Its objectives were twofold:
On 13 July 2026 the Chair of Trustees sent the message reproduced below to explain that the Trust was closing down and had transferred its funds to World Wars Muslim Memorial Trust.
If you share the above objectives, please consider making a donation to World Wars Muslim Memorial Trust.
MESSAGE SENT ON 13 JULY 2026 TO THE MAILING LIST OF THE NATIONAL MUSLIM WAR MEMORIAL TRUST
I knew Lord Sheikh from mid-2006, with our main relationship being our mutual involvement with the Conservative Muslim Forum (“CMF”) that Lord Sheikh had founded.
From early 2019 Lord Sheikh had a number of discussions with me regarding a separate project that he had in mind. He was very conscious that there was no war memorial in the UK specifically commemorating the service of Muslims in Britain’s armed forces. Accordingly, he was thinking of creating a charity that would bring about such a memorial.
Although my CMF involvement ended in June 2019 (as explained on my personal website), neither Lord Sheikh nor I wished to let that affect our other involvements.
Accordingly, when Lord Sheikh proceeded to concretise his thinking about a war memorial charity, I agreed to serve as a trustee. Lord Sheikh particularly appreciated this given my background as a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser, and also my facility with technology. (Until I left the CMF, I was the individual primarily responsible for operating the CMF’s website.)
Apart from Lord Sheikh (Chair of Trustees) and myself, the other individuals Lord Sheikh persuaded to serve as trustees were Lord Lexden, Mak Chishty (retired Metropolitan Police commander), and Major General (Retd) Charles Fattorini.
In September 2022 Lord Sheikh died suddenly. After his death, the remaining trustees elected Lady Sheikh as a trustee. They also elected me as Chairman and Mak Chishty as Deputy Chairman. As our file at the Charity Commission reports, the other trustee changes between then and now are the appointment of Air Marshal Martin Sampson, the retirement of Lord Lexden and Major General Fattorini, and the appointment and retirement of Kawsar Zaman.
Over time, it became clear to me and the other trustees that we were not going to be able to achieve the objective of constructing a Muslim war memorial in London. A project of this kind requires total commitment. The trustees collectively recognised that we were not able to supply this due to our other responsibilities. Nor were we able to identify replacement leadership that could be relied upon to take on the responsibility and to assume custody of the funds that we had already raised.
Charity law, quite properly, puts onerous responsibilities on trustees that we were very conscious of. Accordingly, the trustees resolved to wind up the trust in accordance with its constitution and to transfer all of its funds to another charity that we considered was best placed to take forward a similar mission. The charity we chose was World Wars Muslim Memorial Trust which is registered with the Charity Commission with number 1168606.
We have now transferred all of our residual funds, which amounted to £19,002.59 to that charity and will ask the Charity commission to dissolve our trust.
We are grateful for your past support.
While we would have liked to fulfil Lord Sheikh’s original vision, we are very conscious of the need to make the best use of the funds entrusted to us by many donors (including of course the trustees themselves who were the largest donors) which is why we concluded that the best course of action was to transfer the funds to World Wars Muslim Memorial Trust.
Mohammed Amin
Chair of Trustees
The National Muslim War Memorial Trust