British Muslims being fleeced in the name of Pakistan floods

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

By Murtaza Ali Shah
LONDON: A deluge of faith-based Muslim charities, television channels and downmarket newspapers are involved in fleecing mainly British Muslims in the name of Pakistan flood victims in what has been describe as ‘blood money’.

With heart-wrenching scenes of Pakistani flood disaster victims beaming on the screens and desperate victims marooned helplessly in the worst floods of modern Pakistan’s history, nearly a dozen television channels and at least 10 newspapers are in overdrive to ask more than 2 million British Muslims - and anyone else who would bother - to pay their zakat, fitrana, sedkaat etc, for the day-to-day welfare and rehabilitation of the more than 20 million flood victims in Pakistan.

A noble drive it would seem at the surface but a close scrutiny suggests that the alliance of so-called Muslim charities, with little or no credibility, television channels, especially established to make money in the name of Islam, and newspapers, produced mainly to provide print backup to the expanding trade of collecting money for charity purposes, has become a criminal nexus.

The situation has made members of the British Muslim community incandescent with anger that they have approached Lord Nazir Ahmed, a fearless campaigning Labour peer, to question the credibility of what’s going on at these ‘community charities and channels’.

Lord Ahmed has already filed a complaint with the official watchdog and has asked the watchdog to investigate why these channels ‘charge between £3,000 and £10,000 per session per day from charities’ and in some cases yearly contracts with charities worth £150,000 or a little less for broadcasting appeals on their behalf.

Lord Ahmed alleges that that most of these charities and the individuals involved with their work are ‘dodgy’ and their intentions are questionable.

Talking to The News, he said: “Charities and channels use emotive picture to encourage donations, and I am aware of the thousands of children who have given their pocket money for the flood victims. We have a duty to ensure that every penny is directed for the needs of the unfortunate victims rather than paying the private channels and charities accounts for their expenses and salaries”.

“The government has the responsibility to ensure that any breach of rule or the law is taken seriously by prosecuting the culprits.”

Under Rule 10.13 of the Ofcom Broadcasting Code, broadcasters may conduct fundraising for legitimate charities or emergency appeals in programmes, as long as they are broadcast free of charge. Ofcom licensed broadcasters must comply with the Ofcom Broadcasting Code and broadcast charity appeals in programmes free of charge. “In relation to such appeals, broadcasters may charge a charity for the provision of non-broadcast additional services (e.g. call centre services, or studio costs),” explained a spokesman for the Ofcom to The News.

The charities and channels clearly abide by this rule but dodge the rules when they deal with each other through annual deals where commercial spot rates are kept higher than normal with charity appeals being offered as added values for the higher spot rates than the regular selling trend or in some cases the studio/production costs are showed as high as 7,000 to 10,000 pounds when in actual the studio is owned by the channel and should not cost them more than 1,500 to 2,000 pounds to produce a charity appeal or programming of such genre. Hundreds of thousands of pounds exchange hands in complete violation of the laws.

Now another trend is picking up for these channels that is to offer the charities to broadcast with their stations on a certain percentage share of the collected money. That liberates the charities from putting down any payment towards costs etc, and the earnings are divided.

While submitting the annual accounts, a compulsion, these charities hire experienced accountants to fulfil all the requirements set by the Charities Commission audit branch. Papers produced in Pakistan showing the balance of the income and the spending are completely relied on, but there is no mechanism in place to thoroughly investigate whether the British taxpayers money has been rightly spent or not.

The News is aware that many mosques with charitable status and charities with known affiliations with ultra-violent and extremist Islamist groups are openly fleecing the British taxpayers of their hard-earned money.
This money is channelled through respectable means to Pakistan banks but then it goes on to fund Madrassahs (religious schools) and causes which are clearly violent, hate-filled and sectarian in nature.

Some of the mosques and charities involved in fundraising secretly support al-Qaeda and Taliban ideology and other causes of militancy, yet the British government is showing no interest in investigating them or using trusted community sources to know more about their intents and purposes.

Throughout the year, and especially for the holy month of Ramadhan, these mosques and the affiliated charitable trusts fly in rabble-rousing mullahs from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, most of them with open affiliations with Jihadi networks and many of them known for propagating anti-western propaganda back home round the year, to collect large sums of money as the visiting clerics meet congregations and ask for their donations. When these clerics leave for Pakistan after Eid, they don’t take with them the large sums they have collected in Britain for fear of being stopped by immigrations and fraud officers at the airport. The money is transferred in their accounts through legitimate banking transfer methods but this money ends up, mostly, in the personal accounts of the clerics and used for preaching anti-western hatred in the Madrassahs these clerics are associated with.

The money-raising scam has gained so much momentum that well-known television anchors, singers, former rock star-turned-moral crusaders, cricketers, nasheed singers and so-called welfare workers are flown in from Pakistan especially to appear on the fund-raising shows and use their appeal to the Diaspora to ask for maximum funds. The visiting guests are treated as dignitaries as they stay in expensive hotels, travel first class, go for shopping to places like Harrods and charge extraordinary amounts for their appearances. Neither they ask any question about the credibility of these charities nor the charities are obliged to update them later on whether the money has been spent ethically and on the right projects.

Some of these charities, which have sprung up recently, have taken it upon themselves to launch appeals in the name of various projects round the year, appealing to
the religious sensitivity of mainly Muslim viewers of these channels.

At least a dozen or so community newspapers, mainly published in bi-lingual format of Urdu and English or other South Asian languages, have also sprung up in the last few years to become part of what has become a lucrative business. These papers, mostly stored in mosques, community centres and in charity offices, are providing the print support to these charities but none of these papers follows the journalistic ethics of Britain. These papers plagiarise stories and images and openly flout the media defamation laws, yet they remain in the community market circulation just because these charities provide them with lifeline throughout the year. The liaison officers of these charities, hired at fat salary packages, ensure that these weekly broadsheets and tabloids remain in business as it also ensures their continuity in the job and their share in the deals that are struck.

These charities pay little regard to the fact that their greed and plundering ways are causing harm to quality journalism and indeed encouraging further violation of press laws.

Barring a handful credible channels and 3-4 well-reputed charities, rest of the channels and charities, most of them claiming to be operating in Pakistanis areas, are running live fundraising appeals in the name of the victims of Pakistans catastrophic floods. OfCom rules prohibit charities and the channels from exchanging money for some of these charities and almost every Muslim sect most of them Pakistani immigrants - has one or even more television channels in Britain, available on Sky platform.

UKs Charity Commission has 625 mosques with charitable status registered in its books but its believed that more than 100 fake charities are also running with impunity, using community links to
collect money and some of these channels are a ready platform for their shady activities. There has been a phenomenal rise in the number of faith-based Muslim channels in the last few years. Although Ofcom, the watchdog, has strict rules and criteria for setting up channels and how to conduct the broadcasts, since most of the content of these channels is in Urdu, Punjabi, Bangladeshi and other Asian, there is virtually no accountability of these channels and the watchdog seems helpless to do anything about these channels unless someone has the time and resources to report the malpractices for a possible probe.
Many of these channels have not only been found violating the rules set by the watchdog but many have openly promoted sectarianism and communalism.

For each channel to sustain itself on the sky platform, the approximately fixed costs for a month are about 40,000 pounds.

Given the kind of editorial output these channels come up with and those who advertise with these channels, including a large number of charities, its impossible for these channels to survive for three months with transparent revenue generation. In the end, these channels turn towards Muslim charities for help and the charities oblige happily by cutting shabby deals. Ofcom has investigated a range of specific appeals with regard to this rule in the past but found no evidence that any were made on behalf of illegitimate organisations or that payments had been made by the charities for their broadcast in programmes.

For Englishmen to catch the South Asian and Arabs cutting such deals, its a real difficult, if not impossible, task as those who deal in this area are street smart and sly. But the biggest victims of this organised and well-managed racketing and fraud business are the gullible British Muslims, mainly Pakistanis, who fall prey to the Machiavellian methods of these charities, believing their
money is being used to help their less fortunate brothers and sisters.

After the Kashmir Earthquake of 2005, it was estimated that British Muslim Charities raised as much as DEC , which was 50 million . DEC has now collected over 35 million. Over 50 charities have deployed their volunteers and full-time staff with buckets and pamphlets on the streets of Britain with potential to raise funds. Nearly 20 million may have already been raised by these charities.

It is estimated that approximately 200 million are raised every year by Muslim charities for spending on development projects in Pakistan but its difficult to see the implementation of these projects on the ground while the sleazy business goes on unchecked and dodgy methods used to outfox the transparency regulations.

A spokesperson for the Charity Commission said it encouraged charities to make the most effective use of their charitable resources but the trustees were required to use charitable funds and assets reasonably and only in furtherance of the charity’s objects.