the political class in Westminster has been happy to take a lead on restricting our free speech when it comes to Islam, ushering in a definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’.

But it has said next to nothing about how this ecosystem within that is operating within Britain is working, who is funding it, and how to shut it down. I don’t know about you but I’d like to hear a little less about ‘Islamophobia’ and a little bit more about how the charitable sector in our own country appears to be enabling Islamism.

Because the fight against Islamist terror is not simply about finding and arresting terrorists; it is about shutting down the much wider system facilitates this terror, or what the scholar Shamit Saggar once described as the ‘circle of tacit support’.

The charities that are not really charities. The foundations that are not really foundations. The ‘community representative groups’ that do not really represent anybody beyond extremists.

It’s only when we start turning the screws on this wider non-violent network by ushering in much greater scrutiny, transparency, and tougher action that we will be able to dismantle it. Because the one thing that we will never be able to say is that we were not warned.

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There will be no Live this evening as I am travelling back to the UK this evening. Our Live discussions will resume next week at 7pm on Mondays.

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