During the third week of August, dozens of Muslim children aged eight to thirteen will spend a long weekend at Phasels Wood Activity Center—a venue typically used for Scout camps and youth retreats—located a short drive from London. They’ll be enjoying the great outdoors under the tutelage of counsellors working for Camp Wilayah, which describes itself as a youth development program that helps children “build character, discipline and spirituality.”
Summer camps offer a closed and immersive experience that is ideal for organizers whose goal is not the child’s happiness, or physical and emotional development, but rather sheer indoctrination.
According to its website, which indicates that girls attending the camp must wear the hijab at all times, Camp Wilayah offers a packed schedule of zip-lining, rock-climbing, shooting, archery, “reflective moments” around campfires, and discussion workshops. The camp charges £225 per child for four days and three nights of camping. Judging from this promotional video, the camp, operated by Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission (AIM), is a lot of fun.
There’s just one catch. Multiple data points—including posts on AIM’s social media accounts and photos of AIM leaders and activists appearing at the camp, some scrubbed from the internet—indicate that Wilayah is a base of support for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
This is profoundly troubling. According to a report published by the Henry Jackson Society in 2023, Iran had been behind fifteen “credible threats to kill or kidnap British citizens or U.K.-based individuals in the past year alone.” (An email inquiry from Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) to the people who run the Phasels Wood Activity Center about why it allows pro-Iranian Islamists to use their property elicited no response.)
Islamist Summer Camp
The camp’s name—Wilayah—is the first clue about its support for Iran. It is derived from Wilayat al-Faqih (“the authority of the jurist”), the principle that Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, uses to justify total political and religious control over the increasingly restive Iranian people.
Then there’s the organization that runs the camp, Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission (AIM). Policy Exchange, a well-known U.K. think tank, reports that AIM leaders have venerated Ayatollah Khomeini—the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran—and his successor, Ayatollah Khamenei, on the internet. According to Policy Exchange, AIM has declared that “Ayatollah Khamenei is for many Muslims a symbol of religious Islamic authority, scholarship and reverence.”
This is pretty ominous given that Khamenei leads a regime that has brutally oppressed religious minorities and women since its founding. Moreover, the organization’s Facebook page includes numerous expressions of support for terrorist groups. It’s the Islamist equivalent of the Politburo or the Chinese Communist Party running a summer camp in Britain.
AIM’s Truculent Rhetoric
AIM did not respond to repeated inquiries—sent through its website and WhatsApp—from FWI about the camp, but did respond to a query from The Times of London in April, declaring that “The Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission serves communities in Britain. Unlike the roughly 3,000 Zionist organisations in the UK, it neither takes orders from nor represents the interest of any foreign power,” AIM declared, adding that, “We are proud of our record in opposing the 140-year Zionist campaign of genocide against the people of the Levant, which has included forced displacement, ethnic cleansing and indiscriminate aerial bombardment, among many other crimes.”
“Times readers should ask themselves why this newspaper is so invested in laundering propaganda for the state of Israel and attempts to smear British citizens on behalf of a hostile and illegitimate foreign state,” AIM declared.
In its coverage of Camp Wilayah and its sponsor, The Times reported that “On October 12, 2023, five days after the Hamas attack on Israel, AIM’s Instagram account shared a message saying that “a flood was inevitable” and the “Zionists brought this disaster on themselves.”
Khomeini’s Ghost Haunts Wilaya
There’s good reason to believe that similar rhetoric will be broadcast around the campfire at Wilayah, which, as documented in images obtained by FWI, has displayed images of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the man who founded the Islamic Republic of Iran, one of the premier sponsors of global terrorism against Israel, Jews, and a dread enemy of Western democracies.
Moreover, Hasan Ali Al-Taraiki—a radical Shia cleric originally from Bahrain—has delivered sermons at the camp. In addition to having ties to AIM, Al-Taraiki is also affiliated with Abrar and Dar Al-Hekma—two U.K.-registered charities described by the Jewish Chronicle as “hubs of support for the brutal Iranian regime and its terror networks.”
Al-Taraiki has taken to Instagram to accuse an American rabbi of supporting the “extermination” of the inhabitants of Gaza. He has also used social media to lionize Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, Hassan Nasrallah, and to lament the presence of a Jew blowing a shofar at Khaybar, the scene of a massacre of Jews recounted in the Qur’an. He has even expressed support for the “Resistance Axis” with an image on Instagram that includes the flags of Hezbollah, IRGC, and the PMF, with the statement, “The Resistance will go on.”
In a now-deleted YouTube video, a portion of which has been archived on X by the counter-Islamist account, Habibi, Al-Taraiki declares that “no leader in the world can be elected without “the consent of the Zionist movement.” (Another video of Al-Taraiki speaking about the Jews can be seen here.)
Hajj Mohammad Baqir Al-Eissa
Another person affiliated with the camp is Hajj Mohammed Baqir Al-Eissa, an apparent Hezbollah supporter who has posted numerous now-deleted images of his appearances at the camp (one of which appears below) on social media. Baqir’s involvement at Camp Wilaya is quite troubling given that his social media profiles includes expressions of support for Hezbollah, proscribed as a terror organization by the U.K. government.
Kamber Hussain
Kamber Hussain, another AIM official with the camp, has shared extensive content on his personal social media channels that aligns closely with Iranian regime propaganda, including visual displays of allegiance to its leadership and ideals. In particular, he has posted numerous links promoting the ideology of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, publicity for the celebration of Al-Quds Day, and support for Qassam Soleimani, the late leader of the IRGC Quds Force, an organization that has provided support to proxy groups responsible for the death of British soldiers.
Obvious Double Standard
The double standard is obvious. While pro-Iranian activists run a summer camp that promotes the ideologies of U.K.’s enemies, just outside of London, British cultural programming is effectively banned in Iran. In particular, the British Council cannot reopen in Tehran since the Iranian government imposed a ban on collaborating with the organization in 2009. To make matters worse, the BBC recently accused Iran of “escalating a campaign of intimidation against its Persian journalists and increasingly targeting the relatives of staff inside the country.” This campaign included “random interrogations, travel bans, passport confiscations and asset seizure threats.” Yet in the U.K. itself, groups linked to Iran’s theocracy are permitted to host camps, charge fees, and influence young British Muslims—with little apparent oversight.
Unique Challenge
Elliott Abrams, former U.S. envoy and national security official for three presidential administrations, warned that such summer camps present a unique challenge for policy makers in the West.
“It is difficult to indoctrinate children living in free societies, because they have so many sources of information,” Abrams said. “Summer camps offer a closed and immersive experience that is ideal for organizers whose goal is not the child’s happiness, or physical and emotional development, but rather sheer indoctrination. In the hands of organizers who embrace radical causes, support foreign regimes, and seek to build new warriors who think violence is acceptable, summer camps can be dangerous for our societies. They may produce not better footballers, climbers, hikers, or swimmers, but better jihadis.”
