£1m charity cash for group linked to Iran

From the Times and the Telegraph. The Islamic Human Rights Commission is the outfit that has organised the annual Al quds day abomination in London for the last decade or so. That is definitely not a charitable purpose.

A human rights organisation supported by Jeremy Corbyn has received more than £1 million in charity cash despite being run by self-declared Islamist revolutionaries closely aligned to Iran who say that the West is “the enemy” and Britain a “Stasi state”.

Leaders of the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), which has been said by Mr Corbyn to represent “all that’s best in Islam”, speak of “apartheid London”, label anti-terrorism laws a “war on Muslims” and condemn English as a “colonial language that will always subjugate you”.

The London-based group, given £1.2 million since 2013 by a charity that received £250,000 from the taxpayer via Gift Aid, claims to fight for the oppressed “whosoever they are and whomsoever oppresses them”. 

No affiliation to Iran is mentioned on the website of IHRC, which was founded in London in 1997 and says it fights for global human rights.  IHRC has condemned more than 50 countries for alleged mistreatment of Muslims. Its targets are Britain, the United States, Israel and Islamic nations such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt that have poor relations with Iran.

IHRC accused The Times of Islamophobia and racism.

Massoud Shadjareh, the chairman of the IHRC, spoke of of Ayatollah Khomeini, the cleric who became Iran’s supreme leader after the 1979 revolution, as “a torch of light for the whole of mankind”.

IHRC, which was founded in London in 1997, has three directors in additon to Mr Shadjareh. They are:

• Saied Reza Ameli, the Tehran-based secretary of one of Iran’s leading policy-making bodies, the Supreme Council of the Cultural Revolution;

• Arzu Merali, the research director, who was introduced at a 2014 conference as “a revolutionary” and a “powerful voice of Islamic-inspired resistance to the status quo”. She said then: “We know who the enemy is. It’s the West, Nato countries [and] . . . the white supremacist or liberal structure we’re all suffering at the hands of.” She and Mr Shadjareh wrote a 2008 paper in which they told of their “radicalisation” as Islamists and said: “We are all Hezbollah.”

• Nazim Ali, who at a rally days after the Grenfell Tower fire condemned “Zionists who give money to the Tory party to kill people in high-rise blocks”.

A Labour spokesman said Mr Corbyn was “a long-standing campaigner for human rights across the world, including in Iran” … The Times asked whether he continued to hold a high opinion of IHRC but has had no reply. As Labour leader, he attended a 2016 book launch hosted by the group. He has also received almost £20,000 for appearances on Press TV.

An IHRC spokesman said: “Trying to align us to any country based on the ethnicity of any of our staff, directors or volunteers is essentially a racist enterprise.”

The Charity Commission recently concluded a two-year investigation into the relationship between IHRC and its trust but did not order any changes.