Tehran Calling - The Iranian Threat to the UK - Dr Paul Stott

Its 1996 memorandum of association stated that ‘at all times at least one of the trustees shall be a representative of the Supreme Spiritual Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran’.11 At least until 2017, the charity’s accounts included the same sentence: ‘At all times one of the trustees shall be a representative of the Supreme Spiritual Leadership of the Islamic Republic of Iran.’12 In reply. [...] Shomali was formerly the director of the International Institute for Islamic Studies in Qom, director of the Manchester Islamic Centre, and tutor and director of the Hawza Ilmiyya in London.24 In 2018, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s International Quran News Agency (IQNA)25 described Shomali as the ‘representative of the 20. [...] o r g / took the shape of a ‘Faith and the Contemporary World’ forum, intended web/20210728031150/https:/ic-el.uk/ to celebrate the milestone of the ‘40th Anniversary of the victory of the about-us/ 43. [...] While the identity of the group founder is unclear, just four accounts held ‘admin’ status, and two of the numbers are associated with Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission (with the name of ‘Samir’), and the Islamic Human Rights Commission.86 The administrators periodically left the group open for messages and the public organising was chiefly driven by ‘Samir’, using a phone number associated with the Ahlul. [...] The exact number of Shia Muslims living in the UK is unknown, and, according to a response by the Office of National Statistics, cannot be answered under the existing measures and without in-depth research.95 In 2017 it was estimated that around six per cent of the UK’s mosques were run by and for Shias, with approximately three per cent by the Twelver Shias, to which the majority of Shia in the U.