UK: New British Muslim group announces launch in apparent challenge to MCB

Further details have been revealed about plans for a new national body aiming to speak for British Muslims, in what appears to be a direct challenge to the leadership credentials of the Muslim Council of Britain.

The new body, which is called the British Muslim Network, is set to hold an official launch on 23 February, according to an invitation seen by Middle East Eye.

Details about the new body were also reported by the Times newspaper on Friday, just one day before the MCB was due to hold elections to elect a new secretary general.

The Times reported that prominent supporters of the new network include Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a former Conservative minister and member of the House of Lords, and Mishal Hussein, a former BBC journalist.   

Others involved in the network are reported to include senior Muslims in various industries, including imams, lawyers, doctors, and academics.

The invitation to the launch event said the network had been created as a result of “the joining of many heads and hearts over the past few months and is linked to conversations that have been taking place in British Muslim communities for many years.

“This civil society network will seek to galvanise experts across all sectors and reach out to listen to the everyday voices of British Muslims, in all our diversity, across the UK.”

The invitation added: “Our diversity is our strength. We will work to create spaces in which the voices of British Muslims are meaningfully heard among key stakeholders, institutions and to policymakers.”

According to the Times report, the group will have a governing body and will be led by a man and a woman.

The latest details about the group have emerged months after MEE first reported on plans to create a new Muslim group designed to engage with the government on various issues.

Sources at the time told MEE the plans were loosely modelled on the structure of the Jewish Leadership Council, an umbrella group representing Jewish organisations that works closely with government and public bodies.

Among the figures reported to be involved in the organisation include Asim Hafiz, a former army imam, and Akeela Ahmed, an equalities campaigner.

Brendan Cox, the husband of Jo Cox, a Labour MP who was murdered by a far-right-inspired gunman in 2016, is also understood to be backing the group along with several campaign groups focused on community cohesion and integration.

Ahmed told Hyphen, a UK-based Muslim news outlet, that the new organisation will not “compete or replace any [existing Muslim] organisation” but did not explicitly mention the MCB. 

Details of Warsi’s reported involvement with the network comes just days after she was one of the main speakers who addressed the MCB’s annual dinner on Monday and criticised the policy of successive governments to not engage with the MCB. 

“How dare they. How dare we be told who we can have to speak on our behalf. How dare we not be allowed the agency of our own representation,” Warsi said during her remarks. 

“How dare we be told that we are going to be accountable for what somebody may have said two decades ago. How dare we be held accountable for every single word of every single person who’s ever been involved in an institution.”

MEE did not receive responses for comment from candidates Dr Mohammed Wajid Akhter and Dr Muhammad Adrees, standing to represent the MCB as the organisation’s next secretary general due to the organisation’s purdah rules during its election periods.

The MCB did not respond to a request for comment.

But last year, a spokesperson for the MCB, which represents hundreds of mosques and Muslim organisations, expressed wariness about the project and called for renewed engagement from the government.

“Previous attempts to manufacture consent on behalf of Muslim communities by government-appointed forums of ‘acceptable’ Muslims have been repeatedly rejected as they operated without any agency and produced no results,” it said.

“We would urge the new government to recognise the rich diversity of British Muslims and ensure credible, democratic bodies such as the Muslim Council of Britain are not excluded from such conversations.”

Government refusal to engage with MCB

MEE understands discussions over the group’s formation came about over concerns of a “vacuum of leadership” after the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attacks in Israel.

Successive governments have mostly refused to engage with the MCB since the last Labour government initially suspended ties in 2009 after the organisation’s then-deputy secretary general signed a declaration in support of Palestinians’ right of resistance, following Israel’s three-week war in Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, between December 2008 and January 2009.

Labour restored ties before its defeat in the 2010 general election, and MCB officials held several meetings with Liberal Democrat ministers during the Conservative-led coalition government that followed until 2015.

But Conservative Party ministers refused to meet MCB officials between 2010 and 2024.

Khadijah Elshayyal, a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh who specialises in British Muslims, described successive governments for not engaging with the MCB as “discriminatory” and hoped the BMN would consider engaging with younger Muslim activists. 

“The establishment of this network will have to show that it is able to connect with activists and everyday voices on the ground – being well-spoken and well-connected is not a qualifier for authentic representation, as countless experiences have demonstrated,” Elshayyal told MEE. 

“A further question is what relevance or utility representation politics continues to have in the current moment.

“We have a blue Labour government which has shown little interest itself in genuine engagement with faith communities and with the now long history of government non-engagement (granted mainly conservative) as well as astroturfing and the longer history of prevent (introduced under Labour), the onus really is on the government, not on communities to come up with polished or palatable platforms. 

“Muslim activism and agency continue in our communities, in the third sector, in formal electoral politics, and beyond, and this is so with/without channels to government engagement, and it makes impacts simply by virtue of the fact that it is deeply woven into the political fabric of our society.”