Home Office Criticizes British Ex-Defense Minister After Meeting With Head Of UK Muslim Brotherhood Group

British media is report­ing that British Con­ser­v­a­tive Ex-Defense Sec­re­tary Pen­ny Mor­daunt has been crit­i­cized by mem­bers of the British Home Office for meet­ing with Zara Mohammed, the new Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al of the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain, despite an exist­ing “non-engage­ment” pol­i­cy with the group. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by The Sun:

A top Tory min­is­ter has been slapped down after boast­ing she sat down with a boy­cotted Mus­lim group. Ex-Defence Sec­re­tary Pen­ny Mor­daunt met the Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain on Fri­day. This was despite an exist­ing “non-engage­ment” pol­i­cy for min­is­ters towards the group since 2009. The MCB has been the cen­tre of con­tro­ver­sy despite claim­ing to be the UK’s main “nation­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mus­lim body”. (…) The last Labour gov­ern­ment cut ties with the group after a lead­ing mem­ber signed a dec­la­ra­tion call­ing for acts of vio­lence against Israel.

Read the rest here.

The Mus­lim Coun­cil of Britain (MCB) 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), a transna­tion­al Islamist influ­ence net­work cov­ered by the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR). In Jan­u­ary 2017, Zara Mohammed was elect­ed as the new MCB Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al, the first female SG in its his­to­ry. From 2014–2017, Mohammed held sev­er­al lead­ing posi­tions in the Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties (FOSIS), a nation­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing Islam­ic soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties through­out the UK and that has numer­ous ties to the GMB net­work in the UK. In Octo­ber 2020, the GIOR report­ed that the MCB had joined a vir­tu­al Mus­lim lead­er­ship con­fer­ence that brought togeth­er a large num­ber of GMB lead­ers and groups from around the globe.

(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.)