IHRC has had sight of an email from the Islamic Human Rights Commission Trust chair to The Times dated today 10 October 2019.  The email demands the issuing of an apology regarding the misleading story about IHRCT that claims it is “taxpayer funded”. 

Inter alia the email states:

“Either Mr Norfolk does not understand how gift aid works, or is relying on the public’s ignorance of the rules to create false outrage. Either way this is poor journalism at best, and at worst a malicious smear campaign against a legitimate charity like IHRCT. “Donations by individuals to a charity are tax free. This is called tax relief. The tax goes to the individual or the charity. This is not “taxpayer funded”. Rather it is tax relief on our donors taxes. Donors have elected to donate to us, and have expressly given us permission to claim tax relief on their behalf on taxes they, the donor, have paid. We are not accessing generic taxpayer funds.”

IHRC (the limited company) is saddened that The Times has stooped to such misrepresentation.  It is misleading to the public, undermines the work of the Charity Commission and the procedures of HMRC in a thoroughly disreputable way.  We trust a proper apology and clarification will be issued.

As regards the rest of Andrew Norfolk’s ‘reporting’ on us, as we have already noted directly to him, it is at best confused and at worst malign.  Read our statement here.