Muslim Council of Britain Anniversary Dinner Features London Mayor, Global Muslim Brotherhood Leaders

On Novem­ber 25, 2022, the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain (MCB) host­ed a din­ner at the Hilton Wal­dorf hotel in Lon­don to cel­e­brate its 25^th anniver­sary. Accord­ing to an MCB Face­book post:

Tonight the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain began cel­e­brat­ing its 25th anniver­sary at a spe­cial din­ner bring­ing togeth­er our com­mu­ni­ty from around the coun­try. […] Tonight, we begin to reflect on our 25 years of seek­ing the com­mon good and empow­er­ing Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties to achieve a just, cohe­sive and suc­cess­ful British society.

Read the rest here.

The event brought togeth­er high-lev­el politi­cians, includ­ing the May­or of Lon­don, Sadiq Khan (Labour Par­ty), Scot­tish Labour Par­ty leader Anas Sar­war, and Lib­er­al Democ­rats leader Edward Dav­ey. Oth­er spe­cial guests includ­ed Labour MP Naz Shah and Lou­sia Rolfe, Assis­tant Com­mis­sion­er for Met Oper­a­tions in the Lon­don Met­ro­pol­i­tan Police. In his address, Sadiq Khan laud­ed for­mer Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain lead­ers, say­ing:

I want to pay trib­ute to all the Sec­re­tary Gen­er­als this evening. To all the elders who recog­nised the impor­tance of estab­lish­ing the MCB.

In addi­tion to politi­cians and civ­il soci­ety lead­ers, the event also fea­tured appear­ances by Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB) lead­ers, including:

• Iqbal Sacranie, the Found­ing MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al and list­ed as a for­mer trustee of the Union of Good, a world­wide coali­tion of Mus­lim char­i­ties des­ig­nat­ed by the US for Hamas fundrais­ing activ­i­ties and close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the GMB
• Muhammed Abdul Bari, a for­mer MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al and for­mer trustee of the Islam­ic Forum of Europe, the Euro­pean wing of the Jamaat-e-Isla­mi, a South­east Asian Islamist polit­i­cal par­ty close to the GMB
• Tufail Hus­sain, the Direc­tor of Islam­ic Relief UK, a char­i­ty close­ly tied to the GMB
• Omer El-Ham­doon, for­mer Pres­i­dent of the Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain and a trustee of the Euro­pean Insti­tute of Human Sci­ences, the UK chap­ter of the French GMB edu­ca­tion­al insti­tute Insti­tut Européen des Sci­ences Humaines

Leeds imam Qari Asim also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the event. In June 2022, Asim was dis­missed from his post as a gov­ern­men­tal advis­er on Anti-Mus­lim Hatred after back­ing calls to ban a film about the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter.

The UK Labour Par­ty has a his­to­ry of par­tic­i­pat­ing in events by GMB and Hamas sup­port groups in Britain. In April 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that sev­er­al high-lev­el Labour politi­cians, includ­ing par­ty leader Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan, had par­tic­i­pat­ed in a vir­tu­al Iftar meet­ing that also fea­tured MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Zara Mohammed and Zaher Birawi, a promi­nent British pro-Hamas activist. In Octo­ber 2022, the GIOR report­ed that UK Labour Coun­cilor Ibrahim Ali, who had been sus­pend­ed from his par­ty over his past involve­ment in a con­tro­ver­sial British Mus­lim advo­ca­cy group tied to the GMB, had shared a stage with Labour MPs at a Liv­er­pool pan­el debate.

The Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain (MCB) is a UK umbrel­la group that has been dom­i­nat­ed by the Jaa­mat-I-Isla­mi and usu­al­ly acts in con­cert with the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.