The Royal Mint has sparked outrage after agreeing to donate profits from the sales of specially created Kaaba gold bars to Islamic Relief UK (IRUK), a U.K.-based charity that has, however, been designated as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.
All bullion product transactions at The Royal Mint are Sharia-compliant.
IRUK’s affiliate, Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW), which the UAE has also designated as a terrorist organization, has been described by the U.S. State Department as promoting “blatant and horrifying” antisemitism. Israel banned IRW from operating in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, citing alleged ties to Hamas, a terrorist organization that seeks Israel’s destruction.
Lawyers for IRW told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) that “the allegation Islamic Relief is linked to any terrorist or Islamist group, quite apart from being (clearly) defamatory of Islamic Relief, as well as its Trustees and officers as representatives of the Charity, is completely untrue.”
For its part, the Royal Mint seems oblivious to the controversy. “I’m proud to continue The Royal Mint’s partnership with Islamic Relief UK for Ramadan,” Andrew Dickey, Director of Precious Metals at The Royal Mint, said, adding, “This holy month is a time of giving, and we’re delighted to support the charity’s vital work through our sales donations and event auctions.”
The gold bars, weighing 20 grams each, start at £2,669.61 and carry an engraving of the Kaaba—the square stone building at the center of the Great Mosque in Mecca, which Muslims consider the “house of God” (Baytullah) and toward which they must face when praying.
“All bullion product transactions at The Royal Mint are Sharia-compliant,” IRUK stated on its website. It noted that the UK’s maker of British coins will also donate proceeds from its 1-gram (£175) and 5-gram (£689) bars, as well as gifting two 1-gram and two 5-gram Kaaba bars for the charity to auction, with the proceeds going toward Islamic Relief’s Sudan Emergency Appeal.
The Royal Mint and Islamic Relief will also run a joint social media prize draw, giving away ten 1-gram Kaaba Bars. “Our partnership with The Royal Mint is a very special one,” Zia Salik, Interim Director, IRUK, added. The Birmingham-based charity shares offices with IRW, now considered the largest Muslim charity in the Western world and a registered charity in the U.K. IRW describes IRUK as its “fundraising division.”
Politicians, Public Intellectuals Slam Royal Mint for Favoring Islam
Several politicians and public intellectuals hit back at the Mint’s announcement, warning that the partnership was an alarming development signaling the continuing Islamization of the U.K. One X-user stated that the Royal Mint had not issued gold bars for Lent, Easter, or Hanukkah, nor had it ever partnered with a Christian charity.
“Britain’s bizarre but predictable descent into sectarianism, given our breakneck demographic transformation, is gathering pace. We have the Royal Mint making the astounding decision to donate funds for Ramadan,” Alan Mendoza, Executive Director of the Henry Jackson Society and Chief Advisor on Global Affairs to Reform UK, wrote on X.
“One word. Why?” parliamentarian Nick Timothy asked on X. Sidney Cordle from the Christian Peoples’ Alliance said that the party has complained to the Royal Mint about its interaction with Islamic Relief.
“Why is the Royal Mint paying zakat during Ramadan? Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam. Muslims are required to give 2.5% of their wealth to charity,” observed Tim Dieppe, who leads the public policy division at Christian Concern.
The Royal Mint has not responded to an inquiry from Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
Islamic Relief Subject of Numerous Reports
Multiple think tanks and media outlets, including NGO Monitor, the Henry Jackson Society, and the Middle East Forum (MEF), have compiled dossiers detailing accusations of financing terror, platforming of hate preachers, support for Hamas, and antisemitism against IRW.
In its 2023 report, NGO Monitor catalogued the US State Department cutting ties with IRW due to “anti-Semitism exhibited repeatedly by IRW’s leadership” (2021), the German Ministry of Interior ending projects with the charity, citing IRW’s “significant connections” to the Muslim Brotherhood (2020), and in January 2021, the Dutch Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Co-operation Sigrid Kaag deciding “not to subsidize Islamic Relief Worldwide” based on information from other donor countries.
NGO Monitor also listed Israel’s 2014 ban on IRW based on its alleged role in funneling money to Hamas. That year, the United Arab Emirates included IRW and IR-UK on a list of terrorist entities. In 2017, Bangladesh banned IR from working in the Rohingya refugee camps as a “preventative measure against potential radicalization in the camps,” the report noted. The U.K. government confirmed that the UAE had listed IRUK as a “terrorist organization” in 2014.
“Islamic Relief has long worked with charities known to promote extremism and finance terrorism,” the 2018 MEF report concluded, listing the charity’s links to Hamas-affiliated groups and pointing to financial links with several terrorism-linked groups in the Middle East, including the Charitable Society for Social Welfare, founded by Al-Qaeda terrorist and “Bin Laden loyalist” Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani.
The report identified multiple prominent extremist clerics and Islamist activists who spoke at IR events, including Abdullah Hakim Quick, who claims that the Islamic position on homosexuality is “death,” Haitham Al-Haddad, who describes Jews as “pigs and apes,” and Abdul Nasir Jangda, who defends sex slavery and advocates killing apostates.
MEF’s 2018 report on the organization stated the following:
Islamic Relief has long been accused of funding terror. Both Israel and the United Arab Emirates have designated Islamic Relief as a terror-financing organization. In 2005, Russian authorities accused Islamic Relief of supporting terrorism in Chechnya. And in 2012, the Swiss banking giant UBS closed down Islamic Relief’s accounts and “blocked donations coming from its customers to the charity,” reportedly over terror financing fears. Four years later, HSBC did the same.
The Henry Jackson Institute’s 2018 report, titled “Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing: How Islamist Extremists Exploit the UK Charitable Sector” similarly noted that IRW and its US franchise “have been accused of extensive ties to Islamist terrorist organisations.” In 1999, IRW received $50,000 from Osama bin Laden and the project coordinator of its Gaza office, Iyaz Ali, was arrested in Israel in 2006 for channeling funds to Hamas, it cited as examples.
In 2019, after news outlets in Germany cited the United Arab Emirates’ designation of Islamic Relief as a terrorist organization over its ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, it responded by declaring, “Islamic Relief Worldwide is an independent and purely humanitarian aid organization, working with communities in more than 40 countries to lift themselves out of poverty, regardless of race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.”
Islamic Relief’s Response to Mint Controversy
Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) asked Islamic Relief for comment over the most recent controversy, prompting a letter from Carter-Ruck, a U.K. law firm. Writing on behalf of IRW, the firm declared that Islamic Relief is a purely humanitarian organization which is a “United Kingdom-registered charity [that] operates as an independent non-governmental organisation, providing humanitarian aid and support throughout the world. In this capacity, it acts as an implementing partner for major UN agencies including the UN World Food Programme (WFP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and government aid departments, in addition to which it is a member of the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC).”
The firm added that “the allegation that Islamic Relief is linked to any terrorist or Islamist group, quite apart from being (clearly) defamatory of Islamic Relief, as well as its Trustees and officers as representatives of the Charity, is completely untrue.”
The letter, which states that Islamic Relief will use the receipts from the U.K. mint to support its humanitarian efforts in Sudan, also declares that
independent investigations have found nothing at all to substantiate the allegations of such linkage, in addition to which, annual statutory audits by leading accountancy firms (which reports remain publicly available), and a series of donor-led audits by key institutional donors, have all concluded with no findings whatsoever that could support such grave allegations against the Charity.
We add that whilst the UK Charity Commission has of course been aware – for more than a decade – of such allegations as have previously been made, it has been satisfied that there is no need to take any formal action against Islamic Relief. It is obvious that the Charity Commission would not permit any organisation to continue operating as a registered charity if there was any credible evidence that it was linked to terrorist or Islamist groups.
We add that it is all the more galling that such false allegations have been made against Islamic Relief (and are rehearsed yet again in your latest enquiry) in circumstances where Charity’s own aid workers have been among those tragically killed by acts of terrorism – in Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kenya.
Carter-Ruck also warned that Islamic Relief “has brought legal complaints against the publishers of MailOnline and GB News in respect of allegations linking it with terrorist groups, and in both instances those publishers have retracted allegations and issued public apologies.” The GB News apology can be seen here, and the Daily Mail’s apology can be seen here.
In its letter to FWI, Carter-Ruck asked that MEF not serve as “a platform to disseminate, yet further, such baseless allegations against the Charity, which our client is concerned are being raised again seemingly in an effort to damage its current partnership with the Royal Mint (the proceeds of which, we repeat, will be applied to the Sudan appeal). This concern is amplified by the fact that Middle East Forum has previously published a number of similarly false and misleading statements concerning Islamic Relief.”
On March 12, FWI asked Carter-Ruck for specifics regarding the “misleading statements” MEF has made about Islamic Relief and has yet to receive a response.
Public Transport Controversy
In March 2025, Alex Wilson, the London Assembly leader of Reform UK, asked the mayor of London why the charity was allowed to advertise on the London Underground despite IRW being “banned by UAE for funding terrorist groups in the Middle East.”
Wilson noted that the U.S. State Department had also found top IRW leaders exhibiting “blatant and horrifying anti-Semitism and glorification of violence.” The mayor’s office commended IR as a “highly respected and mainstream aid charity” and clarified that its advertisements complied with the Transport for London advertising policy.
IRUK ads at bus stops and metro stations asked viewers to “Give Zakat for the sake of Allah.” An earlier ad on buses in London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leicester, and Bradford declared “Subhan Allah” (Glory be to God) in Arabic and urged the public to “Gather the Rewards of Ramadan” by donating to IR.
“Islamic Relief UK has recently partnered with Cardiff Council in Wales to put up banners on some streets proclaiming ‘Zakat is Our Sacred Duty,’” Carys Moseley, Public Policy Researcher at Christian Concern, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI). “With these banners, the charity is communicating the Islamic doctrine of fitrah that we are all born with a natural disposition towards Islamic worship of Allah.”
“The Royal Mint is a public institution that is being used to give a glamorous gloss to the less tolerant reality of Islamic doctrine. What looks like refined magnanimity on behalf of a royal institution contrasts with the near-compulsory rhetoric on the street in Cardiff,” she warned.
