New lobby group for British Muslims ‘won’t compete with Muslim Council of Britain’
Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrat figures have all expressed willingness to engage with the group
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A new body that hopes to lobby the government on issues affecting Muslims across areas including education, healthcare and the criminal justice system is set to launch next month — and insists it won’t seek to rival the Muslim Council of Britain.
The British Muslim Network (BMN) will officially go live in London on 25 February with a series of roundtables inviting participants from across England to share their expertise on the challenges facing Muslims across a variety of sectors.
The network, which will initially cover England only, has been set up by a core group of about 20 people, according to co-founder Akeela Ahmed — who previously chaired the government’s Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group. Other members include Imam Asim Hafiz, an adviser at the Ministry of Defence; Syima Aslam, the CEO of Bradford Literature Festival; and Julie Siddiqi, founder of Together We Thrive, a Muslim women’s network.
Ahmed hopes the BMN will gather insights from Muslim communities and use these findings to improve policymaking. “Each roundtable will bring together experts from across the country working in each sector to discuss a set of questions,” she said. “The learnings of this will be drawn up into a report, which can then be shared with government, policymakers and other sector leaders.”
Aside from speaking to Muslim experts across these fields, Ahmed said, the network will engage grassroots communities, activists and campaign groups, with a particular focus on underrepresented groups, such as people from refugee and newly arrived backgrounds.
“Our hope is to help Muslim communities develop and progress, while helping the rest of society understand the positive contributions that Muslims make to the UK,” she added.
The network will be open to all British Muslims to join, and will be led by two co-chairs, a man and a woman. The group is yet to finalise a governance structure and advisory board, and it is not yet clear if members will be asked to pay a fee.
Ahmed said the BMN is keen to avoid being seen as London-centric, and has already connected with Muslims in cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Oxford and Newcastle.
Earlier reports had suggested that the BMN would seek to challenge the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the largest representative body of British Muslims, with more than 500 members including mosques, schools and charities. Ahmed disputes this, saying the new group would not claim to be a representative body for Muslims, and that it is keen to work alongside existing organisations. The MCB will elect a new secretary general on Saturday.
“We hope to add to the ecosystem of Muslim organisations that already exists — we aren’t trying to compete or replace any organisation,” she said.
Asked if this could include the MCB, she said: “Our core value is collaboration, so our whole approach is to galvanise and build on the already fantastic work that has been taking place. We would be really keen to partner with different organisations, though we are not at that stage yet.”
A key challenge for some existing Muslim organisations, including the MCB and MEND (Muslim Engagement and Development), which aims to tackle Islamophobia and encourage Muslims to get involved with British politics, is a lack of engagement from the government — in the MCB’s case, going back years. However, Ahmed is confident that the BMN will not face this same hurdle.
Hyphen understands that the group has already spoken with representatives from Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, and that all have expressed willingness to engage.
“It’s not news that over the years, under different successive governments, engagement with Muslim communities has been inconsistent and has lacked depth,” Ahmed said. “But if the government doesn’t do that, it restricts itself, because it’s missing insights into British Muslim communities. We hope to address those as part of our network.
“I always advocate for government engagement with British Muslims to be as wide and broad as possible. We hope to do this in a way that is founded in evidence, through insights from Muslim communities. For example, we could use our network to collect information and evidence of anti-Muslim hatred, and then get that in front of people who inform policies.”
The government currently funds the national Tell MAMA project to monitor Islamophobia.
The British Muslim Network, whose leaders are working in a voluntary capacity, hopes to raise funding through contributions from within the Muslim community.
Asked if the group would accept government funding, Ahmed said: “At the moment, we are only speaking to potential funders within the British Muslim community. I don’t see that changing.”
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