Interfaith charity closes amid ‘concerning’ links to Muslim Council

Michael Gove confirmed he would not give the IFN any further money in a letter sent last week – Paul Grover for the Telegraph

An interfaith charity has confirmed it is to close after Michael Gove ended taxpayer funding because of what he called its “deeply concerning” links to the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB).

The board of the Inter Faith Network (IFN) said that it was with “much regret” that it had agreed to close and it was looking at ways for other organisations to carry on its “legacy”.

The IFN was founded in 1987 as a charity to “make better known and understood the teachings, traditions and practices of the different faith communities in the UK” and to build “good relations between people of different faiths”.

The organisation has been heavily reliant on taxpayer support, receiving £3.8 million from the Government since 2010.

Last year, The Telegraph revealed that the IFN had angered the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities by not explicitly condemning the Hamas Oct 7 attack on Israel.

In January, Mr Gove then wrote to the charity saying he was “minded” to stop funding the charity because it counts a member of the MCB among its trustees.

The MCB has been subject to a Whitehall-wide engagement ban dating to 2009 when an official at the council signed the Istanbul Declaration, which was widely interpreted as calling for attacks on Royal Navy vessels enforcing a UN weapons blockade on Hamas-run Gaza.

The MCB has previously said that it “never endorsed the declaration” and “specifically reject any notion that we endorse an attack on the Royal Navy”.

‘Deeply concerning’

In a letter sent last week, Mr Gove confirmed he would not give the IFN any further money. “It is deeply concerning that an MCB member could be appointed into your core governance structure,” he said.

“This increases the proximity between government funding and an organisation (the MCB) with which the Government has a long-standing policy of non-engagement.

“This is even more important in the case of funding for a prominent and nationally active organisation such as the IFN, which would carry too great a risk of compromising the credibility and effectiveness of that policy.”

He added: “Interfaith work is hugely valuable but that does not require us to use taxpayers’ money in a way that legitimises the influence of organisations such as the MCB.”

In a statement published online, the IFN said it had tried to “diversify” its funding base. However, it said its interfaith work was “not eye-catching and easy to fund and does need some financial support from Government”.

The IFN said that neither its “careful and considered” response to Mr Gove “nor the widespread support and concern at the potential loss” of the charity had led the Communities Secretary to “reconsider his position”.

It added: “The organisation is now on the path to closure and IFN trustees and staff will be working to bring the organisation’s work to a close and to preserve its legacy in ways that enable others to build strongly on that in the future.”

Zara Mohammed, secretary general of the MCB, said: “We are sorry that the IFN and interfaith relations generally have been the victim of an inexplicable campaign by divisive ideologues in the government to smear the MCB and deny British Muslims a representative voice.”

The closure of the IFN was debated in the House of Commons last week. Sir Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, said that after the chaos in the Commons over the Gaza vote it was “extraordinarily stupid to be shutting down at this precise point our principal vehicle in the UK for Muslim-Jewish dialogue”.

However, Sir Christopher Chope, the Conservative MP for Christchurch, said: “This organisation has had about £2 million in income in the past five years, and three quarters of that income has come from the Government – from the taxpayer.

“Is not the message for other organisations that they should not be too dependent on taxpayer funding?”

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