It’s nearly time for the Muslim Council of Britain’s annual general meeting, where its new leadership will be elected. Alas, almost no-one wants to stand for, or even vote for, the positions.
The MCB secretary-general, Wajid Akhter, bemoans that nobody will stand to take over from him: ‘If I am candid, my preference would be for fresh and youth [sic] leadership now… Unfortunately, the curse of incumbency and other factors have meant that there are likely no other candidates standing even though many better than myself are there.’ With nominations now closed, this is indeed the case.
The MCB has also had to ‘extend the deadline for delegate registration’ at the AGM ‘in the hopes of registering more delegates’. And to further drum up attendance, or share the cost of the room booking, the MCB has combined the AGM with a ‘Muslim mental health conference’ held earlier the same day in the same place. I can, of course, quite understand why the state of the MCB should make its members – if not the rest of us – depressed.
There are two candidates for Akhter’s deputy. But one of them, Lamine Konate, admits: ‘Many Muslim communities in the North perceive the MCB as a largely London-centric organisation with limited understanding of their local concerns and realities.’
In further outbreaks of truth-telling, Akhter confesses he hasn’t done a very good job at building the organisation: ‘I underestimated how long structural change takes in a 500-affiliate body built on consensus. I moved too slowly on some fronts and too quickly on others. Communications have been inconsistent. I have not yet built the volunteer pipeline I promised – the “dream team” is still half-assembled.’
Given Akhter’s views, this is probably just as well. As I revealed for Policy Exchange last year, he believes that to be a Muslim today is an ‘act of revolutionary defiance, standing at odds with the prevailing culture in many ways.’ In the same 2022 article, Akhter wrote that British Muslims should raise their children primarily as Muslim, rather than as British.
In 2012, he attacked New Year celebrations as ‘pagan’ and usually involving ‘un-Islamic practices’ such as ‘mixed gender events where people wear fashionable clothes, dance and sing songs’. Any Muslim participating, he scolded, was taking ‘the first step on a slippery slope… to disappearing within the dominant culture.’ The Policy Exchange report, with a long catalogue of Akhter’s other commitments to tolerance and inclusivity, is here.
The MCB has long been boycotted by both Labour and Tory governments because of views like this. It’s often forgotten that it opposed a government ban on al-Qaeda, declaring that armed struggle was a way for some people to ‘claim their rights’. That was before 9/11, though after al-Qaeda had already perpetrated three mass-casualty attacks, killing hundreds. Later, it also opposed a ban on al-Muhajiroun, which was linked to just under a quarter of all Islamist terrorist attacks in Britain and whose leader, Anjem Choudary, is now serving life for directing a terror organisation. The MCB has denounced Choudary.
The meagre response to the MCB’s elections also illustrates the other reason why it would not be sensible for the government to restart engagement with the organisation. The MCB simply does not represent British Muslims, either in its views or in its membership. It claims to have ‘over 500’ member organisations, itself perhaps only an eighth of the number of mosques and Muslim civil society bodies in Britain, but even this number is suspect. Each member has one vote in its leadership elections. At the last election where figures were given, in 2021 (which was online and easy to take part in), only 167 votes were cast.
The MCB simply does not represent British Muslims
The MCB has not published a full list of its members since October 2018, when it claimed 20 national affiliates, 12 regional affiliates and 413 local affiliates – a total of 445. But there was significant overlap between these. One organisation alone, the UK Islamic Mission (UKIM), a British associate of the Pakistani Islamist party Jamaat-e-Islami, accounted for 29 members, one national affiliation and 28 local branches. The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), a British associate of the Bangladeshi version of Jamaat-e-Islami, accounted for 15 members. Many other organisations had multiple memberships. Other nominally separate members, including many mosques, are controlled by the IFE (now renamed the Muslim Community Association) or UKIM and have or have had the same or closely overlapping leadership as the local branch of that organisation.
So the Labour MPs calling for re-engagement with the MCB, or attending its events and hoping nobody will notice, are, not for the first time, barking up the wrong tree.
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