Claystone think tank

Why is a defunct think tank with connections to a “misogynistic, racist and homophobic” cleric still being cited?

Introduction

The left-wing website Novara Media recently published an attack, by the freelance writer Ilyas Nagdee, on the proposed appointment of William Shawcross, the former head of the Charity Commission, as the independent reviewer of the government’s PREVENT counter-extremism programme. Ilyas Nadgeee drew on a 2014 report by the think tank Claystone, which alleged that Shawcross had unfairly targeted Muslim charities for investigation during his time at the Charity Commission.

However the report he links to is a dead link. In fact, the whole website for Claystone no longer exists. That’s because Claystone Associates, the official company name for the think tank, was struck off from Companies House last year. Their statements shows they barely had any funds - £319 in 2015, £655 in 2016, and £2,522 in 2017. So how were they able to pay for numerous reports, written between 2014 and 2018?

All of Claystone’s reports criticise the government for their handling of Islamic issues, often related to schooling and counter-terrorism. Their defunct about page states that they were focused on providing “research, analysis and reasoned solutions to foster social cohesion in relation to Muslims in Britain”. No details are provided about who worked there, who ran it, or how they were funded. So who were they?

Who is behind Claystone?

Dr Umer Siddique, Arun Kundnani, and Adam Belaon are the named authors of reports by Claystone. Umer Siddique and Adam Belaon were also named on Companies House as having been officers of Claystone Associates, alongside Rihaan Anjum.

Arun Kundnani is the only one of these not to be listed on Companies House and indeed he appears to have had a thriving career outside of Claystone. His personal website says he is a former editor of Race & Class - the journal of the Institute of Race Relations - and was an Open Society Fellow. He is now a Visiting Assistant Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University, as well as publishing regularly with the Transnational Institute. He was one of those who re-tweeted Ilyas Nagdee’s article:

Rihaan Anjum is listed as a Travel Agent. A different profile with the same name and year of birth on Companies House says he is a director a tourist agency which specialises in Hajj trips. It also gives the address of a business he was previously a director of - UK ISOC Limited - as 56 Greenfield Road, 3rd Floor, London, England, E1 1EJ. His profile for Claystone Associates gives its address as Unit G7 East London Business Centre, 93-101 Greenfield Road, London, England, E1 1EJ. It is therefore quite possible that these are one and the same person, although not certain.

Umer Siddique is listed as having originally been a medical student living in Ilford but being in “wholesale” by the time he became associated with Claystone Associates. Adam Belaon is listed as a teacher or tutor, who currently runs a “Nail Fungus Clinic”, also in Ilford. A search of his name on Twitter reveals that he used to write for the website Islam21C, although his articles have all been taken down. Interestingly, at some point all of his articles were changed so that the author’s name was Zeeshan Khan. Even that has been altered again, with Khan’s page now bereft of articles but bearing the name of Faisal Jacobs. His archived articles include him claiming that the US launches false flag attacks to “give credibility” to their “fraudulent claims”, calling the gay rights activist Peter Tatchell “infamous”, describing Rupert Murdoch as a “Zionist media owner”, and alleging that Muslims should be careful not to become “sacrificial lambs for the crimes of those that run the capitalist system who are at one with Zionist ambitions”.

This is interesting because Islam21C happens to be the “flagship website” of the Muslim Research & Development Foundation (MRDF), according to an archived version of their ‘about’ page (the new ‘about’ page doesn’t mention this, so this may no longer be true or they may no longer wish to publicise this). The MRDF is based at 56 Greenfield Road, London, E1 1EJ; which is the exact same address as that of Rihaan Anjum’s prior business.

The chair of the MRDF, when Claystone was still publishing, was Imam Haitham al-Haddad. His message has been called “misogynistic, racist and homophobic” by Sara Khan, the government’s Lead Commissioner for Countering Extremism. Shaykh al-Haddad is a regular writer for Islam21C, where he published many of his most controversial articles. These include him claiming that Japan was struck by the 2011 tsunami because they refused to submit to Allah. Some of his articles appear to have been deleted, including one which complains that at an Islamic concert he attended “members of the opposite sex where [sic] freely mixing” and in some cases even “their thighs were touching”. Islam21C has written extensively about Claystone’s reports and explicitly supported some of their campaigning activity.

The Claystone report on the Charity Commission thanks the Labour MP Paul Flynn (who died last year) and the solicitors Birnberg Pierce, who specialise in civil rights and liberties cases, usually relying on legal aid. A later Claystone report was launched in the Houses of Parliament by the journalist Peter Oborne and Labour MP Yasmin Qureshi. Claystone also helped Assed Baig with a counter-extremism story, when he was a journalist at Channel 4 News. There is no proof that any of them were aware of Claystone’s other connections but it demonstrates how they were able to influence politics and the media.

Was Claystone’s report right?

The Guardian write up of Claystone’s report noted that the Charity Commission had live investigations of seventy six charities, of which twenty were Muslim. To find out if the Charity Commission was justified, we can look at the five full statutory inquiries - the most serious sort of investigation they can launch - they were running at the time: Children in Need, Human Aid, Syria Aid, al-Fatiha Global, and Aid Convoy.

The full list of Charity Commission statutory inquiries is published on their website. The Guardian claims that Children in Need was one of these, although there is no mention of them amongst the inquiries or in the Claystone report, so The Guardian may be mistaken. It can therefore be discounted unless new information emerges.

The investigation into Human Aid began after reports that it co-hosted a charity event which had speakers who held “controversial and/or extremist” views. Human Aid has a Zakat Fund, whose projects are “verified by Sheikh Haitham al-Haddad” and is based in East London Business Centre, UNIT G3, 93 - 101 Greenfield Road, London, E1 1EJ. That is the same location, albeit a different unit, as Claystone Associates. The Charity Commission discovered multiple financial issues involving fundraising, due diligence, and monitoring. Human Aid has come under investigation again over issues to do with cash couriering.

Meanwhile, Syria Aid was referred to the Charity Commission after failing to register with it (they were struck off Companies House as they clearly stated their intent was charitable). In addition, media reports linked it to fundraising for extremists and the Charity Commission’s attempts to engage with the trustees were frustrated (not least because their trustee consistently failed to turn up to pre-arranged interviews). The investigation revealed there were no minutes of appointments, proceedings, annual general meetings, or meetings of the trustees as are required. There was no evidence of any financial safeguarding either, with all funds placed into personal bank accounts of the trustee. The Charity Commission unsurprisingly concluded that there had been misconduct and, as the charity had ceased to exist by this point, they disqualified the trustee from being a trustee again for a period of ten years,.

It was also financial conduct which first drew the Charity Commission’s attention to al-Fatiha Global, after their record-keeping failed to keep up with their fundraising for charitable activities in Syria. This was compounded by media reports that a charity volunteer (the son of the chief of the trustees) had posed in Syria with an armed fighter for photographs. The investigation found a lack of oversight, which included charity volunteers travelling into the Syrian warzone with large sums of cash. Despite its growth in income from £4,038 to £1,229,928 in one year, the trustees did not improve their financial control, leading to them being unable to fully account for the charity’s expenditure. One volunteer, Alan Henning, was kidnapped and executed by the Islamic State in 2014. Despite this, the trustees failed to submit a Serious Incident Report to the Charity Commission when he was abducted from their convoy. As a result of all these failings, the Charity Commission appointed an Interim Manager to administer the charity, although he was discharged after a year.

Aid Convoy, yet another Syria-linked charity, first came to attention when it began to raise funds under the name Aid Convoy 2 Syria. The Charity Commission ordered it to register as a charity, which they had failed to do, and then began the investigation after police seized cash from volunteers claiming to represent Aid Convoy. When visited, it emerged that Aid Convoy could not account for £84,000. Despite taking measures, they persistently failed to file their annual returns on time and a second inquiry into them was opened.

It was discovered that the charity’s high street bank account had been closed, leading to them using personal accounts instead. In addition, the investigators found the charity had posted videos to social media featuring a man named Tauquir Sharif acting as a representative for the charity, despite him being stripped of his British citizenship for links to al-Qaeda. Aid Convoy claimed he was a media partner for their Turkish aid delivery partner, who they refused to stop working with. The charity kept on sending containers into Northern Syria, despite claiming not to know what was in them. In total they shipped 48 containers, whose value was estimated by them as £60,000 each; meaning that £2,880,000 worth of goods was shipped without anyone knowing what was in them and how they were used. An Interim Manager was appointed but, without his knowledge, Aid Convoy held an online appeal. It is unknown what happened to the donations raised by that appeal. Two of the trustees were subsequently disqualified and the charity dissolved.

Comment

These four cases show that the Charity Commission was right to be concerned about the activities of some Islamic charities. In most cases it was financial or organisational mismanagement which led to inquiries being launched. Where extremism was cited, it was certainly worthy of investigation: charity workers posing with armed gunmen, a charity worker being kidnapped and later murdered by a terrorist group, and terrorist-linked individuals appearing in a charity’s social media are all reasonable grounds for scrutiny. The allegation that these charities were being specially targeted because of their religion therefore seems to be baseless. Furthermore, the connections between Claystone, Islam21c, Haitham al-Haddad, and Human Aid suggests that the think tank may have had ulterior motives in publishing their report. That Claystone’s report continues to be cited, despite these suspect connections being discernible even in 2015, shows how some are willing to suspend their critical faculties when it suits their political aims.