Overzealous UK Charity Commission accused of policing prayers for Palestinians

A south London mosque has accused the Charity Commission of trying to restrict Islamic worship, solidarity with Palestinians and the work of Muslim charities. The mosque has rejected an official warning issued over sermons delivered at its premises and is now considering legal action.

The Lewisham Islamic Centre said on Tuesday that it was seeking legal advice after the regulator made public an official warning it had issued to the charity on 20 October. The Commission said it had found “misconduct and/or mismanagement” connected to, “but not limited to”, two sermons hosted by the charity that “included content that was inflammatory, divisive and not in the charity’s best interests”. It ordered the centre to introduce a “robust” events and speakers policy covering all speakers. The warning will remain on the charity’s public record for a year.

The Commission did not say which comments prompted the warning. Media reporting suggests that the sermons include an October 2023 address by Imam Shakeel Begg, delivered during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, in which he spoke of Palestinian “suffering at the hands of the oppressors and the Zionists”.

In a four-page statement, the centre accused the Commission of policing prayers and setting itself up as a gatekeeper of what imams may say from the pulpit. It said it does not accept that a regulator should be placed in the position of “prescribing the permissible content of Islamic sermons or scrutinising established forms of Muslim prayer according to its own interpretation of religious language and expression”. The Commission’s powers, it added, must not become “an instrument through which legitimate religious expression, peaceful advocacy for oppressed peoples or the ordinary activities of Muslim charities are constrained”.

The centre said the case raised a “fundamental question”: whether a Muslim charity should face regulatory sanctions for allowing its imams to pray for Palestinians suffering death, destruction and oppression, to address matters of profound concern to their congregation in Friday sermons, and to express the religious and moral obligation to stand against injustice. “The Centre’s position is unequivocally clear: We should not,” it said.

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It said the Commission had taken issue with one of its imam’s supplications for the people of Palestine, Gaza and Jerusalem, which included prayers for their protection, healing and deliverance from oppression. The centre described these as “acts of Islamic worship”. It also said the Commission had focused on the fact that the sermon was delivered in October 2023 but ignored that, by that date, more than 3,500 Palestinians had been killed and more than 1,000 were missing under the rubble, citing figures published by the UN human rights office at the time. “Palestinians do not lose their entitlement to compassion, dignity, justice or international legal protection because of the actions of Hamas or any other organisation,” the statement said.

Within weeks of that sermon, South Africa brought a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). In January 2024, the court ordered Israel to prevent genocidal acts in Gaza. Since then, a near-unanimous consensus has formed among human rights bodies that Israel is committing genocide. Amnesty International, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, the Israeli rights groups B’Tselem and Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and the UN Commission of Inquiry have all reached that conclusion. 

Critics point to this consensus to argue that the British government has itself criminalised people calling for an end to the genocide, while turning a blind eye to prominent voices in the UK who have justified the mass killing of Palestinians. Since the government banned Palestine Action under terrorism laws in July 2025, thousands of people have been arrested, many of them for silently holding placards. Home Office figures show that 3,630 of the 3,867 terrorism-related arrests in the year to June 2026 were linked to suspected support for the group.

In its response to the Commission, the centre argued that the Friday sermon “is not an ordinary public speech” but an integral part of Islamic worship, and that traditional supplications dating back to the time of the Prophet Muhammad are a recognised feature of Muslim religious practice. It called the Commission’s objections “an unacceptable interference”, particularly, it said, when synagogues have continued to pray for the Israeli army while Israel faces genocide proceedings at the ICJ.

It said the Commission had criticised its due diligence on an invited speaker, even though the centre had carried out “detailed and proportionate” checks, including extensive internet searches. The centre said the Commission appeared to consider these steps insufficient, raising “serious questions” about whether the regulator was imposing requirements on Muslim charities that go beyond what could reasonably be expected of a charitable organisation. 

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“Muslim charities should not be expected to operate under a permanent presumption of suspicion,” the statement said, adding that there was no suggestion the same expectations applied to other faith-based charities. “It does appear to us that Muslim charities continue to be treated less favourably than others, a concern that has been well known for some years now.”

That concern has a long history. During William Shawcross’s time as chair of the Commission, Muslim charities accounted for 38 per cent of all its investigations in his first year. In 2023, the Islamic Human Rights Commission launched a campaign to protect mosques after a rise in complaints from Islamic institutions that said the regulator was harassing them.

The centre’s trustees “categorically reject” any suggestion that they had failed in their duties. They added that a public warning was not mandatory and was “overzealous” in this case, because the matters could have been dealt with through regulatory advice. “Solidarity with the oppressed must not become grounds for charitable sanction,” the centre said, urging other organisations to join “a united challenge to an overbearing Commission in defence of religious freedom” if it takes legal action.

The dispute comes as the government prepares to give the Commission sweeping new powers. In March, ministers announced plans to strengthen the regulator’s powers to close charities said to promote extremism and to suspend trustees. A consultation on powers to disqualify people who have promoted violence or racial or religious hatred from running charities closes on 23 December. When he unveiled the plans as part of the government’s social cohesion strategy, Communities Secretary Steve Reed told MPs they were part of its effort to tackle antisemitism. Sector bodies have warned that the vague definition of extremism could be used to suppress lawful campaigning and advocacy, including by Muslim groups.

Critics fear the new powers will be applied through the lens of the highly controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of anti-Semitism. The definition has been widely criticised for conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Jewish racism, and the government adopted it in 2016 without any safeguard protecting criticism of Israel. Charities are under growing pressure to adopt it: this week, a Labour MP called on the Commission to intervene after Save the Children declined to use the definition.

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