The U.K. government will allocate millions of pounds to a new watchdog tracking anti-Muslim hatred, despite its alleged Islamist ties and a likely conflict of interest in which the head of the new monitor is also a government advisor on the proposed definition of “Islamophobia.”
This Labour government has decided to spend public money to recreate the very work that Tell MAMA was doing without fear or favor.
The decision has sparked further controversy amidst accusations that the Labour government stripped its existing monitor Tell MAMA (Measuring Anti-Muslim Attacks) of funding because its founder has challenged a government-approved definition of “Islamophobia.”
The government announced on July 21 that it had appointed the British Muslim Trust (BMT) as “part of a new government drive against record levels of anti-Muslim hate,” with Akeela Ahmed MBE as the CEO of the new watchdog.
Ahmed, co-chair of the BMT—a company that exists on paper but is currently operationally inactive since its creation in 2018—is one of five key advisors in the government’s Working Group advising Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner on a definition of “Islamophobia.”
The BMT, which only launched its website on July 22, will receive £1 million annually from the government as it begins monitoring incidents this autumn. Meanwhile, the government has stripped Tell MAMA, which received £6 million since its founding in 2012, of all funding.
Parliamentarian Warns of Conflict of Interest
Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of TellMAMMA, a publicly funded organization that documents incidents of anti-Muslim hostility in the U.K. has been attacked by Islamist organizations for not doing enough to fight “Islamophobia.” Mughal is also a founder of Muslims Against Antisemitism.
(Crown Prosecution Service)
On July 22, Conservative lawmaker Claire Coutinho asked why Labour had pulled funding from the “widely respected independent anti-Muslim hatred charity” Tell MAMA and reallocated it to the BMT.
“The founder of Tell MAMA opposes the divisive Islamophobia definition that Labour is trying to force through, saying it will inflame tensions and breed resentment with the public,” Coutinho wrote on X, warning that “a definition being cooked up behind closed doors by activists with extreme views on how to define Islamophobia is only going to create more division.”
Coutinho condemned the government’s conflict of interest, outlining how Ahmed, a “supposedly ‘independent’” advisor selected to draft the “Islamophobia” definition, is to profit financially from taxpayer funds given out by the government she is tasked with advising independently.
Tell MAMA’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal OBE, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI) that the government had “placed obstacles in the way of Tell MAMA since June 2024 and pressurized it to hand over materials and the running of the project, possibly to hand over to selected groups.”
Mughal elaborated:
This Labour government has decided to spend public money to recreate the very work that Tell MAMA was doing without fear or favor. They have just granted over £2.5 million to the BMT, which is a dormant company. One has to ask, how, and why, when the company has never traded in significant social engagement activities.
BMT’s Co-Founder’s Conflict of Interests
FWI identified further links of conflict of interest between the BMT and the Aziz Foundation (AF), which co-founded the monitor alongside the Randeree Charitable Trust (RCT).
AF has funded multiple ventures lobbying for a statutory definition of Islamophobia, including:
- The All-Party Parliamentary Group’s (APPG) Islamophobia Defined report (2021), urging the government to impose a definition of Islamophobia “rooted in racism” that will set “appropriate limits to free speech” when talking about Muslims. (The text of this report specifically mentions the “generous support” provided by the Aziz Foundation toward its completion.)
- The Strategies for Eradicating Islamophobia in the UK report published on AFZ’s website in 2024 warns of “devastating and real consequences” since “the government has failed to adopt a formal definition of Islamophobia.”
- The Countering Islamophobia on Campus report published by AF 2025 reiterates the call for a racism-linked definition of Islamophobia.
The APPG report quotes Akeela Ahmed as having “stressed that a definition with legal power is required, one that could be implemented by the government and the police.”
AF has also opposed the government’s anti-radicalization program, stating in a 2021 tweet that its values “do not align with those of the Prevent policy, which actively harms Muslims.” According to the U.K. based Jewish News, AF’s website also listed Tarket Younis, an academic at Middlesex University, who supported de-proscribing Hamas and called for having all “Zionists removed from our institutions” as a mentor for Muslim students. (Once Younis’s hostile social media posts were uncovered by Jewish News, his name was removed from AF’s website, the publication reported.)
AF also funds the Centre for Media Monitoring (CMM), which works to suppress references to the “faith or Islamist motives” of attackers, even during jihadi terror incidents, by labelling such coverage as “Islamophobic,” FWI reported.
BMT’s Islamist Links
Nafeez Ahmed.
(Elevate Festival via Flickr)
Ahmed is married to Nafeez Ahmed, a former researcher with the Khomeinist Islamic Human Rights Commission, sponsor of the Iran-backed annual Al-Quds march held annually in London to oppose Israel and Zionism. He has since distanced himself from the IHRC.
In February, Ahmed was appointed chair of the British Muslim Network (BMN), which she co-founded. The Orthodox Sunni-led body will brief the government on a wide range of Muslim-related issues, representing an added conflict of interest.
A FWI investigation found that the BMN is dominated by Islamist allies. BMN’s co-chair, Qari Asim, serves as senior imam at Leeds Makkah Mosque, which adheres to Sunni fundamentalist Deobandi doctrine.
In 2022, the Conservative government dismissed Asim as an advisor on “Islamophobia” after he supported protests for a Shia-produced film on the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter, The Lady of Heaven, to be banned.
Julie Siddiqi, another BMN co-founder, is a former executive director of the Islamic Society of Britain. Brigitte Marechal’s The Muslim Brothers in Europe: Roots and Discourse stated that the outfit was “based on a chaotic partnership” between members or former members of the Muslim Brotherhood and former members of Jamaat-e-Islami.
Another BMN co-founder, Imam Asim Hafiz, graduated from the Darul Uloom al-Arabiya al-Islamiya, a Deobandi seminary in Greater Manchester, whose website stated that Satan uses women “as his avenue to create evil in society,” The Times reported in 2016.
Human rights activist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, warned of BMN co-chair Qari Asim: “For far too long the British government has consulted and even partnered with duplicitous clergymen like Mr. Asim. They represent the non-violent but no less sinister arm of the Medina Muslims, the proponents of dawa—radicalization that stops short of explicit calls for jihad, but points in that direction.”
Neither the Aziz Foundation nor the BMT responded to a request for comment.
