Moazzam Begg blasts Charity Commission’s William Shawcross

8th March 2016

CAGE outreach director Moazzam Begg blasts William Shawcross of the Charity Commission.

He says talks about Shawcross’s links to Israel and the Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society. He also says that Shawcross has defended Guantanamo Bay and torture. Begg was speaking at University College London during the Students Not Suspects Tour organised by the NUS Black Students Campaign.

After Shawcross was appointed as the new Chair to the Commission in October 2012, the process of targeting Muslim charities accelerated.

The Charity Commission's William Shawcross — The Charity Commission’s William Shawcross

Under Shawcross, who during his tenure at the noeconcervative and Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society had stated that “Europe and Islam is one of the greatest, most terrifying problems of our future….”, the Commission implemented a new code called “extremism and radicalisation.”

The Claystone Institute has revealed that the Commission had marked 55 charities with the issue code “extremism and radicalisation” without their knowledge in the period 5 December 2012 to 8 May 2014. These charities were being monitored as a potential concern for matters relating to extremism and radicalisation.

The surge in anti-Muslim investigations prompted Hany el-Banna, a founder of Britain’s largest Muslim charity, Islamic Relief, to claim that the Commission had “surrendered to the political and interests of our governments, not of universal humanitarian principles.”