Tax-Exempt Advice: Beat Your Wife, Lightly

Marriage guidance in three steps

The Hackney Islamic Community Centre, also known as Masjid Daar Al-Hadeeth, posts its lessons on YouTube. In one of them, teacher Yasin Munye recites a poem listing the major sins in Islam. Among them: disobeying one's husband and leaving the house without his permission. For the rebellious wife, he prescribes a method: advise her, then shun her in bed, then discipline her physically.

"By lightly hitting them to show them who is in charge."— Yasin Munye, teacher at the Hackney Islamic Community Centre, in a video lecture

He did not improvise. Quran 4:34 sets out the same three steps, in the same order, and in his farewell sermon the Prophet guru allowed husbands to strike a wife who transgresses, but not severely (Muslim 1218). Hence the "lightly". According to the National Secular Society, which flagged the videos, the lectures also teach that a wife may not refuse her husband sex. In another video, it says, a second teacher, Abu Sa’ad Muhammad, called it a sad reality that many women feel entitled to call the police when their husband hits them.

The rest of the syllabus

In the same lecture, Mr Munye calls gay sex one of the most evil acts, a crime for which both partners should be executed under Sharia, by the sword or by being thrown from a building. That is the method once used by the Islamic State, and the rule of a hadith graded authentic: kill the one who does it and the one to whom it is done (Abu Dawud 4462). In another video, according to the NSS, he approves of Saudi Arabia executing people accused of sorcery. Homosexuality remains a capital offence in Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Mankind, terms and conditions apply

The centre says it supports mankind in advancing the Islamic faith. Mankind, apparently, does not include disobedient wives or gay men. As a registered charity, it enjoys tax relief: in the year to March 2025, it declared £191,097 in income, almost £155,000 of it in donations. In April, it became a charitable incorporated organisation, a status that shields its trustees from the charity's debts. The NSS, which referred the centre to the Charity Commission, wants the advancement of religion itself reconsidered as a charitable purpose.

"This charitable purpose must be urgently reviewed."— Megan Manson, head of campaigns at the National Secular Society

The Commission will assess

The Charity Commission has opened a regulatory compliance case and will decide whether a statutory inquiry is warranted. The mosque has not responded publicly. The regulator knows the genre: in January, it opened a similar case against Green Lane Masjid in Birmingham, whose imam had listed "discipline in the case of rebellion" among a husband's rights, after already giving that charity advice and guidance in 2025. English law, meanwhile, keeps its own list: marital rape has been a crime since 1991, a husband who stops his wife from leaving the house can be prosecuted for coercive control, and hitting her, even lightly, is assault.

In Hackney, a wife who goes out without permission commits a sin. A husband who forbids it risks prosecution. And the charity that teaches it, judging by precedent, risks advice.