People in the UK are giving hundreds of thousands of pounds a year to Islamist extremist organisations - sometimes unwittingly - in small anonymous donations, a Government investigation has revealed.
It found that overseas funding was only a significant source of income for a small number of suspected extremist bodies, but “for the vast majority of extremist groups in the UK, overseas funding is not a significant source”.
The Home Office said it would be “directly raising issues of concern, supported by evidence, with specific countries” but did not name them.
Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary, said she had decided against publishing the report in full for reasons of national security and the personal information it contains.
She said the “most common source of support for Islamist extremist organisations in the UK is from small, anonymous public donations, with the majority of these donations most likely coming from UK-based individuals”.
“In some cases these organisations receive hundreds of thousands of pounds a year,” she added.
“This is the main source of their income.”
She said the donors may not know or support the organisations' full agenda, but a short summary of the report released by the Home Office did not provide a breakdown.
“Some Islamic organisations of extremist concern portray themselves as charities to increase their credibility and to take advantage of Islam’s emphasis on charity,” it said.
“Some are purposefully vague about their activities and their charitable status.”
Two British charities were truck off the register last year after being used to raise money for al-Qaeda and Isis, under the guise of fundraising for victims of the Syrian civil war and helping Kurdish Muslims in Birmingham.
Several other organisations have come under suspicion over alleged links with jihadis fighting in Syria, while some have been linked to Anjem Choudary’s banned al-Muhajiroun network.
The Home Office report said regulation can improve transparency but some suspected extremist organisations are “seeking to avoid regulatory oversight”.
It found that although overseas funding is not a significant source of funding for most groups of concern, foreign support has “allowed individuals to study at institutions that teach deeply conservative forms of Islam and provide highly socially conservative literature and preachers to the UK’s Islamic institutions”, adding: “Some of these individuals have since become of extremist concern.”
The Home Office’s report, commissioned by David Cameron in November 2015, does not include the funding of terrorism or funding of extremism overseas from UK sources.
“It gives us the best picture we have ever had of how extremists operating in the UK sustain their activities,” Ms Rudd said, adding that privy councillors from opposition parties would be invited to read the full, classified report.
“Fundamentally, no single measure will tackle all the issues of concern raised in the review.
“A comprehensive approach focused particularly on domestic sources of support for all forms of extremism is needed.”
The Home Secretary outlined steps including public awareness campaigns to ensure donors understand the full intentions of organisations they choose to give their money to.
Information will also be given to the financial services sector, grant making trusts and foundations, so they can ensure they are not “inadvertently supporting” jihadis.
The Charity Commission will be among the bodies tasked with bringing a higher proportion of supposedly charitable groups under regulatory oversight, introducing a new requirement to declare overseas funding sources.
