A senior leader of Britain’s largest Muslim charity has quit after it has emerged that he had posted anti-Semitic messages on social media in a months-long tirade.
Heshmat Khalifa was a trustee and director of Islamic Relief Worldwide, and had labelled Jews the “grandchildren of monkeys and pigs” whilst called Egypt’s president a “Zionist pimp”. In the posts shown in The Times, Mr Khalifa, 63, said the Palestinian militant group Hamas was “the purest" such movement in history.
Islamic Relief was among the 85 organisations designated as terrorist groups by the UAE Cabinet in 2014. According to a freedom of information request, the British foreign office believed it "had issues" over terrorist allegations. "Islamic Relief Worldwide (IRW) is a UK-based charity that has been under their domestic Counter-Terrorism sanctions legislation due to alleged connections with Hamas," an internal memo said at the time, according to The National.
Khalifa’s £570 million income over the past five years included substantial contributions from the United Nations, the European Commission and the British taxpayer. He resigned after The Times confronted the global aid charity with antisemitic comments that he made on his Facebook page. Khalifa said that declaring Palestine’s armed wing a terrorist organisation was a “shameful disgrace to all Muslims”. The charities regulator has launched a preliminary investigation.
In the meantime, the charity said that it “sincerely regrets any offence caused” by the Facebook posts, which “contravene the values and principles of Islamic Relief Worldwide”.
Mr Khalifa is a British citizen since 2005 and has held senior roles with the charity or its overseas branches since 1999. Until a few days ago he was chairman of Islamic Relief Australia and a director of its branches in Germany and South Africa. Interspersed with such posts, written in Arabic, were others promoting the work of Islamic Relief. Mr Khalifa’s Facebook friends include several senior figures at the charity.
