* Finsbury Park mosque
Meanwhile, they have opened an account with a new bank.
Finsbury Park mosque in north London received a letter in July notifying them that their account would be shut down on September 22nd, adding that they should not try to open another account with the bank in the future.
The charity was told that following a ‘general review’ of its customer portfolio, the bank decided it would stop providing banking services to the mosque, because it fell out of HSBC’s ‘risk appetite.’
However, Finsbury Parks’ management believes that the move was an act of ‘anti-Islamic discrimination’ against the mosque and the community that attends it.
Finsbury Park Mosques’ chairman Mohammed Kozbar told RT that HSBC “made it difficult” to ascertain why their account had been closed, but that the mosque is “committed to continue the work it is doing.”
Kozbar also told RT that it was unlikely that the mosque was a credit risk. “We are a local organization; we don’t send or receive money from abroad and our money goes into funding our local work,” he said.
Trustees of the mosque have also hit out at HSBC’s decision, with some calling it a deliberate act of prejudice.
In July, Khalid Oumar told the trade magazine Third Sector that the decision was “clearly discriminatory” and "unacceptable".
Oumar also said HSBC was unwilling to disclose any further information regarding its decision. A spokesperson for Finsbury Park Mosque told RT that it had found an alternative bank, although they would not disclose any details.
The mosque is one of a number of Islamic institutions to have had their banking services revoked. The bank accounts of other Muslim representative bodies, such as the Ummah Welfare Trust and the human rights advocacy group CAGE, were also terminated under the same pretext.
Earlier this year, HSBC closed the business account of the Muslim think tank, The Cordoba Foundation, alongside the personal accounts of its founder and CEO Anas al-Tikriti.
Tikriti says he was "confronted with a wall of silence" when he tried to hold the bank to account over its decision.
HSBC told RT in July that it did not factor race or religion into its commercial decisions, and that discrimination against customers on these grounds would be ‘illegal’ and ‘immoral.’
However, the bank did not comment on the factors it used to make risk assessments.