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Who Runs the Mosque?: Money, Power and Governance in Britain's Muslim Institutions
Paperback
ManagementIslamGeneral Sociology
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Sep 4 2026
Pages: 258
Weight: 0.77
Height: 0.58 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
You pray there. You donate there. Your children may learn there. But do you know who actually runs it?
Every Friday, millions of pounds pass through Britain's mosques and Islamic institutions. Buildings are bought. Imams are appointed. Children are taught. Funeral funds are collected. Trustees make decisions that can shape a community for decades.
Yet many of the people who sustain these institutions could not name their trustees, explain how they were appointed, say who legally owns the building, or describe what happens to the money they give.
Who Runs the Mosque? goes behind the prayer hall to examine the structures of money, power and accountability that quietly shape Muslim institutions across Britain.
Without sensationalism or naming and shaming individual mosques, Yusuf Al-Qalb asks the questions that are rarely asked out loud:
Who controls the mosque, and who can remove them?
Where does the money actually go?
Who owns the building?
Why can the same committees remain in place for decades?
Why are women, young people and converts so often absent from decision-making?
What happens when family, faction or sect enters the committee room?
Who protects the children attending madrassas?
What happens when an imam depends on the very trustees he may need to challenge?
And when governance fails, who is ultimately accountable?
Drawing on the realities of charity law, trustee responsibilities, mosque finances, safeguarding, employment, property ownership, regulatory scrutiny and community disputes, this book explains a complicated system in language ordinary people can understand.
But this is not an attack on Britain's mosques.
It is a book about protecting them.
Many Muslim institutions were built through extraordinary sacrifice. First-generation communities gave money they could scarcely afford, volunteered countless hours and transformed houses, warehouses and empty buildings into institutions that now serve hundreds of thousands of people. The challenge facing the next generation is different: how do we ensure those institutions remain transparent, accountable and worthy of the trust placed in them?
And this is not simply a book about what has gone wrong.
It shows what can be done.
With practical guidance on reading mosque accounts, understanding trusteeship, preventing conflicts of interest, improving safeguarding, handling cash responsibly, opening membership and reforming constitutions, Who Runs the Mosque? turns scrutiny into a blueprint for stronger institutions.
Its extensive practical resources include questions to ask at an AGM, an annotated set of accounts, guidance on checking an institution's public records, safeguarding tools, a cash-handling protocol, a conflicts-of-interest framework and a model constitution.
Whether you are a congregant, donor, parent, trustee, imam, volunteer, community activist, charity professional, journalist, policymaker, student, or simply someone interested in how religious institutions really work, this book will change the way you look at the building at the centre of so many Muslim communities.
Because the most important question is not whether we trust the people running our institutions.
It is whether we have built institutions that deserve to be trusted.
You know where your mosque is. Now find out who runs it.
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