Muslim Council of Britain denies endorsing British Muslim Network

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) has distanced itself from the British Muslim Network (BMN) after Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, a former government minister, suggested that the new organisation had the MCB's support at a launch event on Tuesday.

Addressing remarks made by Warsi in which she praised the organisers of the new network for reaching out to Muslim community organisations, Wajid Akhter, the MCB's secretary-general, told Middle East Eye that the MCB had not been approached by anyone from the BMN and had not endorsed it.

"It has been brought to our attention that the Muslim Council of Britain has somehow endorsed a new organisation launched this week," Akhter, who was elected to the MCB leadership last month, told MEE.

"No such endorsement has been given and no contact has been established or sought with the current leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain."

Akhter’s comments came after Warsi, a former Conservative minister under David Cameron who now sits in the House of Lords as an independent peer, said that the MCB was among Muslim organisations which had been approached ahead of the launch of the BMN and were supporting the initiative.

"I am delighted that you have reached out to every Muslim community organisation that I could possibly think of, including the Muslim Council of Britain, and I am delighted that you have their support, too," Warsi told the audience.

Warsi said that Zara Mohammed, the previous secretary-general of the MCB, had hoped to attend, and said that Miqdaad Versi, a spokesperson for the MCB, sent "best wishes" to the gathering.

"I know that Zara, the current secretary-general who has just stepped down, was hoping to be here but couldn't be here because of other work commitments, and Miqdaad also sends his best wishes," she said.

MEE has approached Mohammed and Versi for comment.

Notable figures

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, who nearly lost his seat in the last election to pro-Palestine activist Leanne Mohamad by 500 votes, and Labour's faith minister, Lord Wajid Khan, also spoke at the BMN's launch and praised the group.

Streeting admitted that "successive governments and the Labour Party had not got the relationship right" with the Muslim community.

Other notable figures who attended Tuesday's launch event included Brendan Cox (the widowed husband of the murdered Labour MP Jo Cox who has since remarried), who MEE understands is a key figure behind the network. Warsi personally thanked Cox during her speech. 

Figures from the Good Faith Partnership also attended the event, alongside Asim Hafiz, a British Army imam who was appointed as the UK Ministry of Defence's Islamic religious adviser.

Earlier this year, Warsi became one of the first Muslim figures to publicly declare her support for the BMN in a report in the Times newspaper.

Details of Warsi’s reported involvement with the network came days after she was one of the main speakers at the MCB’s annual dinner and criticised the government's policy of not engaging with the MCB, an umbrella organisation of about 600 mosques and community groups which has long been considered the main body representing and speaking for Muslims in the UK.

Sir Stephen Timms, a Labour minister, was spoken to after he attended the MCB dinner. Labour's leadership reportedly "reminded" Timms of his "duty to uphold collective responsibility".

Critics have accused the BMN of lacking credibility within Muslim communities and undermining the MCB's attempts to engage with the Labour government.

The BMN's leadership has argued that the government should engage with a "whole range" of Muslim groups, including both the MCB and the BMN.

The BMN does not claim to be a similarly representative body. But the faith minister's support signals that the government is likely to engage with the new body, despite its ongoing boycott of the MCB.

Lost funding

Last year, Middle East Eye first reported on plans to create a new Labour-supported Muslim group to engage with the government.

MEE  revealed earlier this month that the initiative had lost most of its backing, including hundreds of thousands of pounds in funding. Several Muslim MPs privately said they would not attend the BMN's launch. 

On Tuesday morning, BBC Radio Four asked BMN co-chair Akeela Ahmed whether "reports of withdrawals of offers of funding for your body and disquiet from some Muslim Labour MPs" were true.

Ahmed replied: "It's not true. We are in very early days, we are in start-up days at the moment. We are privately funded, and we are speaking to people within the British Muslim communities about funding for the organisation, but we haven't had any funding withdrawn."

Qari Asim, an imam and another BMN co-chair, recently joined other Muslim scholars in signing the "Reconciliation Accords" with Jewish leaders, including Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis.

The accords were presented as "rebuilding a meaningful trust between Muslim and Jewish communities" and the signatories, including Asim, met King Charles at Buckingham Palace on 11 February.

The BMN's advisory board, made public this week, includes Abdurahman Sayed, the CEO of London's Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre, and Zahed Amanullah, a former director of the Concordia Forum think tank.

Amanullah, currently a fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, spoke at an event hosted by the UAE-backed "countering extremism" organisation Hedayah last December on countering antisemitism and Islamophobia.