10.05.06
–
updated 05.06.06
Letters between the home office and a high-profile
muslim group reveal that the government has given at least £150,000
to it. The muslim council of Britain (MCB), led at the time by Sir Iqbal Sacranie,
received the grant after asking the government for £500,000, according
to correspondence disclosed under the freedom of information act (FOIA).
The financial relationship between the group and the home office is
bound to raise questions – especially among muslims – about the
MCB’s independence from the government.
However, correspondence between Sacranie and a home office minister
shows that he has been critical of the government.
Ministers have seen the MCB, which in June 2006 elected Dr Muhammad
Abdul Bari to replace Sacranie as secretary general, as the organisation through
which to reach out to Britain’s muslim population in the wake of the
September 11 attacks in America and the bombings in London last July.
However, some British muslims complain that the MCB does not speak
for them.
In February last year, a policy advisor at the home office’s
‘cohesion and faith’s unit’ (CFU) sent a letter to the MCB’s
treasurer, Dr Akber Mohamedali, offering the group a grant of £148,160
for the financial year ending the following March.
The money was to fund five projects that the MCB had proposed: MCB
leadership development programme; MCB leadership mentoring programme; MCB
direct, a web portal for information on islam and muslims; British citizenship
programme; and British muslim equality programme.
The home office set out a series of terms and conditions for the grant,
including: “MCB will contribute to policy development work by attending
meetings, submitting ideas, debating issues, etc, which may need to be on
a strictly confidential basis.”
“MCB will be prepared to work in partnership with CFU on the
development and implementation of policy initiatives.
“MCB will act as a source of expertise and exp-erience to government
on issues relevant to the work of the organisation.”
The MCB had submitted, in January last year, a £500,000 bid to
fund the programmes in a proposal entitled, “British muslims: from alienation
to engagement.”
The proposal says: “There is now a growing body of evidence that
British muslim communities suffer some of the sharpest forms of both race
and religious discrimination and disadvantage. They are, however, inadequately
protected from either.”
“It is suggested that this defining experience of muslims, of
discrimination and disadvantage, often leads to detachment and alienation
from the mainstream of British society.
“This alienation has been further fuelled more re-cently –
in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 – by a backlash of increased
levels of islamophobia in all sections of society, the over-zealous use by
law enforcement agencies of new draconian anti- terrorism provisions resulting
in a disproportionate impact on muslims, the intense focus of the media on
muslims as the ‘enemy within’, the gains of the far right across
Europe and Britain’s role in the ‘war on terrorism’ in muslim
countries.
“The level of alienation is in some cases so high that it results
in not just ‘parallel lives’ but such high levels of disaffection
as to threaten the kind of disorder experienced in some northern cities in
2001. It also helps the recruitment of young men by extremist tendencies.”
“Much is already underway on different fronts to address the
British muslim experience and what may be brewing just below the surface as
a result.
“The government’s new strategy on race, faith and community
cohesion will not only add to these activities but also provide a more coherent
framework for them. The purpose of the initiatives proposed in this bid is
to complement those activities from within the muslim community.”
The released correspondence shows that, since being offered the £150,000
grant, the MCB has sought more funding from the home office.
In one e-mail from Mohamedali to a home office official last August,
the MCB makes a bid for another £35,000, including £9,300 for
“an incident monitoring service” and £5,000 for the MCB’s
website.
He writes: “Home office funded developing the merged MCB website,
which is completed and ready for testing and then going live. This will enable
the community at large to access the work and services of the MCB in a much
more user-friendly way.” The additional £5,000 is “to get
the merged MCB website technically tested and go live on the web.”
The released correspondence does not include the response to this further
bid.
The financial relationship between the MCB and the home office did
not stop Sacranie from criticising the government’s response to the
terrorist threat in the wake of the July attacks in London in a letter last
August to Hazel Blears, then a home office minister.
He wrote that the MCB remained committed to working with the government
to defeat terrorism. “However, we are concerned that the current proposed
strategy will not be the most effective in dealing with this problem.”
“The starting point must be for the government to institute a
full statutory judicial inquiry into the terroristic incidents of July 7 and
July 21.”
The government continues to refuse calls for such an inquiry.
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