The Archbishop of Canterbury welcomed two controversial Muslim leaders to Lambeth Palace for tea and cake last week, including a cleric with close ties to the brutal Iranian regime, the JC can reveal.
Mohammad Ali Shomali, who met Justin Welby, spent five years as the UK representative of the Iranian supreme leader in his role as the head of the Islamic Centre of England (ICE), the London mosque that is currently the subject of a Charity Commission inquiry because of its role in promoting extremism.
Also on the guest list was Mohammed Kozbar, a leader of the Muslim Council of Britain who praised the founder of the Hamas terror group as a “holy warrior”.
Welby posted a gushing message after the event, saying it was a “pleasure to welcome friends”, adding that he had enjoyed “the honest sharing of different perspectives”.
Lord Carlile KC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, said the Church had to be more careful in choosing its partners for interfaith events, citing the report published earlier this year by Sir William Shawcross on the government’s Prevent programme that is supposed to curb extremism.
He added it was a “serious error of judgment” to engage in discussions with those who have been seen as “apologists” for “extremism”.
Stephen Crabb MP, the Commons Parliamentary Chairman of Conservative Friends of Israel, said: “These reports represent another painful reminder of the Iranian regime’s increasingly emboldened interference in the UK. It is particularly troubling that invaluable interfaith work is being undermined by extremists.”
The day-long gathering at Lambeth Palace library was organised by the Christian Muslim Forum (CMF), a taxpayer-funded group of which Welby has been patron since it was founded in 2006. Welby has welcomed Shomali to Lambeth Palace on at least two previous occasions, in 2016 and 2017.
For years, Shomali has served as co-director of an institute in the Iranian city of Qom that was led until 2021 by a hardliner who advocated suicide bombings against Israel and believed “Zionists” were the “fundamental source of evil”.
Kozbar, who is also the general secretary of Finsbury Park Mosque, met Hamas leaders on a visit to Gaza in 2015 and paid tribute to the terror group’s founder, Ahmed Yassin, following a visit to his grave.
There is no suggestion that Welby endorses extremist views, and a spokesman for Lambeth Palace told the JC that not “everyone is in full agreement on important issues” at such gatherings.
He added that the meetings were “a chance to explore and work through differences and build trusted relationships”. Two weeks ago, Welby rejected the claim that Israel was an apartheid state.
But the meeting raises serious questions about the selection of partners for interfaith events and the influence it may give them. CMF’s latest annual report, covering the calendar year 2021, says it has “built links” with both the ICE and the MCB, which has been blacklisted by successive Labour and Conservative governments since 2009 because of its alleged support for violence against Israel.
In 2019, the CMF held a “twinning event” between the ICE and a church near the mosque, St Augustine’s in Kilburn Park.
For ten years until the end of 2021, the CMF was partly funded by taxpayers, receiving grants totalling £341,000 from the forerunner of what is now the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, led by Michael Gove.
Both as head of the ICE and after stepping down, Shomali has travelled widely and repeatedly taken part in interfaith events with both Protestant and Catholic clergy. He was pictured sitting next to Welby at Lambeth Palace in December 2015, when he posted on Facebook that the Archbishop had welcomed “Shia theologians to Lambeth Palace at the end of three days of dialogue with Christian theologians at the University of Oxford”.
However, in the same period he has maintained his proximity to the Iranian regime. In 2014, Shomali held a “celebration” at the ICE to mark the 35th anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution. Among its guest speakers was the former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Shomali also held events venerating Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, whose accession to power was followed by the persecution of Iran’s 1.4 million Christians.
And in an essay published in 2017, Shomali likened gay marriage to bestiality, writing: “A hundred years ago, it would have been unthinkable for gay marriages to be sanctioned… Perhaps a day will come where some will desire marriage with animals.”
A poster for an event celebrating Ayatollah Khomeini with Shomali as a speaker (Photo: Twitter)
In 2016, Shomali published a personal “letter of appreciation” from Khomeini’s successor, Khamenei, extending “thanks to your excellency for your unreserved efforts”.
Read it all in The Jewish Chronicle
