Radford Islamic charity warned over ‘inflammatory’ sermon after 7 October Hamas attacks

A charity has been formally warned and one of its trustees disqualified after an “inflammatory” sermon in the days after the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel.

Language in the Nottingham Islam Information Point sermon, on 13 October 2023, included “the hour will not begin until the Muslims fight the Jews and the Muslims will kill them until a Jew hides behind a rock or a tree”, the Charity Commission said.

It is one of more than 300 charity cases related to the conflict.

Nottingham Islam Information Point has been contacted for a response.

The 2023 attacks by Hamas saw about 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage and the Israeli military launched a campaign in Gaza in response, in which at least 57,268 people have been killed since, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Nottingham Islam Information Point, based in Radford, Nottingham, aims to provide support to victims of Islamophobic attacks and address misconceptions about the religion.

The Charity Commission added that, during the sermon, by trustee Harun Abdur Rashid Holmes, attendees were encouraged not to “busy yourselves with politics and voting”.

The regulator found the sermon “did not further the charity’s purposes, including to provide relief to those in need and was not in the charity’s best interests”, therefore amounting to misconduct and/or mismanagement.

Mr Holmes, who is not a trained imam, was deemed by the commission not to have acted in accordance with his duties as a trustee and was disqualified in July last year.

He is prevented from holding any senior management position in a charity in England and Wales for three years – and was noted by the commission to lack the good judgement expected of a trustee.

While the watchdog said it recognised some of the sermon’s content had come from a specific hadith – a narration of historical events ascribed to the Prophet Muhammad – the appropriate context was not given and it therefore was “inflammatory and divisive”.

The regulator also said “no consideration” had been given to the timing of the sermon – six days after the attacks in Israel.

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

The commission’s assistant director of investigations and compliance, Stephen Roake, said it had acted “robustly”.

He said: “In times of conflict, people expect charities to bring people together, not to stoke division.

“Following our intervention, the charity’s remaining trustees have taken positive steps to improve their governance. This includes the introduction of a more robust events policy.

“All charities that host events and speakers should take note of this case and ensure they have sufficient due diligence in place.”

Of the 300 cases considered by the Charity Commission since the end of 2023 in relation to the conflict in the Middle East, about a third have resulted in formal statutory guidance being issued by the commission.

More than 70 referrals to the police have been made, when the regulator considered that a criminal offence might have been committed.

The commission’s chief executive David Holdsworth said some people were undermining charities’ “potential for good” in an opinion piece for the Sunday Telegraph.

He wrote: “Over the past few years, and particularly since the escalation of conflict in the Middle East in October 2023, we have seen charities misused to promote the personal views of those linked to the charity, in some cases inciting hate, or condoning violence.

“There can be no hiding place for those who seek to use charities to promote hate or harm to others.”