Charity warned over sermon after 7 October attacks

A charitable organization was officially warned and one of its disqualified administrators after an “inflammatory” sermon in the days that followed the October 7 attacks in Hamas against Israel.

The language in the Nottingham Islam Information Sermon, on October 13, 2023, included “The hour will not start that Muslims fight the Jews and that Muslims will kill them until a Jew hides behind a rock or a tree,” said the charity commission.

It is one of the more than 300 charities linked to the conflict.

The Nottingham Islam information point has been contacted for an answer.

The 2023 Hamas attacks saw around 1,200 people killed and 251 took hostages and the Israeli army launched a campaign in Gaza in response, in which at least 57,268 people have since been killed, according to the Hamas Ministry of Hamas in the territory.

Nottingham Islam Information Point, based in Radford, Nottingham, aims to provide support for victims of Islamophobic attacks and to approach false ideas on religion.

The charitable commission added that, during the sermon, by the trustee Harun Abdur Rashid Holmes, the participants were encouraged not to “take care of politics and vote”.

The regulator noted that the sermon “did not deepen the objectives of the charitable organization, in particular to relieve people in need and was not in the interest of the charitable organization”, which represents misconduct and / or mismanagement.

‘No consideration’

Mr. Holmes, who is not an imam trained, was judged by the Commission as not having acted in accordance with his fiduciary functions and was disqualified in July of last year.

He is prevented from occupying any management position in a charitable organization in England and in Wales for three years – and was noted by the Commission to miss the expected good judgment of a trustee.

While the watchdog said that he recognized that part of the sermon content came from a specific hadith – a narration of historical events attributed to the Prophet Muhammad – the appropriate context was not given and it was therefore “inflammatory and dividing”.

The regulator also said that “no consideration” had been granted at the time of the Sermon – six days after attacks in Israel.

The commission said that Holmes had accepted that, with hindsight, the hadith was sensitive and that it had not given it a sufficient context.

Deputy Director of Commission Investigations and Compliance, Stephen Roake, said that he had acted “robustly”.

He said: “During conflict, people expect the charitable organizations bringing people together, not the Stoke division.

“After our intervention, the remaining administrators of the charitable organization took positive measures to improve their governance. This includes the introduction of a more robust event policy.

“All charitable organizations that host events and speakers should take note of this case and ensure that they have a reasonable diligence sufficient in place.”

Of the 300 cases examined by the Charity Commission since the end of 2023 with regard to the conflict in the Middle East, around a third led to official statutory directives issued by the Commission.

More than 70 references to the police were made, when the regulator considered that a criminal offense could have been committed.

The commission chief executive officer David Holdsworth said that some people would undermine the “good potential” of the charitable organization in an opinion article for the Sunday Telegraph.

He has written: “In recent years, and in particular since the climbing of conflicts in the Middle East in October 2023, we have seen poorly used charities to promote the personal opinions of those linked to the charity, in certain cases encouraging hatred or violence of tolerance.

“There cannot be a hiding place for those who seek to use charitable organizations to promote hatred or injuries to others.”

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