Muslim charity should have done more to prevent extreme material appearing on its website, regulator says

From The Third Sector and Civil Society

An Islamic charity found to have material on its website that sought to legitimise the killing of gay people and encouraged the killing of Muslims in certain circumstances should have done more to prevent the material appearing, a Charity Commission inquiry has concluded.

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into the Islamic Network in August last year after the commission was made aware of material hosted on the charity’s website.

Islamic Network took down its website before the commission began its inquiries, but an analysis of the charity’s archived web data found statements that referred to homosexuality as a “sick disease” and said killing gay people was legitimate.

… historic material published on the Islamic Network’s website also revealed statements referring to homosexuality as “perverted sexual behaviour” and an “evil and filthy practice” which is “even viler and uglier than adultery”. A 2004 article on the site explained various punishments “in this world”, including that gay people should be “destroyed by fire”, “executed by being thrown from a great height” and “stoned to death”. 

One article called “The prohibition of the Blood of a Muslim and the reasons for shedding it” made reference to the circumstances under Islamic law when it was permissible to “spill the blood of a Muslim”. The article discussed other circumstances in which it might be permissible to kill and concluded “that a Muslim can be killed legally only for three crimes: a) adultery b) murder and c) apostasy.”

…none of the charity’s current trustees were in post when the articles in question were first uploaded. But the commission concluded that although the trustees took down the website quickly, they should have done more to ensure its content was appropriate and found they were too slow to implement new policies to ensure extremism and hate material was not promoted.

Islamic Network did not respond before publication to requests for comment