UK media has reported that the Muslim Charities Forum has criticised an article linking the umbrella organization to Hamas fundraising. According to a Civil Society Governance report:
Muslim Charities Forum
September 24, 2014 The Muslim Charities Forum has criticised an article in The Daily Telegraph alleging the umbrella body had links to terrorist organisations, and has said it is taking legal advice.
The Forum said it was ‘shocked and dismayed’ by the article, which alleged that the umbrella body had ‘ties to the Muslim Brotherhood’, a group which David Cameron ordered an investigation into in April this year, following assessments by MI5 and MI6.
The article, which appeared yesterday, also reported criticism of a grant, which it referred to as a ‘donation’, of £18,397 given to the Muslim Charities Forum and noted in the Department for Communities and Local Government’s (DCLG) spending report.
The article quoted Sam Westrop, director of Stand For Peace, a multi-faith organisation which tackles extremism, describing the grant as ‘madness’ and ‘completely counter-intuitive’.
Westrop said: ‘If the government is really committed to fighting extremism and ultimately preventing radicalisation to the point of terrorism, it actually needs to stop enabling and funding it.’
From the perspective of the GMBDW, the most interesting portion of the denial is the following which claims that none of the MCG charities are members of the Union of Good (UOG):
The Telegraph reported that American think tank Nine Eleven Finding Answers claimed that five of the Muslim Charities Forum member charities were early participants in the Union of Good, a fundraising body with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood which was created to raise money for the terrorist group Hamas. The US Treasury has said that the Union of Good is a sponsor of terrorism.
But the Muslim Charities Forum denied in the article that any charities under its remit are members of the Union of Good.
A spokesman for the DCLG also said in the article that no members of the Muslim Charities Forum were members of the Union of Good.
The GMBDW editor was the author of the report in question and we note that the above denials refers to current membership in the UOG, something which is impossible to establish given that it has been a number of years since the UOG published any kind of membership list. However, until 2008 various lists continued to identify various MCF charities as UOG members.
The GMBDW reported in September on the original Daily Telegraph story on the MC donation.
