THE UK Government has been crit- icised for not publishing its full report into funding for extremism, which found that Islamist extremist organisations are receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds a year.
The Home Office review into the nature, scale and origin of the funding of Islamist extremist activity in the UK found that for a small number of organisations with extremism concerns, overseas funding is a “significant source of income”.
Labour’s shadow home secretary Diane Abbott said there was a “strong suspicion” the report was being “suppressed to protect this Govern- ment’s trade and diplomatic priorities, including in relation to Saudi Arabia”.
The review, commissioned in Nov- ember 2015 by then prime minister David Cameron, found the most common source of support for Islamist extremist organisations in the UK is from small, anonymous public donations, with the majority most likely coming from UK-based individuals. “In some cases these organisations receive hundreds of thousands of pounds a year,” Home Secretary Amber Rudd said. “This is the main source of their income.”
While overseas funding was a significant source of income for some organisations, it was not so important for the vast majority of groups. But overseas support has also allowed individuals to study at institutions that teach “deeply conservative forms of Islam”, the report found.
Foreign support also provides “highly socially conservative liter- ature and preachers” to the UK’s Islamic institutions and some of these individuals have since become of extremist concern. Rudd said the review “gives us the best picture we have ever had of how extremists in the UK sustain their activities”.
Other findings include that some Islamic organisations of concern are posing as charities to increase their credibility and to take advantage of Islam’s emphasis on charity.
Abbott said: “Of course, security intelligence should not be com- promised but this is easily achieved by redaction and other means. The Government would never have commissioned this report if it considered this problem insurmountable.”
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