UK Charity Commission whitewashes Iran-linked British charity

This is a cross-post by Stop the Bomb, a pan-European coalition of human rights activists opposed to the clerical dictatorship in Tehran.

Until recently, the London-based charity International Islamic Link described itself on its website as the “office of his eminence Hazarat Ayatullah Nasir Makarem Shirazi”.

Ayatullah Shirazi is a senior Iranian cleric, and served on the Assembly of Experts that drafted the Islamist constitution of the Islamic Republic after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. He believes that “the Holocaust is nothing but superstition,” and that homosexuals should be killed.

In 2009, International Islamic Link was granted £15,000 by Brent Council in London for the promotion of “religious freedom and tolerance”.

Madness, you say? You haven’t heard the least of it yet.

As a result of lobbying of MPs by Stop the Bomb, the Charity Commission recently announced that it was conducting a “pre-investigation assessment” of International Islamic Link. By this time, however, the charity had removed all references to Ayatullah Shirazi from its website.

Upon conclusion of its assessment, the Charity Commission expressed its satisfaction with International Islamic Link’s claim that it “has no private or public link with Ayatullah Nasir Makeren [sic] Shirazi”.

Quite how an organisation can, in a matter of weeks, go from being the personal office of a prominent Holocaust denier to having “no private or public link” with him is unclear. What is clear, however, is that the Charity Commission has now exonerated International Islamic Link of any affiliation with the Iranian regime.

Madness, you say? We think so too.