An Islamist radio station, penalized by U.K. media regulator Ofcom for broadcasting hate speech, has responded to the ruling accusing the government watchdog of “Islamophobia.”
Ofcom announced on July 14 that it had fined Markaz Al-Huda Limited, a private company which runs the radio station Salaam BCR, £3,500 for a “highly offensive” 38-minute speech which “contained antisemitic hate speech and abusive and derogatory statements.”
In order to defend us from Islamist supremacism, the government must walk back its commitment to enshrine the concept of Islamophobia.
The regulator’s sanction is casting the spotlight on a growing network of radio stations that broadcast radical Islamist programs in Urdu and Arabic and have previously been punished by Ofcom but continue to function in the U.K. with little regulatory oversight.
Markaz-Al-Huda’s defiant response adds fuel to the debate over the Labour government’s push for a contested definition of Islamophobia and vindicates critics who have warned that even a non-statutory definition approved by the state will stifle free speech and criticism of Islam.
Broadcaster’s Links with Pakistani Pro-Caliphate Islamism
Salaam BCR broadcast the speech twice on October 17, 2023, in which a Pakistani Islamist speaker “evoked antisemitic tropes that depicted Jewish people as the devil, by implicitly and collectively associating them with characteristics commonly associated with Satan,” Ofcom ruled.
Ofcom reports that in his talk, Shujauddin Sheikh labelled Jews “the worst enemies of humanity” with a “history” of “killing prophets to only protecting their own interests [sic],” “instigating war,” and “lending money with interest and strengthening their economy, to achieving a bigger purpose for themselves.”
The National Secular Society (NSS) reports that Shujauddin Sheikh leads Tanzeem-e-Islami, an Islamist organization from Pakistan whose website promotes an Islamist theocracy and advocates for the implementation of Sharia law in Pakistan. Shujauddin Sheikh himself has expressed support for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
According to the Jamestown Foundation, Tanzeem-e-Islami’s “pro-caliphate, ultra-orthodox teachings are congruent with the ideology of militant Islamist groups.” The Karachi Counter Terrorism Department has linked the group with Islamic State terrorism and the May 2015 massacre of 43 members of the Ismaili-Shia community in Karachi.
Radio Station Defies Government Watchdog
In October 2024, the radio station responded to Ofcom’s Breach Decision by returning its broadcasting license as a “gesture of our objection to fairness and disgust [sic],” complaining that it had become “so disillusioned with those that run Ofcom.”
Asserting that it would “contest any decision that Ofcom proposes,” Markaz-Al-Huda said it could not operate under the watchdog’s “racist/Islamophobic prejudicial hardline policies” and “Ofcom’s hardline [policy] towards Muslims [sic] broadcasters on MW/AM.” Markaz-Al-Huda also accused the regulator of being a “puppet instrument heavily run and supportive of a Zionist agenda which makes [it] a discriminative and Islamophobic organization,” stating it would not be “accountable to a supposedly independent regulator that works at the behest of foreign forces.”
“The speech provided a critical examination of Zionism…and the policies associated with it … particularly in the context of the state of Israel” and “Israeli aggression against the Palestinians,” and therefore should be “distinguished from hate speech,” Tanzeem-e-Islami argued.
Campaigners Warn Against Deploying ‘Islamophobia’ Definition
Jewish, Christian, and secular campaigners, who united to condemn the Islamist broadcaster, reiterated their warning on the dangers of a government-endorsed definition of “Islamophobia.”
“The preacher’s attack on Ofcom’s decision as ‘Islamophobic’ shows how the term ‘Islamophobia’ is being weaponised for Islamist supremacism not only in the Holy Land but here in the U.K. as well,” Carys Moseley, Public Policy Researcher at Christian Concern, told Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
“In order to defend us from Islamist supremacism, the government must walk back its commitment to enshrine the concept of Islamophobia,” Moseley, author of Nationhood, Providence, and Witness: Israel in Modern Theology and Social Theory, warned. Ofcom’s ruling is a timely warning about the theological roots of contemporary antisemitism as regards the Israel-Gaza conflict.
“This rhetoric is abhorrent. If it were aired on a major broadcaster, it would be a scandal, so how is a measly fine of £3,500 proportionate? This is the right outcome but a very disappointing sanction, and there is every risk that the broadcaster may reoffend,” a spokesperson for the Jewish group Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) told FWI.
“Regulating foreign language media is not easy, but that is all the more reason to send a stronger message when major infractions like this are discovered,” the CAA spokesperson remarked. “We will also be reporting this to the Charity Commission. Our regulators need to get a serious grip on extremism in their sectors.”
Islamist Broadcasters Fined for Repeated Offences
Ofcom has repeatedly cracked down on Islamist broadcasters for breaching its regulations on hate speech. In April, the broadcasting authority began an investigation into the Islam Channel for continuing to promote jihadist terrorism, Jew-hatred, and Wahhābī-Salafi Islamism.
Ofcom’s website records multiple breaches by the Islamist channel, which attracts over two million British Muslim viewers daily, FWI reported in April 2025. In 2007, The Guardian Reported that Ofcom fined the network £30,000 for breaking the broadcasting code by having pro-Hamas activist Yvonne Ridley, who once declared Zionists should be “hunted down,’ present news programs while she was a candidate in local elections.
According to The Guardian, the Islam channel, which has platformed leading Muslim Brotherhood voices, was censured by Ofcom in November 2010 for five programs advocating for marital rape, violence against women, and describing women who wore perfume outside of the home as “prostitutes.” Ofcom fined the channel £20,000 in November 2020 and £40,000 in September 2023 for broadcasting antisemitic programming.
In April 2023, Ofcom imposed a penalty of £10,000 on Ahlebait TV Networks after finding that its program titled “Money Power, Islam and a Just Order” amounted to antisemitic hate speech and derogatory and abusive treatment of Jewish people.
Will U.K. Charity Commission Act?
Meanwhile, in comments to FWI, the National Secular Society confirmed that it had reported Markaz-Al-Huda to the U.K. Charity Commission, noting that “these comments, broadcast within days of the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, were antisemitic in the extreme.”
“We urge the Charity Commission to take an equally robust approach to this charity and ensure it cannot publish hateful or divisive sermons in the future, even if that means removing the charity from its register. Extremists must be prevented from exploiting the charity sector,” Megan Manson, NSS Head of Campaigns, said.
“That this charity responded to Ofcom’s concerns by calling the regulator ‘Islamophobic,’ also demonstrates how legitimizing the use of the term, including by creating an official definition, empowers extremists,” Manson stressed. “We hope Ofcom will continue to take a robust stance against broadcasters’ media which promotes hate and division, including by revoking the licenses of repeat offenders.”
Markaz-Al-Huda did not respond to a request for comment.
