Azad Ali is a British activist and a spokesman for the Islamic Forum of Europe. He was founding chair of the Muslim Safety Forum, is Vice-Chair of Unite Against Fascism (UAF), and former director of engagement at

Muslim Engagement and Development Muslim engagement and development (MEND) (formerly iENGAGE) is a UK NGO. It focuses on media monitoring, advocacy in Government of the United Kingdom, Westminster and improving the media/political literacy of British Muslims. The aim of the organi ...

(MEND). He has also been employed as an IT worker and

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

for the Treasury.

Islamic Forum of Europe

Ali was community affairs co-ordinator for the Islamic Forum of Europe, an offshoot of the Islamist group

Jamaat-e-Islami Jamaat-e-Islami ( ur, ) () is an Islamic movement founded in 1941 in British India by the Islamic theologian and socio-political philosopher, Syed Abul Ala Maududi.van der Veer P. and Munshi S. (eds.''Media, War, and Terrorism: Responses fro ...

. According to fascism and anti-fascism specialist Nigel Copsey of Teesside University, this brought Unite Against Fascism into disrepute as a group unconcerned with Islamic extremism.

Muslim Safety Forum

Ali was founding-chairman of the Muslim Safety Forum from 2006. While in that post, he became a "key member" of the Metropolitan Police's 'Communities Together Strategic Group', chaired by Deputy Assistant Commissioner Rose Fitzpatrick, which met fortnightly to "oversee and review community reassurance and engagement measures" involving the Muslim community. Ali was also a member of the Kratos Review Group, to examine the Met's response to suicide bombings. Ali left the post of chairman in 2008, then resigned entirely from MSF in 2009 after publicity over his comments. In July 2010, he was reinstated as MSF's chairman.

Controversial views

According to Charles Moore, former editor of '' The Daily Telegraph'', in 2008 Ali is a "leading Muslim networker" in Britain who described

Al-Qaeda Al-Qaeda (; , ) is an Islamic extremism, Islamic extremist organization composed of Salafist jihadists. Its members are mostly composed of Arab, Arabs, but also include other peoples. Al-Qaeda has mounted attacks on civilian and military ta ...

terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in 2008 as, "one of my favourite speakers...," and "blogged in favour of a man who argued that it was a duty under jihad to kill British and American troops in Iraq." Ali "dissociated himself from al Awlaki" in the wake of the

2009 Fort Hood shooting On November 5, 2009, a mass shooting took place at Fort Hood, near Killeen, Texas. Nidal Hasan, a U.S. Army major and psychiatrist, fatally shot 13 people and injured more than 30 others. It was the deadliest mass shooting on an American mi ...

. Ali has denied that the

2008 Mumbai attacks The 2008 Mumbai attacks (also referred to as 26/11, pronounced "twenty six eleven") were a series of Terrorism, terrorist attacks that took place in November 2008, when 10 members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an Islamist terrorist organisation from P ...

, and the

2017 Westminster attack On 22 March 2017, a terrorist attack took place outside the Palace of Westminster in London, seat of the British Parliament. Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old Briton, drove a car into pedestrians on the pavement along the south side of Westminster ...

were terrorism. In 2009, Ali was suspended as a

in the Treasury after he praised Abdullah Yusuf Azzam,

Osama bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until Killing of Osama bin Laden, his death in 2011. Ideologically a Pan-Islamism ...

's key mentor, and wrote approvingly on his blog of Azzam's son saying that as a Muslim he is religiously obliged to kill British soldiers in Iraq. In the blog he also criticised the British Foreign Secretary

David Miliband David Wright Miliband (born 15 July 1965) is the president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the International Rescue Committee and a former British Labour Party politician. He was the Foreign Secretary from 2007 to 2010 and the Member of P ...

after the minister had condemned the Palestinian Muslim militant organisation Hamas for encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians. The exposé was by '' The Mail on Sunday'', whom Ali unsuccessfully sued in 2010. When a documentary on the Islamic Forum of Europe was made by the Channel 4 programme '' Dispatches'' in 2010, an undercover reporter filmed Ali saying "Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the

sharia Sharia (; ar, شريعة, sharīʿa ) is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition. It is derived from the religious precepts of Islam and is based on the sacred scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and the H ...

, of course no one agrees with that." Ali later attacked the undercover reporter on the IFE's official radio station, saying: "We've got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had. We've tracked you down to different places. And if people are gonna turn what I've just said into a threat, that's their fault, innit?" Andrew Gilligan, who produced the documentary, has labelled Ali as an " Islamic fascist".

References

External links

Official Twitter account
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ali, Azad Living people Year of birth missing (living people) British Muslim activists