Newly Elected UK Labour Councilor Suspended Over Past Involvement in British Muslim Advocacy Organization

British media is report­ing that the new­ly elect­ed Haringey bor­ough coun­cilor Ibrahim Ali has been sus­pend­ed by the UK Labour par­ty over his past involve­ment in CAGE, a British Mus­lim advo­ca­cy group. Accord­ing to an arti­cle by the BBC:

May 24, 2022 The Local Democ­ra­cy Report­ing Ser­vice (LDRS) said Ibrahim Ali’s sus­pen­sion by Haringey Coun­cil is linked to his pre­vi­ous work with cam­paign group Cage. It describes itself as an “advo­ca­cy organ­i­sa­tion work­ing to empow­er com­mu­ni­ties impact­ed by the war on ter­ror”. Lon­don Labour told LDRS it does not com­ment on indi­vid­ual cas­es. Mr Ali was elect­ed to rep­re­sent the Bruce Cas­tle ward in Tot­ten­ham at the local elec­tion on 5 May. The LDRS said Mr Ali, also known as Ibrahim Mohamoud, was for­mer­ly a spokesper­son for Cage.

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Accord­ing to the arti­cle, in 2015, Ali appeared to defend CAGE direc­tor Asim Qureshi’s descrip­tion of Islam­ic State mil­i­tant Mohammed Emwazi as a “beau­ti­ful young man.” Emwazi is believed to have behead­ed a num­ber of hostages between 2014 and 2015 while he was a mem­ber of an Islam­ic State ter­ror­ist cell.

CAGE was found­ed in 2003 by British-Pak­istani activist Moaz­zam Begg as an advo­ca­cy body and plat­form for Mus­lims affect­ed by the US War on Ter­ror. Its lead­ers are known to have ties to the British GMB net­work. CAGE has a his­to­ry of cam­paign­ing against glob­al anti-ter­ror­ism efforts and mea­sures against Islamist rad­i­cal­iza­tion, claim­ing these mea­sures unfair­ly tar­get­ed Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties and under­mined the rule of law. Accord­ing to British media, dur­ing a 2006 protest, CAGE Research Direc­tor Asim Qureshi advo­cat­ed sup­port­ing vio­lent Jihad over­seas in con­flict zones involv­ing Muslims.

In April 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed CAGE had pub­lished a report alleg­ing sys­tem­at­ic state-spon­sored per­se­cu­tion of Mus­lims in France, demand­ing the French gov­ern­ment reverse its dis­so­lu­tion of Islamist orga­ni­za­tions and remove the exec­u­tive pow­er to dis­solve such orga­ni­za­tions alto­geth­er. In June 2022, the GIOR report­ed that a French gov­ern­men­tal anti-rad­i­cal­iza­tion com­mit­tee had post­ed a Twit­ter thread call­ing out the Islamist lead­er­ship and activ­i­ties of CAGE.

Ibrahim Ali, pre­vi­ous­ly an elec­tion agent for Labour’s Shad­ow For­eign Sec­re­tary David Lam­my, also served as Vice-Pres­i­dent for Stu­dent Affairs at the Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dent Islam­ic Soci­eties (FOSIS). FOSIS is a nation­al umbrel­la orga­ni­za­tion rep­re­sent­ing Islam­ic soci­eties at uni­ver­si­ties through­out the UK, and that has his­tor­i­cal­ly had numer­ous ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood net­work in the UK.