Anti-Islamophobia group Tell Mama should face inquiry, says Muslim peer
A leading Muslim peer has called for an inquiry into the Islamophobia monitoring group Tell Mama over concerns about a 'lack of transparency' on how it is spending public money.
Shaista Gohir, the chief executive of the Muslim Women's Network UK, has also accused Tell Mama of failing to provide detailed data on anti-Muslim hate crimes, being 'silent' when politicians have targeted Muslims, and questioned whether the Tories used it as a vehicle to monitor extremism.
Tell Mama denied the claims and described the idea it was secretly being used to tackle Muslim extremism as a 'slur'. It said it regularly reports 'according to the government's due processes' and that no issues had been raised with the group by officials.
Lady Gohir said the public had a right to know how taxpayers' money had been spent by Tell Mama. 'We need an inquiry because, if you look at the questions, they're very simple: how much was spent on salaries? How much was spent on consultancy fees?'
Tell Mama has been the government's key partner in monitoring anti-Muslim hatred for 13 years, but its government funding was abruptly paused earlier this month, leading to fears it would close at a time when anti-Muslim hate incidents have increased.
The faith minister, Wajid Khan, said 'ministers do not have concerns about financial, structural or governance issues in respect of Tell Mama'.
Nonetheless, the government said it would launch an 'open bidding process' for the contract to monitor anti-Muslim hatred and to support victims, opening Tell Mama up to competition for the first time. It did not answer questions from the Guardian as to why.
Parliamentarians from both houses have privately told the Guardian of their concerns about Tell Mama.
Gohir, a cross-party peer, had been raising questions in parliament and in letters to communities ministers under the previous Conservative administration for more than a year before the funding wrangle.
Sayeeda Warsi, the former chair of the Conservative party who was involved in Tell Mama's founding, described the group on X as 'unfit for purpose'.
But others have rallied to its defence, including the life peer Kishwer Falkner, who raised the issue of its funding in the House of Lords last month, asking for reassurance that 'moderate Muslim groups' were worthy of support.
Tell Mama has received £6m in funding since 2012 and has now confirmed that, after extensive negotiations with the government, it has secured funding for work completed in 2024-25, with more offered.
The service is run by a community-interest company, Faith Matters, so it is not bound by the same stringent rules as charities when it comes to publishing an itemised breakdown of its spending.
Tell Mama's chief executive, Iman Atta, said the organisation would be 'happy to cooperate with anybody regarding the use of public funds'.
Faith Matters, founded in 2007 by the former Liberal Democrat councillor Fiyaz Mughal, specialises in interfaith work and conflict resolution. In 2012, it launched the Tell Mama project. Mughal remains Faith Matters' director.
Atta denied Gohir's assertion that the organisation was silent when Tories made negative remarks on Muslims, citing past challenges to figures such as Boris Johnson, and insisted Tell Mama did not do any work to tackle Muslim extremism and that it had never received any funding from Prevent, the UK's counter-terrorism strategy.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government said it was 'committed to providing a comprehensive service to monitor anti-Muslim hatred and provide support for victims' and would 'soon be opening a call for grant applications to ensure we can meet the challenges communities face today', to which Tell Mama is welcome to apply.
Atta said: 'We hope that whichever organisation is successful in the open-grant process is able to continue this work with urgency, dedication and commitment', at a time when 'far-right movements' and 'incidents of anti-Muslim hatred are on the rise'.
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The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Drought, rising prices and dwindling herds undercut this year's Eid al-Adha in North Africa
Flocks of sheep once quilted Morocco's mountain pastures, stretched across Algeria's vast plateaus and grazed along Tunisia's green coastline. But the cascading effects of climate change have sparked a region-wide shortage that is being felt acutely as Muslims throughout North Africa celebrate Eid al-Adha. Each year, Muslims slaughter sheep to honor a passage of the Quran in which the prophet Ibrahim prepared to sacrifice his son as an act of obedience to God, who intervened and replaced the child with a sheep. But this year, rising prices and falling supply are creating new challenges, breeders and potential buyers throughout the region say. At a market in suburban Algiers last week, breeders explained to angry patrons that their prices had increased because the cost of everything needed to raise sheep, including animal feed, transport and veterinary care, had grown. Slimane Aouadi stood watching livestock pens, discussing with his wife whether to buy a sheep to celebrate this year's Eid. 'It's the same sheep as the one I bought last year, the same look and the same weight, but it costs $75 more," Aouadi, a doctor, told The Associated Press. Amid soaring inflation, sheep can sell for more than $1,200, an exorbitant amount in a country where average monthly incomes hover below $270. Tradition meets reality Any disruption to the ritual sacrifice can be sensitive, a blow to religious tradition and source of anger toward rising prices and the hardship they bring. So Morocco and Algeria have resorted to unprecedented measures. Algerian officials earlier this year announced plans to import a staggering 1 million sheep to make up for domestic shortages. Morocco's King Mohammed VI broke with tradition and urged Muslims to abstain from the Eid sacrifice. Local officials across the kingdom have closed livestock markets, preventing customers from buying sheep for this year's celebrations. 'Our country is facing climatic and economic challenges that have resulted in a substantial decline in livestock numbers. Performing the sacrifice in these difficult circumstances will cause real harm to large segments of our people, especially those with limited incomes,' the king, who is also Morocco's highest religious authority, wrote in a February letter read on national television. Trucks have unloaded thousands of sheep in new markets in Algiers and the surrounding suburbs. University of Toulouse agro-economist Lotfi Gharnaout told the state-run newspaper El Moudjahid that Algeria's import strategy could cost between $230 and $260 million and still not even meet nationwide demand. Thinning pastures Overgrazing has long strained parts of North Africa where the population is growing and job opportunities beyond herding and farming are scarce. But after seven years of drought, it's the lack of rainfall and skyrocketing feed prices that are now shrinking herds. Drought conditions, experts say, have degraded forage lands where shepherds graze their flocks and farmers grow cereals to be sold as animal feed. With less supply, prices have spiked beyond the reach of middle class families who have historically purchased sheep for slaughter. Moroccan economist Najib Akesbi said shrinking herds stemmed directly from vegetation loss in grazing areas. The prolonged drought has compounded inflation already fueled by the war in Ukraine. 'Most livestock farming in North Africa is pastoral, which means it's farming that relies purely on nature, like wild plants and forests, and vegetation that grows off rainwater,' Akesbi, a former professor at Hassan II Institute of Agronomy and Veterinary Medicine, said. For breeders, he added, livestock serve as a kind of bank, assets they sell to cover expenses and repay debts. With consecutive years of drought and rising feed costs, breeders are seeing their reserves drained. Pressed herders With less natural vegetation, breeders have to spend more on supplemental feed, Acharf Majdoubi, president of Morocco's Association of Sheep and Goat Breeders said. In good years, pastures can nourish nearly all of what sheep flocks require, but in dry years, it can be as low as half or a third of the feed required. 'We have to make up the rest by buying feed like straw and barley,' he said. Not only do they need more feed. The price of barley, straw and alfalfa -- much of which has to be imported -- has also spiked. In Morocco, the price of barley and straw are three times what they were before the drought, while the price of alfalfa has more than doubled. 'The future of this profession is very difficult. Breeders leave the countryside to immigrate to the city, and some will never come back,' Achraf Majdoubi said. __ Associated Press writers in Algeria contributed reporting.
Telegraph
an hour ago
- Telegraph
We shall not remain a free country if we continue to submit to radical Islamists
It shows in what strange times we live that it is the chairman of Reform, of all parties, who resigns over the question of banning the burka. Surely his party is the likeliest to favour a ban or – at least – to be able to contain internal disagreements on the subject. Probably Reform's chairman, Zia Yusuf, had other reasons to go. He is not the first person to find it challenging to work closely with Nigel Farage. In a spooky way, Reform tends to act as a mini-Maga, mirroring Trumpery in its highs and lows. Over there, Donald Trump and Elon Musk explode with a cosmic bang; over here, Farage and Yusuf then go off with a smaller pop. For this reason, I suspect that when Maga falters, as it eventually will, so will Reform. Nevertheless, Mr Yusuf is a Muslim. Partly for that reason, he was a recruitment coup for the supposedly 'Islamophobic' Reform. On Thursday, he said his party's newest MP, Sarah Pochin, had been 'dumb', at Prime Minister's Questions, to call for a burka ban; then he resigned. Let me take two other recent examples of where attitudes to Islam raise knotty problems. On Monday, Hamit Coskun, an atheist Turk, was found guilty of a 'religiously aggravated public order offence' and fined. He had burnt a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish consulate in London. In an article in this week's Spectator, Mr Coskun says he was protesting about President Erdogan of Turkey changing his country from a firmly secular state to 'a base for radical Islamists while trying to create a sharia regime'. The magistrate, however, decided otherwise. Mr Coskun had been 'motivated at least in part by hatred of followers of the [Muslim] religion', he said, and so he was a criminal. My other example comes from events outside Parliament on Wednesday. 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One of our points was that, on top of normal public-order legislation, there are at least four other laws which specifically protect Parliament from such attacks. Why are these not enforced, we asked, and why do the parliamentary authorities not take a stronger line to insist that they should be? One of the attractions of Britain to immigrants is that we are a free country, treasuring free speech. In many cases, immigrants enhance our freedom. Now that immigration is on such a vast scale, however, we suffer because many immigrants do not come from freedom-loving cultures. To the extent that immigrants can be grouped by religion, the largest single group are Muslims. For complex political, economic and cultural reasons, Islam is in global ferment. In that ferment, freedom is often scorned, except the freedom to advance interpretations of Islam, often the most extreme ones. Such Islamists have punitive, sometimes violent attitudes to promoting their version of their faith. At worst, this takes the form of terrorism. The words 'Allahu Akbar!' ('God is great!') have become the war-cry of an imminent explosion or attack. Even without actual violence, Islamism often involves naked anti-Semitism and unreasoning hatred of Israel. Militant Islam also tries to assert its power against the sort of freedoms which the rest of us (including, do not forget, many Muslims) cherish. Examples include forcing women and girls to cover their heads and even their faces, prohibitions on school swimming or singing, protests against being served by women in the public services and the banning of certain books and films. A leading Islamist demand is for a blasphemy law, although its supporters use other words to describe it. Most Muslims are highly sensitive to any perceived insult to their prophet, Mohammed, or to the Koran. 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Scotsman
an hour ago
- Scotsman
Mainstreaming of far-right ideas in UK politics shows why John Swinney was right to raise alarm
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Received wisdom at Westminster has it that the far-right has never made it into UK politics. Coupled with that theory is then the debate by the same commentators around what constitutes the 'far-right'. However using the measurement of policies pursued, which is, after all, the very essence of a political movement or party, the far-right has most certainly arrived in UK politics. UK parties, across the political spectrum, now embrace the hardest of hard Brexit, unthinkable even in the aftermath of the referendum in June 2016, and a policy that has done untold damage to the economy and our rights. We also had a government that promoted the sending of asylum seekers to Rwanda and MPs who openly campaign on leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which has underpinned our rights since the end of the Second World War. Were the UK to leave, it would be joining Russia and Belarus in doing so, hardly polite company. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Brexit, leaving the ECHR, and the Rwanda scheme are or were mainstream policy proposals in the UK yet they are policies that far-right parties elsewhere in Europe would baulk at. Even the hardest of hard-right parties in other parts of Europe such as the National Rally in France, the Vlaams Belaang in Belgium or Alternative fur Deutschland in Germany have abandoned plans to leave the EU, given the UK's Brexit debacle. John Swinney's stances on the EU, Donald Trump and migration, among others, have won plaudits (Picture: Jeff J Mitchell) | Getty Images An attack on justice Yet despite these policy failures, the mainstreaming of the far-right has become all too common in our politics along with their tactics. Over the past few days alone, Conservative Shadow Justice Secretary, Robert Jenrick, attacked the Labour Attorney General for doing his job and defending his clients. His remarks were described by former Conservative Attorney General Dominic Grieve 'as a direct attack on our principles of justice'. As we saw in this week's Hamilton by-election, we in Scotland are certainly not immune. Nigel Farage's attack on Anas Sarwar, which he doubled down on when challenged by the press, should act as a warning to us all. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Such remarks are unacceptable and whereas I may have legitimate policy differences with the Scottish Labour leader, they should have no place in our political discourse. For all the heat of the campaign in the run-up to what was a hard-fought by-election, it was good to see SNP and Labour leaders call out these disgraceful comments. Zia Yusuf's resignation as chair of Reform on Thursday and his concerns around Reform in the Commons should also act as a warning. Calling out bigotry That is why the First Minister was right to bring together colleagues from across the political spectrum in a summit seeking to 'lock out' Reform from Holyrood earlier this year. John Swinney is right to call out their policies and the 'bigotry' that they represent and to call out Farage as 'an accomplice of the Russian agenda'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Fair play to the politicians and representatives of civil society who put any political differences aside and joined the First Minister. That meeting was criticised at the time by the Conservatives and a range of commentators. Given Reform's tactics and language over the course of the by-election campaign, we have seen just how badly needed that stance was and remains. Labour will be pleased with Thursday's win, and I congratulate them on it, however, no party can afford to be complacent about Reform. One of the lessons from Hamilton must be that the key to taking on the far-right is to challenge them on their ideas. Nigel Farage's track record is not a particularly good one. He has been a driving force campaigning to leave the EU for decades. That was a decision that has exacerbated the cost-of-living crisis, removed rights from UK citizens, damaged business, especially small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) and ultimately made us all poorer. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad He backed Donald Trump whose presidency has destabilised the world, seen tariffs introduced that have damaged the global economy, and undermined efforts to support Ukraine against Russian aggression. 'Island of Strangers' The Reform policy platform is weak. For their opponents, that should provide ample targets. Yet, in the Westminster bubble their policies are given far too much credibility. There is an omertà around discussing the glaring failure of the Brexit experiment and the less said about Keir Starmer's 'Island of Strangers' speech on migration frankly the better. John Swinney would be the first to admit that the Scottish Government haven't got everything right. However, on the big calls around our relationship with the EU, the impact of Donald Trump's presidency, migration, child poverty and the rights we should enjoy as citizens, the SNP leader has maintained credibility for his stances, winning plaudits at Westminster and further afield. Politics is about ideas and Reform's are simply not good ones. The Conservatives and Reform are increasingly aligning on a range of policies and a pact or even merger is not out of the question. This is to be expected, given that Reform draws its politicians and many voters from the Conservatives. They have, in turn, turned their backs on One Nation conservatism, and instead the party is dominated by the Johnson/Truss populist wing, which is not so different from Farage and Reform. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This week's by-election and the preceding campaign must act as a wake-up call. During the run-up to the Holyrood elections, there is an opportunity for all parties to set out their vision for Scotland. On the one hand, there is an inclusive, outward-looking and internationalist vision represented by John Swinney, on the other is Reform's inward and exclusive offering. I know which one I'm backing.
