Charity watchdog slams Glasgow Central Mosque elders amid concerns of funding for ultra-orthodox group

January 19, 2016

SCOTLAND’s biggest mosque has been criticised by charity watchdogs in a damning report over the way the centre has been run by its previous orthodox leaders. Trustees who wielded power at Glasgow Central Mosque – the country’s largest place of worship – breached their legal duties over many years, according to the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).

The loan of £50,000 to the European HQ of the conservative group Tablighi Jamaat in Dewsbury in 2011 only came to light after the younger generation of liberal Mosque members, who are co-operating with OSCR, effectively took control of the Mosque last year.

In its report, investigators at OSCR, warned of “illegal acts” by the orthodox one-time leaders at the Clydeside complex.

The watchdog investigation focuses on the unusual governance arrangements at the mosque, which has two sets of trustees, one for the religious institution itself, a charity, and another for the multi-million-pound riverside complex opened 30 years ago as a non-charitable trust. For years the so-called “property trustees” ruled, appointing “charity trustees” as committees to run the mosque but effectively continuing to wield control over the institution and its income themselves. OSCR, in its preliminary findings, found against this practice.

This (“inappropriate behaviour”) included an allegation that the property trustees had extended a loan of £50,000 “to an external organisation without appropriate authority to do so and failing to put in place the necessary paperwork”.

Accounts seen by The Herald show that this loan was made to the Dewsbury Mosque in Yorkshire, European headquarters of an ultra-orthodox group called Tablighi Jamaat.

This organisation, which promotes a conservative vision of Islam, has been accused of being a recruiting ground for extremists by US Homeland Security. The group’s leaders, however, have always stressed that they reject violence.