Islamic Relief is being asked by the Charity Commission to explain why it invited a hardline Muslim preacher to star in a fundraising tour of Britain.
Yasir Qadhi, a Saudi-educated American academic, has been recorded apparently telling students that killing homosexuals and stoning adulterers was part of their religion. Dr Qadhi, who features in an eight-city tour starting this month, described Islamic punishments such as cutting off the hands of thieves as “very beneficial to society”.
After being alerted by The Times, the commission is questioning two other charities, Muslim Aid and Read Foundation, about their sponsorship of a speaking tour by Dr Qadhi in 2015 organised by Muslim Engagement and Development, an extremist-led pressure group.
Islamic Relief, a £100 million-a-year charity that has received funding from the Department for International Development, invited Dr Qadhi to give lectures to raise funds for the East Africa Crisis Appeal against hunger.
Dr Qadhi is regarded by some British Muslims as a reformed character who has retracted previous hate speech, such as claiming that the Shia were liars and filth.
One of his former students tried to blow up a transatlantic aeroplane with explosives concealed in his underwear. Dr Qadhi said that he “only briefly interacted” with Umar Adbulmutallab, the attempted bomber, at a retreat in Houston in 2008. He said that the teenage student had ignored the message and methodology of his teachers in Texas and had gone to Yemen, where he was brainwashed by a cleric into trying to blow up the Detroit-bound plane on Christmas Day 2009. Adbulmutallab is serving a life sentence in the US after his bomb failed to detonate fully.
In undated recordings, Dr Qadhi appears to tell students: “This is a part of our religion to stone the adulterer . . . and to kill . . . the homosexual.” He clarified to them that these punishments only applied in an Islamic society and were not applicable in the West.
He taught that jihad was an obligation for Muslims and suggested the use of guns “in our time” rather than Koranic swords. He placed conditions on jihad such as a requirement for there to be a caliphate.
In a speech about religious punishments, he said: “Cutting off the hands of the thieves . . . the one problem that will happen to this person, it will bring about a benefit to an entire nation. And we see statistics to prove it. Muslim countries that implement the hudud [Islamic punishments] are safer, less rape, less stealing.”
He has recalled how homosexuals used to be looked down upon with disgust and said that society had “regressed not progressed” because religious people were now no longer able to stand up against homosexuality.
Dr Qadhi told The Times: “It is an undeniable fact that mainstream interpretations of some classical texts command a nation that is governed by the laws of Islam to implement certain punishments against moral crimes.
“However, I have explicitly and on multiple occasions stated that Muslims living in the modern world need to rethink through our tradition and its heritage. Classical, historical interpretations of the Shariah are not necessarily binding in modernity.
“I have nowhere, repeat, nowhere called for violence against any person or nation state or army. I have made continuous refutations against jihadist groups and critiqued their actions and methodology beyond count.”
He said that he had been threatened with death by Islamic State after condemning the Charlie Hebdo killings.
The Charity Commission requires trustees to assess risks and make appropriate background checks on speakers.
Islamic Relief said that Dr Qadhi had been put through a two-stage screening process, by checking watchlists and looking in detail at his views and track record in context.
The charity found him to be “a charismatic speaker with a large international following who has spoken out consistently against terrorism, extremism and antisemitism and challenges Muslims to rethink old orthodoxies”.
Islamic Relief said that it assisted people without discriminating by race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.
Profile
Yasir Qadhi’s unique selling point is that he has studied Islam as a young man in the puritanical seminaries of Saudi Arabia and as an academic subject in the US, where he read for a doctorate at Yale.
He serves as Dean of Academic Affairs at the international Al-Maghrib Institute, which has taught Islamic sciences to 80,000 students and has bases in 11 countries from Britain to Trinidad & Tobago.
He has rejected some of his more outrageous statements. Although he was taught in Saudi Arabia by Salafi fundamentalists he has said that he has “grown out of the movement”, which he found “not as intellectually stimulating as I would like it to be”.
He rejects terrorists such as Anwar al-Awlaki, the al-Qaeda recruiter. However, on civil rights grounds he criticised the preacher’s assassination by a US drone strike in Yemen as unconstitutional because “he deserved a fair trial and the chance to face his accusers in court”.