British Muslim Brotherhood Group Urges House Of Lords Members To Reject Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

On 17 Jan­u­ary 2022, the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain (MCB) pub­lished a state­ment on its web­site urg­ing mem­bers of the House of Lords to reject part three of the British gov­ern­men­t’s new Police, Crime, Sen­tenc­ing, and Courts Bill in its entire­ty, describ­ing it as “increas­ing­ly puni­tive” and “erod­ing our civ­il lib­er­ties.” Need­ing to be passed by both cham­bers of the British Par­lia­ment to become law, the bill was reject­ed and sent back to the House of Com­mons for fur­ther delib­er­a­tion on the next day. Accord­ing to the state­ment by MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Zara Mohammed:

The new mea­sures in this bill expand police pow­ers and make a dra­con­ian bill even more restric­tive, fur­ther erod­ing our civ­il lib­er­ties. Fur­ther­more, these mea­sures will exac­er­bate pre-exist­ing dis­par­i­ties in polic­ing and the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. This tox­ic leg­is­la­tion must be opposed.

Read the rest here.

The BBC has described the con­tro­ver­sial bill as “a mam­moth piece of leg­is­la­tion which includes major gov­ern­ment pro­pos­als on crime and jus­tice in Eng­land and Wales,” say­ing that it had been defeat­ed in the House of Lords on some of the bil­l’s most con­tentious parts, includ­ing plans to give the police new pow­ers to stop protests if they are deemed to be too noisy and dis­rup­tive. On ter­ror­ism, the bill would have cre­at­ed pow­ers to more urgent­ly rear­rest offend­ers in breach of their bail con­di­tions and thought to pose a ter­ror­ism risk. The bill has been crit­i­cized by mem­bers of the oppo­si­tion, who have called it “oppres­sive and plain nasty.”

The Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain is among the most influ­en­tial Mus­lim orga­ni­za­tions in Britain and has his­tor­i­cal­ly been dom­i­nat­ed by adher­ents of the Islamist Jamaat-e-Isla­mi move­ment in the UK, usu­al­ly act­ing in con­cert with the Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood (GMB). In Jan­u­ary 2017, Zara Mohammed was elect­ed as the new MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, its first female SG. From 2014–2017, Mohammed held sev­er­al lead­ing posi­tions in the Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties, a nation­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing Islam­ic soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties through­out the UK and that has numer­ous ties to the British GMB net­work. In March 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that British Con­ser­v­a­tive Ex-Defense Sec­re­tary Pen­ny Mor­daunt had been crit­i­cized by mem­bers of the British Home Office for meet­ing with Zara Mohammed despite an exist­ing “non-engage­ment” pol­i­cy with the group.

For more on the MCB and its role in the UK Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work, see a 2020 report by Damon L. Per­ry, Ph.D., a researcher and ana­lyst spe­cial­iz­ing in extrem­ism at the Inter­na­tion­al Cen­tre for the Study of Rad­i­cal­i­sa­tion and Polit­i­cal Vio­lence (ICSR) at Lon­don’s King’s College.