UK Islam Channel Acquires Historic Left-Wing Magazine

The UK Islam Chan­nel has acquired his­toric British left-wing mag­a­zine Tri­bune, aim­ing to expand its print and dig­i­tal con­tent offer­ings. The pub­li­ca­tion was found­ed in 1937 by Labour Par­ty MPs Sir Stafford Cripps and George Strauss and at one point employed George Orwell. Tri­bune will see expand­ed print issues and new dig­i­tal con­tent under the new own­er­ship, vow­ing to its edi­to­r­i­al inde­pen­dence. On 9 June 2025, the Press Gazette report­ed that Mohamed Ali Har­rath, the founder of the Islam Chan­nel, had acquired the long-run­ning polit­i­cal mag­a­zine. The arti­cle begins:

The own­er of Britain’s Islam Chan­nel has acquired left-wing polit­i­cal mag­a­zine Tri­bune – a title which has been pub­lished for 88 years and at one point employed George Orwell. The satel­lite broad­cast­er said that the pub­li­ca­tion will now increase its print fre­quen­cy from its cur­rent quar­ter­ly lev­el, and will also launch new con­tent such as pod­casts, video and newslet­ters. The cur­rent edi­to­r­i­al team led by Alex Niv­en will stay in place, and Bhaskar Sunkara, founder of the Amer­i­can social­ist pub­li­ca­tion Jacobin, which bought Tri­bune in 2018, will remain on a new edi­to­r­i­al advi­so­ry board chaired by Labour MP Jon Trick­ett. Tri­bune mag­a­zine was found­ed in 1937 by Labour Par­ty MPs Sir Stafford Cripps and George Strauss, and counts politi­cians such as Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot as for­mer edi­tors. George Orwell worked at the title for years as lit­er­ary edi­tor and authors such as Upton Sin­clair and Doris Less­ing were pub­lished in the mag­a­zine. The pub­li­ca­tion cur­rent­ly reach­es 10,000 read­ers every quar­ter in print for an annu­al sub­scrip­tion of £29.95 (£19.95 dig­i­tal-only) as well as reach­ing “hun­dreds of thou­sands” online every month via its web­site, Islam Chan­nel said.

Read more: https://pressgazette.co.uk/publishers/magazines/islam-channel-tribune/

Key Points

• The UK Islam Chan­nel has acquired his­toric left-wing mag­a­zine Tri­bune, expand­ing its pres­ence in polit­i­cal and cul­tur­al media.

• Tri­bune will move from quar­ter­ly to more fre­quent print pub­lish­ing and launch video, pod­cast, and newslet­ter content.

• Tri­bune said its edi­to­r­i­al lead­er­ship would stay intact, with Bhaskar Sunkara and MP Jon Trick­ett form­ing a new advi­so­ry board.

• Tribune’s cur­rent read­er­ship includes 10,000 print sub­scribers and a broad online audi­ence each month.

The Islamist-Left-Wing Nexus in the UK

The Islam Chan­nel is a UK media com­pa­ny that fre­quent­ly pro­motes the works of indi­vid­u­als asso­ci­at­ed with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. CEO Mohamed Ali Har­rath who had pre­vi­ous­ly been want­ed by Inter­pol on charges of ter­ror­ism in Tunisia. In March 2025, the GIOR report­ed that the chan­nel faced an Ofcom inves­ti­ga­tion for alleged­ly incit­ing Islamist extrem­ism and breach­ing impar­tial­i­ty rules.

The ide­o­log­i­cal and oper­a­tional part­ner­ship between far-left groups and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed net­works in the UK draws ongo­ing scruti­ny, notably through instances such as the new­ly sup­port­ed left-Islamist polit­i­cal alliance around Cor­byn, mobi­liza­tions for Pales­tin­ian advo­ca­cy, and broad­er Euro­pean activ­i­ties echo­ing through sim­i­lar cam­paigns in Ire­land and Bel­gium. The Mus­lim Brotherhood’s alliance with left-wing polit­i­cal move­ments in the UK rep­re­sents a strate­gic con­ver­gence of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dis­parate groups unit­ed main­ly by their oppo­si­tion to West­ern for­eign pol­i­cy and per­ceived impe­ri­al­ism. This red-green polit­i­cal coali­tion has man­i­fest­ed through orga­ni­za­tions like the Stop the War Coali­tion, which has been dom­i­nat­ed by both Trot­sky­ist groups and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed enti­ties such as the Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain since the 2003 anti-Iraq War demonstrations.

This nexus lever­ages sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paigns, anti-war activism, and oppo­si­tion to state counter-extrem­ism poli­cies, blur­ring the lines between advo­ca­cy and influ­ence oper­a­tions. Research high­lights how left­ist actors and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood groups, includ­ing the Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain and MEND, uti­lize anti-Israel and social jus­tice caus­es as com­mon plat­forms, allow­ing Islamist groups to access sec­u­lar polit­i­cal net­works and main­stream their agendas.

Intel­li­gence and aca­d­e­m­ic reports empha­size the Brotherhood’s use of veiled civ­il rights rhetoric to pen­e­trate pro­gres­sive cir­cles, with alliances often rein­forced by far-left MPs in response to issues like Pre­vent. Europe-wide, sim­i­lar pat­terns emerge, reveal­ing a broad­er strate­gic coop­er­a­tion that extends across bor­ders. Analy­ses con­sis­tent­ly show that these cross-ide­o­log­i­cal col­lab­o­ra­tions chal­lenge estab­lished pol­i­cy con­sen­sus while pro­vid­ing mobi­liza­tion capac­i­ty for both move­ments with­in demo­c­ra­t­ic societies.

Exter­nal References:

1. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in Britain: Analy­sis of Recent Sanctions

2. The UK still has­n’t come to terms with the Mus­lim Brotherhood

3. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Unit­ed King­dom (Vidi­no)

Dis­claimer:

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.