The Muslim Charities Forum highlighted that the British Muslim community in the UK donates over five hundred million each year to charity
By Hashim BhattiMar 28, 2023
On the eve of Ramadan last week leading British Muslim Charities and philanthropists from across the country were invited to Downing Street to celebrate the hundreds of millions of pounds donated by British Muslims to support some of the most vulnerable communities in the UK and abroad.
The round table was chaired by the newly appointed Faith Minister, Baroness Scott. The Minister was keen to hear about the work the Muslim charities were doing across the country and the challenges they faced.
The Muslim Charities Forum, an umbrella organisation which represents all the largest Muslim charities in the UK, who attended the roundtable, highlighted that the British Muslim community in the UK donates over five hundred million each year to charity, of which one hundred and fifty million is donated just in the month of Ramadan.
Baroness Scott
Many of the guests highlighted the importance that over sixty percentage of the attendees of the roundtable were women including Muslims from different ethnic and theological backgrounds. The strength in depth of Muslim women in leadership positions was also highlighted at the round table by the attendance of the first Muslim women chief executives of both a national and international Muslim charity.
At the historic event, the Faith Minister thanked both British Muslims and the Charities for all their hard work in the UK and abroad. The minister reiterated that the Government has already started to look into ways it can support a number of challenges they are facing from providing more support for faith-based mental health services to how the Government can work with faith-based charities and philanthropists to support their levelling up plans.
Father of Sumeet Sabharwal, a pilot who died when an Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft crashed during take-off from an airport, offers prayers as he stands next to the body of his son in Mumbai, June 17, 2025. (Photo: Getty Images)
THE 91-YEAR-OLD father of the Air India pilot involved in a June crash that killed 260 people has approached the Supreme Court seeking an independent investigation into the incident.
The petition calls for a probe that looks beyond pilot error and asks for an independent panel of aviation experts headed by a retired Supreme Court judge to examine other possible causes.
The move marks an escalation in protests by the father and a pilots' union over the government’s handling of what was the world’s worst aviation disaster in a decade. The crash occurred soon after takeoff from Ahmedabad.
The pilot’s father, Pushkar Raj Sabharwal, filed the plea weeks after publicly criticising the government investigation. He said officials from India’s Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) had visited him and implied that his son, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal, cut the fuel supply to the plane’s engines after takeoff.
The government has denied the allegations, describing the probe as “very clean” and “very thorough.”
In his October 11 filing, the father told the court that the investigation team appeared to “predominantly focus on the deceased pilots ... while failing to examine or eliminate other more plausible technical and procedural causes,” one of the sources said.
The petition seeks to close the current government-led probe and transfer it to a new panel chaired by a retired Supreme Court judge and including aviation experts, two sources said. They spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Supreme Court has yet to take up the case, which the court’s website on Thursday showed had been jointly filed by Sabharwal and the Federation of Indian Pilots against the government. The site did not provide further details.
The AAIB, the civil aviation ministry, planemaker Boeing and Air India did not respond to Reuters requests for comment. Sabharwal’s father and the pilots’ union also did not reply to emails seeking comment.
A preliminary AAIB report said the Boeing Dreamliner’s fuel engine switches had almost simultaneously flipped from “run” to “cutoff” just after takeoff.
A cockpit recording supported the view that Captain Sabharwal had cut the fuel flow to the engines, a source briefed on US officials’ early assessment of the evidence in July told Reuters.
The Federation of Indian Pilots represents about 5,000 members.
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