How Islamists Influence the UK Government

Last week, the Runnymede Trust published a report, forecasting a ‘bleak and dystopian’ future for Muslims in the UK. Chief executive Shabna Begum told the Guardian that

“Sayeeda Warsi coined the term ‘the dinner table test’, but I think we’ve got even beyond that… The way politicians talk about Muslims now is so derogatory, it’s in the most brutally divisive terms.

“Politicians are engaging in a popularity contest and that popularity contest is measured by how far they are willing to bully and demonise Muslims. And that has become not just an acceptable kind of currency, but a way in which to earn your political stripes.”

The Trust is infamous for having introduced the term “Islamophobia” into common parlance in 1997 — the same year the Blair government came to power, and proceeded to revolutionise Britain’s legal system. “Islamophobia” was devised as a means to silence criticism of Islam by the terrorist group the Muslim Brotherhood. Former Islamist, Abdur-Rahman Muhammad confirmed a meeting took place where members of a Muslim Brotherhood outfit, the International Institute for Islamic Thought, plotted to “emulate the homosexual activists who used the term ‘homophobia’ to silence critics.” It seems to have been successful, given former Prime Minister, Lord David Cameron refused to ban the Brotherhood in 2015 — despite them being banned in multiple Islamic countries, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and sanctioned in Qatar and Turkey.

The report was supported by both Baroness Warsi and the Muslim Council of Britain. In September, Warsi, the former Chair of the Conservative Party under Cameron, announced that she had withdrawn her party whip in protest against “how far right my Party has moved”. She used the news to promote her new book, titled Muslims Don’t Matter. As our review on Courage noted, this book about Islam features staggeringly few references to the Quran (two) or the Prophet Mohammed (four).

But while Warsi and the Runnymede Trust accuse Britain writ large of institutional Islamophobia, the truth is that civil servants, activist groups, and both Labour and Conservative governments have spent millions on PR campaigns with the aim of advancing Muslim interests — particularly in the aftermath of terror attacks. It should alarm you all to learn that the grieving parents of the Manchester Arena attack were told “Don’t Look Back In Anger” in a coordinated propaganda effort by the UK government. Here’s how taxpayer funds were spent on gaslighting the public to rehabilitate the image of Islam.

The body responsible is called RICU — the Home Office’s Research, Information, and Communications Unit. Some learned about it during the COVID pandemic, thanks to Laura Dodsworth’s A State of Fear. Others may have heard of it in a report by GB News this month, which revealed that civil servants produced a report calling the grooming gang scandal, in which thousands of girls across England were sexually exploited by predominantly-Pakistani Muslim perpetrators, a “grievance narrative” fabricated by “right-wing extremists”. The report warned “right-wing extremist narratives (particularly around immigration and policing) are in some cases ‘leaking’ into mainstream debates”. It classified “Cultural Nationalism” as “extreme right-wing”: with the “main belief” being “’Western culture is under threat from mass migration’”. Another example: “Claims of ‘two-tier’ policing, where two groups are allegedly treated differently after similar behaviour”. As I mentioned in a previous essay, there are ample double-standards to point to in Britain’s justice system, regarding those imprisoned for civil unrest following the Southport murders this summer. The Labour government have denounced and distanced themselves from the paper.

RICU has also received notoriety in recent years as the parent body of counter-extremism programme, Prevent. Like many ostensibly neutral institutions, Prevent has been subject to ideological capture since its inception. A recent video circulating on X, urging those undergoing Prevent training to report teenagers for posting stickers opposed to mass immigration, has alerted some to this. But the insidious absurdities stretch back over a decade.

A review of Prevent found that, in 2019, RICU had compiled a dossier of materials circulated by social media users described as “actively patriotic and proud”. The canonical texts of these far right radicals include: books by Peter Hitchens, Melanie Phillips, and Douglas Murray; Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan; John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government; Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France; The Lord of the Rings; Beowulf; C.S. Lewis; Micahel Portillo’s Great British Railway Journeys; and, without a hint of irony, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Curiously, the Qur’an and Hadiths were not mentioned — despite Islamic groups being the predominant perpetrators of lethal terror attacks both in the UK and the world. Ninety percent of the suspects on MI5’s watchlist are Islamic terrorists — equivalent to 1% of the entire British Muslim population. Since October 7th, arrests for terror offences in the UK have increased by 23 percent. But this embarrassing obsession with neo-Nazis hiding beneath every bed led to Prevent thinking watching The Thick of It would turn you into Anders Breivik.

As such, the Shawcross review concluded “Prevent is not doing enough to counter non-violent Islamist extremism”, and has applied “a double standard when dealing with the extreme right-wing and Islamism.” It found that

the present boundaries around what is termed by Prevent as extremist Islamist ideology are drawn too narrowly while the boundaries around the ideology of the extreme right-wing are too broad.

Shawcross was concerned that Prevent staff were unwilling to consider Islam as a motivator of terrorism and extremist violence, saying that:

When discussing Islamism, Prevent staff frequently came back to issues relating to mental health concerns and ‘vulnerabilities’. Ideology, if acknowledged at all, was treated as a secondary factor and a derivative of a wider psychological or social issue. Put simply, ideology was not seen as an essential part of the trajectory towards terrorism, instead it was viewed as one of many potential radicalising factors.

Only 22% of Prevent referrals in 2020 – 2021 were for Islamic extremism; despite Islamic extremism comprising 80% of the Counter Terrorism Police network’s live investigations. Right-wing extremism were only 10% of live investigations, but 25% of Prevent referrals. Shawcross was concerned that Prevent had become myopically obsessed with right-wing extremism. A tragic example of Prevent’s skewed priorities is the recent revelation that Abi Harbi Ali — who murdered Sir David Amess MP at a constituency surgery in Southend, Essex on October 15, 2021 — had been reported to Prevent in 2014, but had only one meeting before his case was closed. Amess’ daughter, Katie explained to The Times that “The police told us they didn’t follow up with him due to an admin error”. According to a July 2024 coroner’s report, Ali’s six-month case review was “missed”, and a 12-month review revealed “nothing of concern”. Meanwhile, RICU staff were classifying right-wing extremism to encompass reading The Chronicles of Narnia.

In his report Shawcross reiterated that

It is worth restating that Islamist terrorism is currently the largest terrorist threat facing the United Kingdom.

But Shawross expressed concern that the focus of Prevent and counter-extremism programmes was being purposefully drawn away from Islamism by bad-faith actors. He notes that the founding chair of the National Association of Muslim Police’s (NAMP) West Midlands branch shared videos on his social media which called for the destruction of Israel and described Jews as “filth”, and speeches delivered by a pro-Hamas cleric and a former Guantanamo Bay detainee (who has since joined CAGE). That same NAMP branch chair authored a paper in 2020, advising Counter Terrorism Policing to drop the terms ‘Islamism’ and ‘jihadism’. Other NAMP branches have hosted events with Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), whose former members have been accused of glorifying terrorism.

This trend has continued recently: with the Met Police distancing itself from former advisor Mohammed Kozbar, a member of the force’s London Muslim Communities Forum which “inform[s] and help[s] shape police policy and procedure at a strategic level”. Kozbar was found to have praised Hamas as “the master of the martyrs of the resistance” after October 7th, and expressed support for the now-proscribed group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Shawcross credits the campaign against Prevent monitoring Islamist extremism to Hizb ut-Tahrir, writing

In 2008, the revolutionary Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir published a report framing the strategy as an attempt by the state to gain “control over the Muslim community in Britain”, to bring about a “reformation of Islam”, and to “ban Islamic ideas”. These lines of argument have set the tone for much of the campaign against Prevent ever since.

Kozbar’s praise of Hizb ut-Tahrir may help explain why, in response to a video of Hizb ut-Tahrir gathering after October 7th to call for “Muslim armies” to wage “Jihad” against the West, the Met Police obfuscated by saying on X, “The word jihad has a number of meanings”, and that they had “not identified any offences arising from the specific clip.” In January, the Conservative government proscribed Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terrorist organisation, making belonging to or supporting the group a criminal offence. This had been attempted by the Conservatives back in 2007, while in opposition — but Keir Starmer, then-Director of Public Prosecutions, took it upon himself to submit an application to the European Court of Human Rights in June 2008 on Hizb ut-Tahrir’s behalf, saying “it is very important that everyone is represented”.

Despite Shawcroft’s findings, the new Labour government has announced their intent to use counter-terrorism bodies to tackle “Extreme misogyny” and the “radicalisation of young men online” by influencers like Andrew Tate. This follows police chiefs declaring a “national emergency” due to a rise in violence against women and girls — following a 37 percent increase in four years. Children’s commissioner Dame Rachel de Souza found the average age of male sexual abuse suspects is fifteen, and the average age of female victims is thirteen; with violent pornography referenced in fifty percent of case transcripts. However, no mention was made of the impact of immigration on sex offences committed against grown women — increasing by fifty percent on public transport in the last two years. As I wrote recently, non-EU migrants (>80% of annual new arrivals to the UK since 2020) commit violent crimes and sex offences two-to-eight times more than Western Europeans and East Asians. Freedom of information requests revealed in September that migrants were arrested 34 percent more often than British nationals in 2023. But solving this problem would require that the government acknowledge their immigration policy is to blame. Reporting offensive Facebook posts instead keeps up the pretence that the government’s reputation remains unblemished.

But why are the government and civil service’s priorities so eschewed? One explanation may be a decades-long effort of Muslim entryism in the Home Office. (A suggestion which, very soon, could be illegal under British law.)

As Steven Edginton reported last April, a 700-strong Islamic Network within the Home Office have worked since 2005 to recruit more Muslim staff, “influence policymakers”, and “Facilitate and support Home Office engagement with external stakeholders from Muslim communities” to support “Muslim needs”. A Home Office whistleblower described it as “an Islamic lobby group [which] represents a serious threat to the Government’s aims in combating Islamic extremism and granting asylum to those fleeing Islamic countries over religious persecution.” In March, Permanent Secretary Matthew Rycroft and other senior civil servants attended an Islamic Network event to celebrate Ramadan. This may explain why Rycroft and Home Office minister Jess Philips MP refused to answer questions from civil servants concerning which foreign nationals commit the most crimes in Britain.

This network may also have influenced the agenda of RICU and Prevent. Former MI6 officer Charles Farr established RICU in 2007. In 2011, a government review concluded that an effort to “identify credible partners” and develop “more professional counter-narrative products” was required. To oversee this, they appointed Richard Chalk, chief of staff to then-Conservative Party chair, Baroness Warsi, as its head. Chalk had returned from conducting classified work in Baghdad during the Iraq war, for British PR firm Bell Pottinger. David Hill became Bell Pottinger’s CEO in 2007, after serving as Tony Blair’s Director of Communications since 2003. Hill replaced spin doctor Alastair Campbell — infamous for compiling the “dodgy dossier” which encouraged Britain and America to invade Iraq in search of fictitious WMDs. Hill is married to former Downing Street press officer Hillary Coffman, herself previously married to David Seymour — Alastair Campbell’s editor at the Daily Mirror. This incestuous network might explain Campbell’s demand that Douglas Murray be arrested for suggesting Blair and his successors’ immigration policies fuelled the riots following the Southport massacre. The permanent fixtures of the political establishment have grown so intolerant of criticism, that Murray’s bestseller, The Strange Death of Europe, earned a place on Prevent’s terror watch-list.

But RICU didn’t spend all its time treating beloved authors like Manchurian agents. Following the Home Affairs Select Committee hearings in 2016, The Guardian reported that, “Under Chalk’s leadership, RICU began communicating with British Muslims in a manner more reminiscent of counter-insurgency operations than a traditional public information campaign”. The purpose of RICU became to manage public perceptions in the aftermath of Muslim terror attacks. Middle East Eye reported on internal RICU documents which stated the unit worked “at an industrial scale and pace” to develop messages which “effect attitudinal and behavioural change”. Methods were modelled on observing how social media was used to coordinate the 2011 Arab Spring, and contingencies to manage public anger in the event of a terror attack during the 2012 London Olympics.

RICU’s tactics take two forms: directing print, broadcast, and social media to run prefabricated headlines, hashtags, photos, and videos; and “controlled spontaneity” events, where groups of activists and imams would be mobilised for vigils and photo ops. For example, government disaster and recovery adviser Lucy Easthope wrote that “The “I Heart” messages that appear in cities, in the wake of a terrorist attack, are not always spontaneous [but instead] carefully planned in advance.” As Dodsworth documents:

After the terror attacks on London Bridge in 2017, there were bunches of flowers and graffiti messages of solidarity behind the cordons at the scene of the attack. On social media there were outpourings of support and positively-themed hashtags, such as #TurnToLove, #ForLondon and #LoveWillWin. The media resounded with comments from faith leaders and politicians. You probably thought all of this was spontaneous. Some of the flowers might have been – the British public is generous and demonstrative – but much of the response was reportedly pre-planned by the UK government.

Another pre-prepared campaign was the Union Jack hijab published on the front page of The Sun newspaper, after British aid worker Alan Henning was beheaded on video by ISIS in 2014. The image had been developed by Breakthrough Media, a communications company with close ties to the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism at the UK Home Office. It had been prepared in anticipation of a high-profile terror attack — not specifically for Henning’s murder — to “promote the true face of Islam among vulnerable UK communities”.

Emails procured by freedom of information access requests show RICU monitored online responses to the front page, calling it “our product”. A similar campaign a month prior was #MakingAStand, by Inspire founder Sara Khan as a “jihad against violence”. Then-Home Secretary Theresa May attended the campaign launch; which should surprise nobody, as a 2015 government document, titled “Prevent Strategy: Local delivery best practice catalogue”, referred to the campaign as a “RICU Product”. It’s just a coincidence, I’m sure, that Sara Khan’s sister, Sabina Khan, was the deputy head of RICU. A similar coincidence happened during the COVID pandemic: as Clap for Carers founder, Annemarie Plas, had a friend working in Downing Street, and suddenly saw her campaign attract support from the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Beckhams, and the Prime Minister within twenty-four hours.

The most egregious example of this industrial-scale gaslighting operation was in the aftermath of the 2017 Manchester Arena attack, where Muslim suicide bomber Salman Abedi murdered twenty-two people, including seven children, at an Ariana Grande concert. After the Manchester Arena attack, Easthope wrote in The Guardian, “I was wrong to insist in my training that the first message should be “we will overcome” [and] that the fight rhetoric has gone too far”. What Easthope appears to insinuate is that the Home Office had a hand in coordinating the response, which involved telling the grieving parents and British public, “Don’t Look Back in Anger”.

It appears RICU overplayed its hand in June 2023, when paranoid schizophrenic Valdo Calocane stabbed two 19-year-old students, Barnaby Webber and Grace O’Malley-Kumar, and 65-year-old school caretaker Ian Cotes, in Nottingham. Before the identity or motive of the murderer had been revealed, a vigil was organised in Old Market Square, where O’Malley-Kumar’s mother said, “Look after each other, don’t have hate in your hearts,” and Webber’s mother told the crowd, “Please hold no hate that relates to any colour, sex or religion.” Nottinghamshire Police and Crime Commissioner Caroline Henry said: “There is no place for hate in the healing process… It’s important that we remain united and come back stronger from this tragedy as Nottingham together.”

This was strange, as there was no evidence suggesting this had been a racially-motivated attack, or an act of Islamic terror. Even stranger were the prefabricated balloons and banners present at the vigil, saying “Choose Love,” and “One City #NottinghamTogether”, suspended above the stage where the parents gave speeches. Behind the parents were a procession of priests, imams, and Sikh granthis, presumably to show solidarity among religions. This seems eerily reminiscent of the London Bridge Attack in 2017, after which #TurnToLove, #ForLondon, and #LoveWillWin were trending on Twitter, and Middle East Eye reports a government official telephoned Southwark Council to inform them “We’re sending you a hundred imams” to read out a pre-prepared statement, condemning the attack. Again, this is despite the Nottingham stabbings not being an Islamic terror attack.

Instead, Calocane was free to commit the three murders because Nottinghamshire mental health services had failed to section him, despite him previously assaulting a police officer and being detained in hospital four times. He had an outstanding warrant for his arrest when he was released from hospital. At Calocane’s trial, his charges were downgraded to manslaughter: meaning he received no prison time, and is even entitled to claim thousands in state benefits (including universal credit and employment support allowance). Since, Webber’s mother, Emma, has given interviews, expressing disgust that state broadcaster the BBC had given “quite a sympathetic” interview to Calocane’s parents — and saying she has “no sympathy” for the “the family that brought that individual into this world and into our country.” Webber has spoken much more candidly when not involved in a vigil, organised by Nottingham’s local government.

Despite accusations that it “targets vulnerable young British Muslims”, the purpose of RICU seems to be selling the native British public on mass Muslim immigration in the immediate aftermath of Islamic terror attacks. Effectively, the Home Office acts as a PR body for Muslims in the UK — demanding the British public not be enraged by the violent Islamists imported into their midst before the bodies of their children are cold.

Hence why, in the aftermath of the Southport massacre and subsequent spontaneous riots across Labour constituencies in England, people grew suspicious when multiple newspapers with different ideological leanings ran the same image and headline of antiracist protestors as a united front against “the Far Right”. Suspicions intensified when this Socialist Workers Party and Stand Up To Racism rent-a-mob gathered in opposition to “a hundred Far Right rallies” reported by national news outlets — all of which failed to materialise. Yet again, it appeared the narrative control engine had been kicked into overdrive.

Nick Lowles, head of HOPE Not Hate, admitted that, “Yes, the list was a hoax, but just look at the front pages of today’s papers”. Dodsworth found that, in 2020, the UK Cabinet Office spent £184 million in public funds on pandemic advertising — including £35 million on the ‘All in, All together’ campaign in national and regional newspapers. Public Health England became the UK’s largest advertiser, and the government the sixth biggest advertiser, during this year. Just like in 2014, the government could tell newspapers which stories to run during times of national crisis. Was the same done here, to quell the civil unrest across the UK?

HOPE Not Hate are a key thread in the activist network which mobilises these “controlled spontaneity” crowds. Lowles had previously spread a hoax about Muslim women being acid-attacked during the riots, cited by members of armed Muslim militias which attacked innocent bystanders. Labour Josh Fenton-Glynn MP shared Lowles post, and retracted when Middlesbrough police said there was no evidence to support Lowles’ claim. It is curious, then, that Lowles was never questioned by police or arrested over spreading this misinformation, which led to real-world violence. People such as Bernadette Spofforth were arrested for circulating the false identity of the Southport stabber, and held in custody for 36 hours on suspicion of publishing written material to stir up racial hatred and false communications. (This false identity was first published on website Channel3Nowby Pakistani national Farhan Asif — who had his charges inexplicably dropped, despite Asif admitting to posting the false story, and misleading police during questioning.) Why was Lowles not also investigated by the police?

Questions have also been raised by HOPE Not Hate operative Harry Shukman’s use of a fake passport, to pose as alias “Christopher Charles Morton”, during a recent documentary.

How did Shukman come to possess such a convincing fake? Who fabricated it for him? Would this constitute a crime under the Identity Documents Act 2010? Why have the Metropolitan Police not investigated the matter — despite me filing a report, and requesting updates, last month? Did HOPE Not Hate have undisclosed assistance from a government department or intelligence agency in gaining this fake passport to deceive members of the public? Given none of the subjects of the documentary have been suspected of or charged with a crime, what would be the justification for (if any) state involvement?

Perhaps it is because HOPE Not Hate are integrated into both the sitting Labour government, and the Home Office’s narrative control operations. During the civil unrest after the Southport massacre, HOPE Not Hate was invited to Parliament by Labour MP Sarah Owen. Owen has since become vice-chairman of the HOPE Not Hate Parliamentary group; joined by fellow Labour MPs Antonia Bance, Gurinder Singh Josan, and Government Whip Anna Turley. Labour Baroness, former MP Ruth Smeeth, was secretary and a board member of HOPE Not Hate until July 2024. Turley and Singh Josan also resigned as directors that same month.

But it’s not only the new Labour government which has used HOPE Not Hate to run interference for disastrous mass immigration and multiculturalism policies. Under the prior Conservative government, the Home Office awarded HOPE Not Hate grants of £50,000 and £141,380 in 2019-2020 to “brief multiple departments… on emerging trends in UK hate”. The funds were provided by the Home Office Counter Extremism Unit, via Bedfordshire, Luton, and London Community Foundations.

HOPE Not Hate also received payments of £240,000 (2022/2023), £275,000 (2019/2020), and £60,000 (2015/2016) from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation — a total of £585,000 over eight years. This was part of the Foundation’s Migration Fund, established to create “a UK network of young migrant leaders,” and a “network of leaders and organisations within towns who will respond to local needs and pressure points and share learning to enable rapid response to provocative elements.” The grants were subheaded “More and Better: Inclusive Towns”, and the “Hopeful Towns Network”. In other words, money was given to HOPE Not Hate to mobilise large crowds in towns and cities to counteract public opposition to mass immigration and multiculturalism. Were HOPE Not Hate involved in the admitted “hoax” which led to antiracist activists on the front page of multiple newspapers during the Southport riots?

Between 2020 and 2023, the Paul Hamlyn Foundation received £1.36 million in government grants. All of this was done while the Conservatives were in power. This is despite the Hamlyn Foundation giving the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants grants £225,000 in 2023, £60,000 in 2022, £210,000 in 2019, and £60,000 in 2016. The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants campaigned against the government’s Rwanda Plan and “all other third-country forced resettlement agreements.” It also funded Detention Action, which brought a legal case against the Rwanda Plan. This activist network has sought to influence the Government’s Migration Advisory Committee: an unelected body established by Tony Blair which sets the annual expected level of immigration as policy. Director of the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, and daughter of Thatcher ally Lord Sumption, Madeline Sumption has been a member of the Migration Advisory Committee since 2016. She has received a 10-year £2 million funding grant by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation for her organisation, Compas, and sits as an advisory board member on pro-migration NGO, Reunite Families UK. It is little wonder, then, why anytime a Conservative MP or Prime Minister promised to reduce immigration, the Migration Advisory Committee recommended policies which resulted in Britain receiving record new arrivals instead.

Why were the Conservative government funding its ostensible enemies? HOPE Not Hate, too, profiled MPs and Ministers in its annual State of Hate report, alongside groups like the Combat 18 and the National Front. Comically, our very own ARC Conference was shown on page 9: as if Jordan Peterson and Ayaan Hirsi Ali are indistinguishable from the “Nazis” mentioned on page 2. The group also ran an article on me earlier this year, for having the audacity to interview former Prime Minister Liz Truss about her time in office. This was while Liz was still an MP — meaning the government and Home Office were funding an activist organisation which smeared members of Parliament and their own party, and members of the public as antisemites. For this reason, HOPE Not Hate were profiled in 2018 by the Swedish government’s Defence Research Agency (FOI): as their dossiers made political opponents the targets of vigilante Antifa gangs. Is the British state’s narrative control engine so self-driving that Prime Ministers since Cameron and May were unaware of this? Or are the activists so enmeshed in the civil service that they ensure their job security by pre-emptive attacks against any government minister who might try to remove them?

Nor are HOPE Not Hate a credible source of what is and isn’t “extreme”. Their researcher, Matthew Collins, was a former member of neo-Nazi organisations including the British National Party and Combat 18. He then joined HOPE Not Hate; and posted on Facebook that he had joined the British Communist Party. At an event in 2013, Collins was filmed saying “Comrades, brothers and sisters, HopeNotHate.co.uk, you are our Red Army!” in front of a Soviet Flag. Stalin’s Red Army was responsible for the murder and rape of thousands of civilians in Germany and Poland during the Second World War. Excuse me if I don’t take Collins nor his outfit’s claims of counter-extremism seriously, when they switch from one flavour of genocidal socialism to another.

One explanation for why successive governments and the Home Office have engaged with organisations like HOPE Not Hate is RICU’s effort to maintain a good reputation for Muslims in and entering Britain. In 2017, HOPE Not Hate ran an article from #MakingAStand’s Sara Khan in its State of Hate report. Kahn became commissioner of the May government’s Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group, which appointed Nick Lowles as a member. Khan’s sister was still deputy head of RICU at this time.

Also in this Working Group was founder of Tell Mama, Fiyaz Mughal OBE. In 2018, Tell MAMA’s annual report accused then-Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson of causing a reported 375 percent increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes with a Telegraph column which compared Muslim women wearing niqabs to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”. The evidence for this? An increase from 8 to 38 self-reported call-ins to a Tell MAMA helpline, which required no proof of crime nor a police report. As one might expect, this Working Group was disbanded when Johnson became Prime Minister.

However, Johnson’s leadership rival, and permanent fixture of Conservative government cabinets, Michael Gove sought to appoint Mughal as an anti-Muslim hatred adviser under the later Sunak government. Mughal refused the role after receiving criticism from fellow Muslims, who accused him of being “a sell-out”. As then-Communities Secretary, Gove liaised with RICU to shape the Prevent strategy. According to senior Conservative sources, Gove became obsessed with carving off and incorporating “large parts of the Home Office and Justice into his department.” In my attempts to uncover why, one prominent Tory who worked with Gove told me, “He’s a control freak.” It appears personal career ambitions may have advanced Islamic interests in government just as much as ideology. It is also worth remembering that this department, now titled the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, is responsible for approving the planning permission for various mosques — including the planned conversion of Piccadilly Circus’ landmark Trocadero building into a mosque and community centre.

The response of Gove, the Sunak government, and the Home Office to the pro-Palestine protests which occupied Westminster every weekend after October 7th, was to tackle nebulous “extremism”, and focus more on the phantom threat of “the Far Right” than the very real Islamic calls for intifada. Gove drafted a new definition of extremism, citing Tell MAMA statistics claiming “a 335% increase in anti-Muslim hate cases” since October 7th. Stating that the UK is “a multi-national, multi-ethnic, multi-faith democracy [made] stronger because of its diversity”, Gove defined extremism as:

The promotion or advancement of an ideology based on violence, hatred or intolerance, that aims to:

• negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others; or
• undermine, overturn or replace the UK’s system of liberal parliamentary democracy and democratic rights; or
• intentionally create a permissive environment for others to achieve the results in (1) or (2).

He stated that the definition was based on a 2021 Operating with Impunity Report, written by Metropolitan Police Commissioner and former Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group member, Sir Mark Rowley, and #MakingAStand’s Dame Sara Khan. (Reminder: Rowley was the sensible man who suggested he would extradite Elon Musk for X users posting videos of the riots following the Southport massacre; and who slapped a microphone out of a reporters’ hand for asking, “Are we going to end two-tier policing, sir?”)

The only mention Gove gave to the pro-Hamas crowds of thousands, who broadcast their genocidal intent onto the tower housing Big Ben during Parliament’s ceasefire vote, was by asking Muslims to not “march alongside extremists”. When asked if he could define Islamism as a distinct extremist doctrine, Gove said: an ideology “that seeks to set Muslims apart from the rest of society”, “divide Muslims themselves”, apply Sharia law, and create “an Islamic state”.

The problem for Gove is that some of the mosques he provided funds to have been doing exactly that. In March, Gove pledged £29.4 million in taxpayer funds to “protect UK Muslims” — an increase of £4.9 million pledged after October 7th. In June 2023, mosques, Muslim faith schools, and “community centres” were given £28 million for increased security. After the Southport massacre and subsequent unrest, Starmer’s government “offered new emergency security” for mosques, with emergency funding pledged atop Gove’s provisions. But Britain’s mosques have become hotbeds of Muslim radicalism. In the Lewisham Islamic Centre, imam Ashraf Dabous blamed “Zionists” for the protests and riots following the Southport massacre. Recent lectures at An-Noor Masjid and Community Centre in Birmingham and Muhammadi Masjid in Bradford have excused marital rape and domestic abuse, citing Islamic scripture. These are only recent examples; with Ed Hussain cataloguing many more in his 2021 book, Among the Mosques. Why are Prevent, RICU, and government departments not obsessively monitoring and legislating against such sectarian criminal establishments — let alone providing them more funding and security?

Even documenting all of this could have me fall afoul of planned Islamophobia laws. After the expulsion of 25 sitting and former Conservative councillors for “Islamophobic social media posts” in 2019, then-Cabinet Office minister Gove insisted he was committed to an Islamophobia inquiry. The broadening out of the inquiry’s scope to “all forms of prejudice” were criticised by Baroness Warsi, who continues to say that “Islamophobia is dangerously out of control”. Under prior Conservative and the new Labour governments, Warsi has sat on the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. Its co-chair is Sarah Owen: the very same vice-chairman of HOPE Not Hate’s Parliamentary group, who invited them to Parliament. The APPG has devised a definition of Islamophobia, and long sought to implement it into British law. It is:

Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.

This illiterate, self-referential definition is a net so broad that it ensnares political opponents, while permitting acts of racial and religious hatred committed by Muslims to go unpunished. It lists examples of what might qualify as Islamophobia:

• Calling for, aiding, instigating or justifying the killing or harming of Muslims in the name of a racist/ fascist ideology, or an extremist view of religion.
• Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Muslims as such, or of Muslims as a collective group, such as, especially but not exclusively, conspiracies about Muslim entryism in politics, government or other societal institutions; the myth of Muslim identity having a unique propensity for terrorism, and claims of a demographic ‘threat’ posed by Muslims or of a ‘Muslim takeover’.
• Accusing Muslims as a group of being responsible for real or imagined wrongdoing committed by a single Muslim person or group of Muslim individuals, or even for acts committed by non-Muslims.
• Accusing Muslims as a group, or Muslim majority states, of inventing or exaggerating Islamophobia, ethnic cleansing or genocide perpetrated against Muslims.
• Accusing Muslim citizens of being more loyal to the ‘Ummah’ (transnational Muslim community) or to their countries of origin, or to the alleged priorities of Muslims worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.
• Denying Muslim populations the right to self-determination e.g., by claiming that the existence of an independent Palestine or Kashmir is a terrorist endeavour.
• Applying double standards by requiring of Muslims behaviours that are not expected or demanded of any other groups in society, eg.. loyalty tests.
• Using the symbols and images associated with classic Islamophobia (e.g. Muhammed being a paedophile, claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule) to characterize Muslims as being ‘sex groomers’, inherently violent or incapable of living harmoniously in plural societies.
• Holding Muslims collectively responsible for the actions of any Muslim majority state, whether secular or constitutionally Islamic.

Under this definition, observing that Muslims commit, per capita, a disproportionate number of terror attacks in Europe, or three times the number of sexual offences against children than native Britons, or even citing verses from the Qur’an and Hadiths, will be a criminal offence. It is ironic that this definition is being pushed again after October 7th: as Hamas’ 1988 covenant, tacitly and sometimes explicitly supported by all on the pro-Palestine marches, cited Sahih al-Bukhari 2926, which says

“The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. “O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.”

Will me saying these inconvenient truths be enough to warrant my surveillance by Prevent? Or my prosecution under this proposed Islamophobia definition?

Before the general election, Keir Starmer interviewed the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, at Eid and committed to make it easier for British Muslims to get visas for Hajj, and use his “experience as a prosecutor” to criminalise online Islamophobia. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper blamed Islamophobia for the unrest after the Southport massacre. Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner couldn’t provide a definition of Islamophobia when asked in Parliament by Lee Anderson MP; but she and Starmer had already formally adopted the APPG definition in 2019.

Even Mughal has since written in The Times that the APPG definition “will curtail free speech with no tangible legal basis.” (However, Mughal then advocated “a definition with true legal value” be produced to censor critics and “to protect Muslims.”) No wonder he is concerned: as he previously resigned from Warsi’s working group, accusing her of being a vehicle for “a form of entryism, by people with no track record in delivering projects”, and expressed deep concerns about the views held by “some of the groups they were recommending be brought into government”. Would Mughal, a Muslim, be guilty of Islamophobia under Warsi’s APPG definition?

In late September, Labour faith minister Lord Khan wrote in a letter to the Network of Sikh Organisations that the APPG definition would be abandoned, as it is “not in line with the Equality Act 2010, which defines race in terms of colour, nationality and national or ethnic origins”. Instead, a definition will be sought which “comprehensively reflects multiple perspectives and implications for different communities” — meaning the effort to instantiate a de facto Islamic blasphemy law is still underway.

Another concerning factor is which activist groups may have influenced the APPG’s definition, and might benefit from the ensuing chilling effect around criticising Islam. Before resigning from Cabinet over the government’s “morally indefensible” stance on Gaza, Baroness Warsi had a record of engaging with Muslim groups who she described as “although not illegal, are clearly illiberal.” Warsi won a libel lawsuit against Colonel Richard Kemp, who suggested in Jewish News that she had sought to excuse the actions of Islamic State — so it warrants reiterating that any amplification of bad faith actors by Warsi was purely accidental. Nonetheless, the figures brought into the orbit of the Home Office while Warsi was Conservative Party Chair include Mend, who invited Warsi to seven events between 2015-2018. Mend is one of many organisations who fund the Islamophobia Awareness Month initiative — which has received more publicity this November.

Mend’s former head of Community Development and Engagement, Azad Ali, was found guilty in 2010 of using his personal website to justify the killing of British troops in Iraq. Ali left Mend to join CAGE — which denounced Gove’s effort to redefine extremism in 2024 in partnership with Palestine Action, Black Lives Matter UK, and others who excused the October 7th attacks. Both CAGE and the Muslim Council of Britain told The Telegraph they would bring legal action against the government if named by Gove’s extremism definition. Zara Mohammed, the current head of the MCB, told BBC Newsnight that Gove’s extremism definition would lead to the “unfair targeting of Muslim communities”.

Likewise, Mend’s chief executive, Azhar Qayum, said he “placed the government on legal notice” concerning the extremism definition. After October 7th, Mend criticised the government as “anti-democratic” for designating Hizb ut-Tahrir as a terrorist organisation, after the group gathered to call for “Jihad” and for “Muslim armies” to rise up at a pro-Palestine rally. Despite this, Warsi had said that Mend “has the potential for real change” and advocated for “broader and deeper engagement with British Muslim communities, [via] both individuals and organisations” like Mend.

Warsi also invited Muddassar Ahmed, former senior activist in the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC), to join her Parliamentary working group on anti-Muslim hatred. MPAC stated “every Muslim who does not participate in that war [with non-Muslims] is committing a major sin”. Another member was Iftikhar Awan, a former trustee of Islamic Relief — which has faced allegations from the US, Dutch, and German governments that it is linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. According to The Telegraph, other members of the working group

tried to get the Government to rebuild ties with the [Muslim Council of Britain] and also to open new links with the IHRC and the Cordoba Foundation, a body described by David Cameron as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”.

As Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s essay for Unherd on October 7th, 2024 reminds us, the Muslim Brotherhood established Hamas. While the home of both Mecca and Medina, and other Muslim states have banned the Brotherhood, in Britain,

for those of us unwilling to turn a blind eye, our Islamist enemies are ready with their tried-and-tested accusations of Islamophobia, carefully deployed to shut down discussion of the true nature of their threat. Any critics of the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoots are defamed as racist and intolerant — as purveyors of “hate”.

This long march by Islamists through our institutions, playing on the guilt complexes and good intentions of liberal politicians, has resulted in Britain being a more hospitable place for Islamic terror groups and their sympathisers than many Muslim states.

Another organisation targeted for infiltration by the Muslim Brotherhood was the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). The Cameron government’s 2015 Muslim Brotherhood Review found that

for some years the Muslim Brotherhood shaped the new Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), dominated the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and played an important role in establishing and then running the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). MAB became politically active, notably in connection with Palestine and Iraq, and promoted candidates in national and local elections. The MCB sought and obtained a dialogue with Government. MAB were active partners in a security dialogue with the police and collaborated with the police in ejecting Abu Hamza, the militant Salafist preacher, from a mosque in north London. The MAB have participated in the governance of this mosque ever since.

In its response, the MCB said “We have no affiliation to the Muslim Brotherhood or any other foreign organisation”, and that it “rejects entirely the insinuation that it is either soft on terrorism or ‘have consistently opposed programmes by successive Governments to prevent terrorism’ as stated by the findings”. However, the MCB has been banned from engaging with Whitehall since its deputy director-general, Dr Daud Abdullah, signed the Istanbul Declaration in 2009. The declaration committed to “carry on with the jihad and resistance against the occupier until the liberation of all Palestine”, and was interpreted as calling for attacks on the British Royal Navy by stating “the sending of foreign warships into Muslim waters, claiming to control the borders and prevent the smuggling of arms to Gaza, [is] a declaration of war, [which] must be rejected and fought by all means and ways.” The MCB claims it “never endorsed the declaration” and “specifically reject any notion that we endorse an attack on the Royal Navy”. It did, however, under Abdullah, led a boycott of Holocaust Memorial Day — raising suspicions as to why it called to “end to the violence in and around Gaza” on October 8th, while failing to mention the murders and rapes in Re’im on the 7th.

But, as the MCB points out, this has not prevented them from engaging with government departments and members of Parliament. They state that, in 2010, two Cameron government Cabinet Ministers attended an MCB dinner; and in 2011, then-Attorney General Dominic Grieve MP was the Chief Guest at an MCB Awards Ceremony. After October 7th, the charity Interfaith was closed after it failed to condemn the attacks on October 7th, and counted a member of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) among its board of trustees. Despite this, Interfaith received £3.8 million in taxpayer funds from the government since 2010. The ban on engaging with the MCB was reiterated by then-Communities Secretary, now Conservative leadership hopeful, Rober Jenrick MP in 2023. However, the Ministry of Defence was found in November last year to have used the MCB to refer imams to become chaplains in the British armed forces. A letter from the MoD in 2021 said

the MoD does have an arrangement to consult with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) in the appointment of imams to the armed services … [The] MCB is one of many endorsing authorities used by the MoD.

A post on the MCB website on the 26th of July 2023 boasts that the first imam to receive a commission in the Royal Air Force had been “endorsed by the MCB”. Since this news, Conservative MP Nick Timothy has revealed that the MCB’s Charitable Foundation — a loophole HOPE Not Hate also exploits to engage in political activity while getting tax-exempt donations — received over three-quarters of recent funding from the government’s Department for Work and Pensions. While the engagement ban remains in place, ideologues within government departments simply ignore it, and deepen ties with the MCB despite questionable views.

Despite the benevolent intentions of Warsi, and presumably others, the Home Office has been hijacked by Islamic extremists who seek to insulate their beliefs from public criticism. The UK government is redistributing billions in taxpayer funds to activist organisations who smear critics of Islam with accusations of every bigoted belief under the sun. The British state is caught in a tug of war: between liberal politicians and civil servants who seek to protect Muslims through funding, legislation, and propaganda efforts; and Muslim activist organisations — with unsavoury ties to, or tacit sympathies for, terror groups — who wield accusations of Islamophobia and racism against those same liberal politicians in order to advance Islamist goals. They move in concert to frustrate the agenda of politicians like former Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who was vocal about the anti-British and antisemitic hatred at pro-Palestine marches. As the i newspaper reported, while Michael Gove was Communities Secretary,

It was Gove who was clear during Suella Braverman’s resignation that this was not the moment for the great right-wing breakaway many Sunak detractors had hoped for. The net effect was to isolate Braverman, who, as the more “extreme” voice, with her heated rhetoric aimed at Gaza protesters, left Badenoch positioned for broader appeal.

In all of this, the British people are the victims: gaslit by their own government, using their own money, anytime their friends, family members, or countrymen are injured, raped, or murdered by an imported Islamic terrorist. They are called racist, put on watchlists, and will be prosecuted for pointing to Islam as a causal factor in all of these avoidable crimes. This is because the government, too, is implicated anytime a terror attack occurs. If only they recognised the truth, and stopped importing Islamic terror into Britain, then we would not have to suffer so.

What must be done? Any insurgent political force looking to undo the damage inflicted on Britain by decades of Islamic infiltration must commit to:

• A transparent investigation into RICU and Prevent since their inception.
• The defunding and disbanding of RICU, and its replacement with a parent-body for Prevent with a commitment in its charter to never again wage psychological operations on the British public.
• Replacing the Prevent programme with a body dedicated to monitoring Nazi (not nebulous “Far Right), communist, and Islamist activity respectively. All such definitions must be presented clearly in guidance, via consultation with a range of academics and political scientists.
• A revision of the Charities Act (2011); and stripping activist organisations of their charitable status for any affiliation with violent communists or Islamists.
• Ensuring anyone in the civil service, government, or a charity/NGO who has collaborated with a proscribed terror group will be prosecuted.
• Ensuring foreign nationals convicted of collaborating with or supporting a proscribed terror group, such as Hamas, or who have committed any crime, will be deported to their country of origin.
• Abandoning any plan to criminalise Islamophobia, and committing to the untrammeled right of all persons to freely criticise any belief system. Any reference to Islamophobia must be expunged from British law, and judicial and policing guidance.
• Ensuring any civil servant who frustrates the agenda of democratically elected ministers, and who refuse to carry out acts of Parliament, will be sacked, and banned from further employment or engagement with government departments.

As of yet, nobody in public life has committed to an agenda so comprehensive. But, to prevent Britain from being subsumed by Islamism, in its naive crusade against racism, all of these steps are necessary. The rot now runs so deep, it is hard to believe. But we must remember what has been done to us — to the families of the victims of terror attacks — all in the name of fighting “Islamophobia”.