Entertainment
Fight breaks out at one of UK’s biggest mosques
LONDON: The Charity Commission is investigating claims of misuse of more than £1m and corruption at one of the UK’s biggest mosques — Hounslow Jamia Masjid & Islamic Centre in West London.
A viral video footage shows worshippers and the mosque management — who are mostly Pakistanis — getting into a brawl inside the mosque — amid accusations of harassment, abuse, intimidation, shoving, punching, and violence.
The dispute started — published in mainstream UK papers — after the former friends and trustees of the mosques fell out with each other and started blaming each other.
Police and an ambulance were called to the scene, the Sun reported.
A trustee of the mosque has resigned his position after 20 years of service — including 10 years as chairman — and a councillor has reported five alleged attacks on his home and car to cops, and begged the council and Labour bigwigs to step in.
In his resignation letter from the mosque, Abdul Majid told how when he ran the Hounslow Jamia Masjid, the bank balance was consistently between £400,000 to £500,000 in credit.
Abdul Majid stated: “Unfortunately, the current financial state of the mosque is a cause for great concern, with the account balance now very low. This, among other matters, has compelled me to conclude that I can no longer continue in this role in good conscience.”
Around £300,000 of charitable donations collected each year at the mosque “do not appear in any official accounts or bank records”. Large collections for the Gaza crisis are “unaccounted for”, he has alleged.
Majid referred to documents in which the firm BNP Paribas Leasing Solutions filed a claim for £150,000 against the mosque’s 11 trustees in a row over a 12-year lease of photocopiers. An out-of-court settlement — “without full board approval or proper discussion” — means the mosque is paying the company £5,000 per month until August 2027.
A lucrative security contract went to a close associate of the mosque’s senior leadership team. Relatives were awarded the contract to supply groceries and meat to the mosque. A series of contracts have been reported without a transparent bidding process, the Charity Commission was told.
It has been suggested that “unqualified” individuals have been appointed to key financial positions. There is a major problem surrounding “familial relationships”, the Charity Commission was told.
The councillor also reached out to Dan Bowring, chair of the Brentford and Isleworth Constituency Labour Party. He called for a formal Labour Party probe into the “conduct of certain individuals within our party who are misusing their official positions and community influence to incite hostility and endanger the safety of elected members.”
The mosque is frequented by up to 4,000 Muslims a day.
A source at the mosque said about the leaked fight footage that some worshippers were banned from the premises after leaders accused them of causing “breach of the peace and public disorder”.
One of the people also banned from the mosque was the councillor. Those expelled were told that returning to the mosque would be viewed as “trespass” and tensions are still understood to be “heightened”.
The Charity Commission, responsible for ensuring the governance, management, and administration of a charity is fit for purpose, said in a statement: “We have opened a regulatory compliance case into Hounslow Jamia Masjid and Islamic Centre to assess concerns regarding the charity’s governance.”
A source at the mosque said: “It’s all about personal animosity. There is no truth to the allegations. The people involved in the dispute used to be best of friends, had joint business and social matters. They fell out and have taken their personal issues to the mosque, making it a big issue. The allegations are baseless and frivolous.”
The mosque source said that they will set out their position very soon and bring facts before the public and the worshippers. He said every allegation of financial corruption is false.
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Entertainment
Taylor Swift shares top favourite show from 2025 amid holiday season
Taylor Swift loves to keep her brain working in other directions while she is not writing music or planning stadium tours.
The 36-year-old pop superstar revealed what she is watching as soon as she has time to turn the TV on, after a long day at the studio or on the stage.
The Fate of Ophelia hitmaker shared the hectic routine she had during the Eras Tour in the recently released docuseries, End of an Era.
While her daily routine does not involve flying from one city to another and putting on a 3.5-hour-long show, she unwinds by watching some crime investigations on Dateline.
The 14-time-Grammy winner has been a longtime fan of the show, and she gushed about the show during her recent interview on Stephen Colbert’s late-night show as well.
“My kind of profession is coming up with ideas for stuff. So, if I can turn off the ideas for a second? Very exciting. I’ll put on — I’ll put on my Dateline, do you know what I mean?” Swift told the host of her favourite pastime.
The Opalite songstress is so deeply involved in the show that she was actually inspired by it to write her song, Florida!!!, on The Tortured Poets Department.
“I’m always watching like… Dateline, people have these crimes that they commit, where do they immediately skip town and go to? They go to Florida. They try to reinvent themselves, have a new identity, blend in,” Swift said in an interview after the release.
Entertainment
Australia probes security services after Bondi Beach attack
- Attack described as inspired by “Daesh ideology”.
- Review to examine powers, structures and information-sharing.
- ASIO investigated the son in 2019, no threat found.
SYDNEY: Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Sunday he has ordered a review into the police and intelligence services after two gunmen shot and killed 15 people at a Jewish festival on Bondi Beach.
A father and his son are accused of spraying bullets into the family-thronged Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s most famous beach on December 14, allegedly inspired by “Daesh ideology”.
Albanese said his government will examine whether police and spy services have the powers, structures, and sharing arrangements “to keep Australians safe”.
“The [Daesh]-inspired atrocity last Sunday reinforces the rapidly changing security environment in our nation,” he said.
“Our security agencies must be in the best position to respond.”
Alleged gunman Sajid Akram, 50, was shot and killed by police during the Bondi attack. An Indian national, he entered Australia on a visa in 1998.
His 24-year-old son Naveed, an Australian-born citizen, remains in hospital under police guard and faces multiple charges, including terrorism and 15 murders.
‘Shocking event’
The son was investigated by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation in 2019 for possible radicalisation but was found at the time not to pose a threat, according to Australian authorities.

His father was also questioned by the intelligence service as part of that review, but he managed to obtain a gun licence that allowed him to own six firearms.
A few weeks before the Bondi Beach attack, the pair returned to Sydney from a four-week trip to the southern Philippines that is now under investigation by detectives there and in Australia.
Albanese said there were “real issues” with Australia’s intelligence service in light of the attack.
“We need to examine exactly the way that systems work. We need to look back at what happened in 2019 when this person was looked at, the assessment that was made,” he told national broadcaster ABC.
Asked in a separate interview about the alleged gunmen’s stay at a hotel in the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, Albanese said their radicalisation was under investigation.
“But it is also the case that they were not seen to be persons of interest, and that is why this is such a shocking event,” he said.
‘Very, very unusual’
There is a long history of insurgencies in the Mindanao region but authorities there say there is no evidence to suggest the Philippines is being used to coach extremists.

The staff of Davao City’s GV Hotel have told AFP that the two men stayed holed up in their small room for most of their 28-day stay.
They would usually leave their rooms only for two or three hours, with the longest excursion lasting eight hours, the Philippine national security service said.
Regional police, who have trawled through CCTV images to retrace the pair’s steps and discover who they met, said the father had visited a gun shop.
Clarke Jones, an Australian National University criminologist, said it was “very, very unusual” to have a father and son as suspected perpetrators.
Once in the Philippines, the pair could have easily travelled to Mindanao without raising any flags, he told AFP.
Jones, who has worked with violent offenders in the Philippines, said the alleged gunmen’s radicalisation had apparently gone “under the radar” for years after the Australian intelligence probe.
“I think we would really need to look at what happened, and whether that kid, when he was first detected, should have been put through some sort of support programme to prevent this potential thing happening,” he said.
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