The British government blocked a working group it set up to advise on a possible definition of Islamophobia from consulting the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), while the group consulted prominent figures and organisations themselves accused of Islamophobia, Middle East Eye can reveal.
The working group, which was set up by the government in February, is being overseen by a former public affairs officer for the pro-Israel Board of Deputies of British Jews, who has also worked for an arms industry trade association and gone on trips to Israel with an organisation accused of operating in illegal settlements.
Government sources with knowledge of the matter said that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), headed by Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner, told the group it could not consult the MCB because the government has a policy of “disengagement” with the organisation.
The MCB is the largest umbrella group claiming to represent Muslim organisations, with over 500 affiliates, including mosques, schools, local and county councils, professional networks and advocacy groups.
However, the working group consulted two prominent figures who have been accused of Islamophobia, Trevor Phillips and John Jenkins, on whether an Islamophobia definition would be helpful.
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MEE understands the government has had a veto over who the working group consults.
The group interviewed the Community Security Trust, which monitors antisemitism. It also invited the neoconservative think tank Policy Exchange – which has also faced accusations of promoting Islamophobia – for a consultation, but Policy Exchange declined, sources told MEE. Policy Exchange did not respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.
By contrast, the government told the working group it could not consult the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), a watchdog that focuses on media coverage of Muslims. The CfMM was set up by the MCB but says it has now become an independent entity.
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However, MEE understands that the government said the group could not engage with the CfMM because of its links to the MCB.
Successive governments have mostly refused to engage with the MCB since 2009 when the then-Labour government suspended ties after the organisation’s deputy secretary general signed a declaration in support of Palestinians’ right of resistance following Israel’s three-week war in Gaza, known as Operation Cast Lead, between December 2008 and January 2009.
Labour restored ties before its defeat in the 2010 general election, and MCB officials held a number of meetings with Liberal Democrat ministers during the Conservative-led coalition government that followed until 2015. But Conservative Party ministers refused to meet MCB officials between 2010 and 2024.
Board of Deputies strategist
Sources said the working group had consulted groups including the National Secular Society and Humanists UK, which have criticised a previous Islamophobia definition adopted by Labour.
An MCB spokesperson told MEE: “We can confirm that neither the communities ministry nor its appointed working group members proactively reached out to the Muslim Council of Britain to participate in this call for evidence. We are mobilising our grassroots membership to share their views anyway.”
They added: “Britain’s diverse faith communities don’t need petty cancel culture politics driven by the whims of right-wing think tanks and legacy media outlets – we need a Government brave enough to lead with authenticity and common sense.”
The working group, led by Dominic Grieve, a former Conservative MP who was attorney general between 2010 and 2014, is set to hold an event in parliament on Thursday at which MPs and members of the House of Lords are invited to give their thoughts on how Islamophobia should be defined.
Joel Salmon, who has been the Anti-Muslim Hatred and Antisemitism Policy team leader in the communities ministry since March, oversees the working group.
In 2016, Salmon argued in a column for Jewish News that the Jewish community “must be able to define for ourselves what antisemitism is”.
Between 2016 and 2019, he was a public affairs officer at the Board of Deputies of British Jews (BoD), a heavily pro-Israel organisation.
In that role, he worked in “political strategy, engaging Ministers & Parliamentarians and influencing legislation”, according to his LinkedIn profile. He was also “responsible for policy development and acted as media spokesperson” for the organisation.
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In 2015, Salmon said he “went on trips with” Aish HaTorah, an international Jewish Orthodox organisation which was reported in 2008 by The Atlantic to have operatives “in the radical belt of Jewish settlements just south of Nablus, in the northern West Bank”.
Ronn Torossian, a spokesperson for Aish HaTorah in New York, told The Atlantic: “I think we should kill a hundred Arabs or a thousand Arabs for every one Jew they kill.”
Between September 2019 and 2021, Salmon worked as a senior public affairs adviser at ADS, an arms industry trade association which counts major weapons companies among its members, including Elbit Systems, Israel’s largest arms manufacturer, Boeing, BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin.
According to the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), ADS holds an annual dinner to “bring politicians together with representatives from [the] world’s biggest arms companies”.
A spokesperson for the communities ministry said: “We will not tolerate Islamophobia of any form and will seek to stamp it out wherever it occurs.
“The Working Group’s work to develop a definition of Anti-Muslim Hatred/Islamophobia is aimed at improving understanding of unacceptable treatment and prejudice against Muslim communities – supporting wider and ongoing government-led efforts to tackle religiously motivated hate crime and foster cohesion. As part of this it engages with a wide range of faith communities and organisations.”
Consulting the accused
Earlier this year, the Labour government set up a working group to draw up an official definition for anti-Muslim discrimination. It was given a six-month timeframe in which to deliver a report.
This suggested the government was rowing back plans to adopt the definition proposed in 2018 by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for British Muslims.
Adopted by Labour in opposition, the definition characterises Islamophobia as “a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.
The new working group has reportedly consulted Trevor Phillips, who was suspended from Labour when Jeremy Corbyn was leader in March 2020 following allegations of Islamophobia, which he denied. His suspension was lifted in July 2021 under Keir Starmer’s leadership, a move which was criticised by some Muslim Labour MPs and members.
MP Zarah Sultana said that “the party must at the very least require a full retraction and apology. Anything less makes a mockery of the idea that the party takes Islamophobia seriously”. The Labour Muslim Network warned that “quietly readmitting [Phillips] behind closed doors, without apology or acknowledgement, will only cause further anxiety and hurt among Muslims.”
Phillips had previously said that British Muslims are a “nation within a nation”. He has denied accusations of Islamophobia.
The working group also consulted the former British ambassador to Saudi Arabia John Jenkins, who was in March last year accused of endorsing social media posts that are “Islamophobic”, “defend Islamophobia” or that peddle in “propaganda against Muslims”. MEE contacted Jenkins for comment at the time but did not receive a response.
Grieve, the working group’s chair, asked Jenkins “whether a definition [of Islamophobia] would be helpful”.
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Last month, the Spectator magazine published Jenkins’ lengthy response, which included references to 18th-century politics and “social constructivism”, to Grieve’s request.
In his response, Jenkins strongly criticised the working group for all its five members apart from Grieve being Muslim.
“I am concerned that the Working Group may have begun its work with its conclusions pre-determined,” he wrote.
Jenkins said regarding the adoption of “any definition” of Islamophobia: “I have heard it described as potentially the most retrograde step in this country since Sir Robert Walpole’s government in 1737 granted the Lord Chamberlain’s office powers to licence theatrical scripts.”
To drive his argument home, he also argued that the question of Islamophobia requires “expertise in European law and jurisprudence (which must be the operational framework for such issues), Islamic jurisprudence (which is highly complex and varied but provides a context for some of the more extravagant claims in this area), the philosophy of liberty and the history of both western and Islamic political thought – plus a healthily sceptical attitude to critical theory and an intellectually rigorous approach to both social constructivism and what Marxists used to call ‘reification’.”
Jenkins appeared to imply that none of the working group’s members have the multi-disciplinary academic expertise which he believes they need.
Working group’s members
Besides Grieve, there are four members of the working group. One is Akeela Ahmed, the co-chair of the British Muslim Network (BMN), which launched in February and has since kept a low profile.
MEE had revealed before its launch that the BMN had lost much of its Muslim support and was being backed by a charity set up by disgraced former archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby.
Also on the working group is Professor Javed Khan, managing director of Equi, an influential new think tank which says it was “born out of the UK Muslim community”.
‘Potentially the most retrograde step in this country since Sir Robert Walpole’s government in 1737 granted the Lord Chamberlain’s office powers to licence theatrical scripts’
– John Jenkins
At the parliamentary launch of an Equi report in February, Khan told parliamentarians and civil society figures that the think tank was “seeing engagement” from the Labour government, including ministers and special advisers.
Baroness Shaista Gohir, a crossbench peer and CEO of Muslim Women’s Network UK (MWNUK), is another member of the working group.
MEE revealed in late February that an MWNUK event in parliament in March celebrating the “cultural contribution of Muslims in the UK” was supported by TikTok, the social media giant accused of censoring content on human rights abuses faced by Uyghur Muslims in China.
Aisha Affi, an independent consultant, is also named as a member of the working group.
Criticism of APPG definition
Grieve wrote the foreword to the contentious APPG report on Islamophobia in 2018, calling it “food both for thought and positive action”.
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But the APPG definition has since been heavily criticised.
Lord Wajid Khan, Labour’s faith minister, said late last year that “the definition proposed by the APPG is not in line with the Equality Act 2010, which defines race in terms of colour, nationality and national or ethnic origins”.
In January 2019, the Jewish Chronicle reported that staff from the Board of Deputies, including Salmon – who is now overseeing the working group on Islamophobia – had attended meetings with members of the APPG on British Muslims, including Baroness Sayeeda Warsi and Labour MP Wes Streeting, who was then a co-chair of the APPG.
The BoD reportedly came close to backing the APPG’s Islamophobia definition, although it eventually did not do so.
The BoD denounced the Jewish Chronicle’s report as a “mixture of innuendos, half-truths, and outright falsehoods”, and said it felt “it wasn’t the right time” to endorse any Islamophobia definition.
