UK Muslim Brotherhood/Left Alliance: New Party Supported by Islamists

The Islamism/Left alliance in UK pol­i­tics has reached unprece­dent­ed strength as Zarah Sul­tana announced her depar­ture from Labour to form a new left-wing par­ty with Jere­my Cor­byn, imme­di­ate­ly receiv­ing sup­port from the Mus­lim Engage­ment and Devel­op­ment (MEND) cam­paign group. On 5 July 2025, The Tele­graph report­ed that this part­ner­ship rep­re­sents the cul­mi­na­tion of a decades-long mar­riage of con­ve­nience between Islamism and the hard-Left, based on shared griev­ance pol­i­tics and anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment that has flour­ished amid the Gaza con­flict. The arti­cle begins:

Bare­ly an hour after Zarah Sul­tana announced that she was leav­ing Labour to lead a new Left-wing par­ty with Jere­my Cor­byn, the Mus­lim Engage­ment and Devel­op­ment (Mend) cam­paign group post­ed a state­ment on X wish­ing the pair “every suc­cess in this bold new chap­ter”. Labour refused to engage with Mend after Sir Keir Starmer took over as leader, and cut the par­ty’s ties with groups accused of links to Islamism. In his offi­cial review of the Pre­vent anti-extrem­ism pro­gramme in 2023, Sir William Shaw­cross described Mend as an “Islamist organ­i­sa­tion” and, before becom­ing Met Com­mis­sion­er, Sir Mark Row­ley high­light­ed the group’s alarmist oppo­si­tion to British counter-extrem­ism measures.

          Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/07/05/inside-ugly-relationship-between-islamism-and-left [pay­wall]

Key Points

• Zarah Sul­tana pre­vi­ous­ly worked as MEND’s par­lia­men­tary offi­cer and describes the term “Islamist” as a smear against pro-Pales­tine activists, while crit­i­ciz­ing Pre­vent as “racist”
• The Social­ist Work­ers Par­ty and Mus­lim Asso­ci­a­tion of Britain formed the Stop The War Coali­tion in 2001, pro­vid­ing a forum for left-wing politi­cians to con­nect with Islamist groups
• George Gal­loway’s 2005 vic­to­ry in Beth­nal Green rep­re­sent­ed the Respect Par­ty alliance between “Trot­sky­ist far-Left and Islam­ic far-Right” accord­ing to The Observer
• Four inde­pen­dent can­di­dates defeat­ed Labour oppo­nents in areas with sig­nif­i­cant Mus­lim pop­u­la­tions dur­ing 2024 elec­tions, form­ing an “Inde­pen­dent Alliance” with Cor­byn fea­tur­ing Pales­tin­ian flag colors

Muslim Brotherhood/UK Left Alliance: Strategic Red-Green Coalition

Jere­my Cor­byn is a long­stand­ing British social­ist politi­cian who served as Leader of the Labour Par­ty from 2015 to 2020 and has rep­re­sent­ed Isling­ton North as an MP since 1983. Known for his anti-war stance and advo­ca­cy for civ­il lib­er­ties, Cor­byn fre­quent­ly aligned with Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions and figures—such as attend­ing events with the Mus­lim Engage­ment and Devel­op­ment group (linked in gov­ern­ment reports to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood) , prais­ing Sheikh Raed Salah of the Islam­ic Move­ment (a Broth­er­hood-off­shoot) as “a voice that must be heard” , and using the Rabia hand ges­ture asso­ci­at­ed with the Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood at pub­lic ral­lies . His pub­lic ges­tures and out­reach reflect an unusu­al polit­i­cal coali­tion: a self-described rad­i­cal athe­ist who forged sym­bol­ic and orga­ni­za­tion­al ties with Islamist and Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked groups, posi­tion­ing him­self with­in a broad­er anti-impe­ri­al­ist and pro-Pales­tin­ian network.

The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood’s alliance with left-wing polit­i­cal move­ments in the UK rep­re­sents a strate­gic con­ver­gence of ide­o­log­i­cal­ly dis­parate groups unit­ed 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. The alliance has proven par­tic­u­lar­ly effec­tive in mobi­liz­ing Pales­tin­ian sol­i­dar­i­ty cam­paigns where Broth­er­hood-linked groups like the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain coor­di­nate with far-left MPs and activists to pres­sure gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy on Israel-Pales­tine issues.

Aca­d­e­m­ic analy­sis reveals that this tac­ti­cal alliance exploits shared anti-West­ern sen­ti­ment while allow­ing Islamist groups to access sec­u­lar polit­i­cal net­works and ampli­fy their influ­ence with­in main­stream dis­course. Euro­pean con­fer­ences have repeat­ed­ly brought togeth­er Hamas sup­port­ers and left-wing par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, demon­strat­ing the oper­a­tional depth of this col­lab­o­ra­tion across mul­ti­ple coun­tries. The Labour Par­ty’s engage­ment with Broth­er­hood-affil­i­at­ed orga­ni­za­tions through events like vir­tu­al iftar meet­ings fea­tur­ing pro-Hamas activists illus­trates how this alliance has pen­e­trat­ed main­stream polit­i­cal dis­course, with research indi­cat­ing that left-wing par­ties often pro­vide legit­i­ma­cy to Islamist move­ments while ben­e­fit­ing from their orga­ni­za­tion­al capa­bil­i­ties and mobi­liza­tion net­works, ulti­mate­ly serv­ing both move­ments’ broad­er rev­o­lu­tion­ary objec­tives against estab­lished demo­c­ra­t­ic institutions.

Exter­nal References:

1. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Unit­ed Kingdom

2. Islamism and the Left

3. The Mus­lim Broth­er­hood in the Unit­ed Kingdom

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.