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Through 14 years of Conservative rule, the UK Government has increasingly severed lines of engagement with Muslim communities amidst a rising tide of anti-Muslim hatred that is fracturing social cohesion and national unity.
But the precedent for this process began under the Labour Party in 2009 when Gordon Brown abruptly banned the government from engaging with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) – the umbrella body representing some 500 mosques and Muslim community organisations nationwide.
At the time, MCB’s deputy leader, Daud Abdalah, had signed a controversial document in Istanbul calling for violence against Israel and condoning attacks on British troops.
The Government lifted the ban the following year after the MCB denounced the Istanbul declaration, made clear that Abdalah had acted in a personal capacity, and confirmed its commitment to ensuring members remained true to council policies opposing antisemitism and attacks on British defence interests.
A decade later in March 2020, under Boris Johnson’s premiership, the MCB made a fatal political mistake: it published an extensive report documenting evidence of high-level institutionalised Islamophobia across the Conservative Party and government.
Almost instantly, the organisation became persona non grata. Government departments were banned from engaging with the MCB.
But it wasn’t just the MCB. After that point, the UK Government began to systematically degrade and sever ties with diverse Muslim organisations across the country – to the point that there is now only one that it considers legitimate enough to speak with: a little-known group called ‘Faith Matters‘.
Originally established in 2006 under Tony Blair, Faith Matters was founded by Fiyaz Mughal and Iman Atta.
In 2012, with the financial support of David Cameron’s Conservative-led coalition Government, Faith Matters established ‘Tell MAMA’ as a national anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring agency.
The organisation was launched by then Senior Minister for Faith, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi. It was modelled on the Community Security Trust, a British charity which monitors antisemitic incidents across the UK.
Unlike the Community Security Trust, Faith Matters is not a charity. Rather, it’s a Community Interest Company (CIC), which means it is subjected to much lighter regulation.
Since 2012, as one of the only Muslim-led organisations the UK Government actively engages with, Faith Matters has received £7 million in government funding specifically to support its work monitoring anti-Muslim hate incidents across the country through Tell MAMA. Despite this, on the ‘about’ section of its website, Tell MAMA, states that is “an independent, non-governmental organisation” and that its work “is not influenced or wholly shaped by government”.
Shortly before crashing out of power in the 2024 UK elections, the Conservative Party’s manifesto mentioned Tell MAMA specifically, noting that it is “proud to support and help fund” its “vital work”.
British Muslim women speak out
It remains to be seen whether Faith Matters will continue to be the singular Muslim organisation of choice that Keir Starmer’s Labour Government turns to in understanding and combating Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred. If that’s the case, it would likely be challenged by some of the most prominent British Muslim politicians in the country.
On 20 May, several senior British Muslim members of the House of Lords publicly challenged the Conservative Government about its unstinting support for Faith Matters and its Tell MAMA initiative and the seeming monopoly it appears to hold on government engagement with Muslim communities.
Baroness Shaista Gohir, the cross-bench life peer and respected women’s rights campaigner, told her fellow Lords in Parliament in May 2024 that Muslim communities “do not have trust and confidence in Tell MAMA.
“I have written a letter to the Government with 31 questions about Tell MAMA, and the Government have not answered them. When will the Government answer my questions in full, and when will Tell MAMA’s data be made available in full? When will Tell MAMA’s poor governance and the quality of its work be assessed? When will its funding be reviewed? It gets around £1 million a year, and no one knows what it does with this money. Why the lack of transparency when it comes to Tell MAMA?”
Former Cabinet Minister and Conservative Party Co-Chair Baroness Warsi also spoke in the House of Lords in support of Baroness Gohir, noting that she had seen her letters to the Government about Tell MAMA.
“To some extent, I bear responsibility, as I was there when the organisation was set up”, Baroness Warsi admitted. “There are deep concerns about its finances, governance, associations and connections… These are really serious allegations about an organisation that is there to protect Muslims in the United Kingdom. I urge my noble friend to look at these matters seriously.
It is important that organisations funded by the government to protect British nationals of whatever faith have the confidence of the communities they seek to protect.”
Baroness Warsi on Tell MAMA
Several other senior British Muslim women politicians, including Baroness Hussein-Ece and Baroness Uddin supported these lines of questioning and expressed concern with the Government’s lack of meaningful efforts to address anti-Muslim hate crimes, particularly against British Muslim women who bear the brunt of such attacks.
In response, then Minister Baroness Swinburne confirmed to the House of Lords that “the department is being asked to investigate and look at all the matters” raised by Baroness Gohir.
The Conservative Government’s written answers in the House of Lords to Baroness Gohir’s questions offered little clarity. The Government noted that Tell MAMA was being funded “with the express remit of supporting victims of anti-Muslim hatred and monitoring incidents”, and insisted that its work is “recognised internationally as a good practice model in recording and monitoring anti-Muslim hate”.
What are these Concerns?
To get a deeper understanding of the concerns raised, I reached out to Baroness Gohir and asked to see her correspondence with the British Government.
From January to March 2024, Baroness Gohir – who is CEO of the Muslim Women’s Network, a national charity – wrote a series of letters to two Conservative Ministers, Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Secretary Michael Gove, and Baroness Jane Scott, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Social Housing and Faith.
The letters asked a series of urgent questions about how some £7 million in public funds allocated to monitor anti-Muslim hate crimes has been spent on the government’s watch for around a decade.
Gohir’s letters ultimately question whether Tell MAMA has functioned as effectively as it should as a national anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring agency, and whether it is doing as good a job as it should with the public funds it receives via Faith Matters.
When I approached Tell MAMA for comment, I did not receive a response from them directly. Instead, Byline Times received letters from Faith Matters’ appointed legal representatives, the London-based law firm Mishcon de Reya. Their response unequivocally denied any lack of transparency and poor governance and demanded that we desist from publishing Baroness Gohir’s concerns and allegations in her letters under threat of a defamation lawsuit.
Earlier this year, Byline Times revealed that the Conservative Government had reversed its decision to appoint Tell MAMA’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, as its new anti-Muslim hatred tsar. The reversal occurred after the Government received inquiries from Byline Times about Mughal’s role in suppressing a Tell MAMA-commissioned report describing Conservative Party ties with far-right groups.
Neither Mughal nor Tell MAMA responded to Byline Times’ enquiries at the time about the appointment. But three months later, on 20 June, following my enquiries with Tell MAMA about Baroness Gohir’s concerns, Mishcon de Reya demanded on behalf of its client that Byline Times remove our article about Mughal. Tell MAMA also published Mishcon de Reya’s letter on its website – but deleted it after receiving this newspaper’s rebuttal.
On 15 July, after I contacted the new Labour Government about its relationship with Tell MAMA, the organisation republished that legal letter, published the second legal letter from Mishcon de Reya and tweeted them out, in order to “rightfully question whether Ahmed can be impartial in his journalism in the future towards Tell MAMA”.
Transparency issues?
On 9 January, Baroness Gohir wrote to Gove raising concerns about “the lack of transparency” in public funding to Faith Matters and Tell MAMA.
She noted that it is not possible for the public to find out who – other than the UK Government – funds Faith Matters, nor to know how Faith Matters spends the public funds it does receive. She also questioned the government’s reliance on one organisation.
“Any funds that are made available to tackle and monitor anti-Muslim prejudice should not be restricted to certain groups,” she wrote. “Muslim communities are very diverse and an approach where several organisations are involved is essential to improve reach and effectiveness.”
In response, Baroness Scott – then Minister at the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) – wrote: “There is a robust monitoring and evaluation process for all our funded partners including Tell MAMA”. She said it sends the DLUHC “regular quarterly reports”, detailing “the work carried out against the work plan”.
A government spokesperson at the time did not disclose copies of these reports and said it was not able to comment as it was in the pre-general election period.
I again approached the department – being renamed the Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government – after the elections to find out the status of its investigation into Tell MAMA. A Government spokesperson declined to clarify the status of the investigation.
Trust and governance issues?
Another problem identified by Baroness Gohir is that Tell MAMA is widely distrusted by the very Muslim communities it is supposed to protect.
“The absence of support from Muslims should be a cause for concern, unless, of course, this aligns with the Government’s strategic goals,” she wrote in the letter, which included 31 detailed questions about Tell MAMA’s work, funding, transparency, and accountability.
This included a request for “a breakdown of how the recent £1 million awarded by the Government will be spent… the timeline for expenditure and whether all funds have been paid in full”.
Her letter also claimed that Tell MAMA suffers from “poor governance”, with its director Iman Abou Atta simultaneously acting as a company director and board member of Faith Matters.
Baroness Gohir wrote that there is no independent board able to hold Tell MAMA’s director to account on issues such as “setting salaries” or “safeguarding the organisation from undue government influence”.
Faith Matters legal representatives, Mishcon de Reya, said that while Atta “feeds into project-related matters, including management of projects and associated risks, her role on the board is, in effect, secretarial (as company secretary). She takes no part in decision-making by the board, including refraining from voting on any board matters. This is a perfectly normal and acceptable arrangement within CICs.”
Potential misconduct?
On 11 March, Baroness Gohir sent a letter to Baroness Scott requesting the government investigate irregularities in Companies House filings by two directors of Faith Matters, Atta, who is Fiyaz Mughal’s ex-wife, and Haifa Shhadeh. Baroness Gohir’s letter noted that Atta and Shhadeh appear to be, or have been, directors of separate community interest companies – Social Change Through Education in the Middle East CIC and Stop Funding Hate CIC – yet filed different biographical data, with variations in surname, date of birth, nationality and occupation.
Baroness Gohir concluded: “I strongly urge the Government to pause funding until a comprehensive investigation is conducted… As the guardian of public funds, this responsibility falls upon the Government.”
Baroness Scott replied to Baroness Gohir’s concerns on 17 April, writing: “With regards to the second letter concerning the two directors of Faith Matters including the CEO of Tell MAMA’s variation of name spelling and inconsistent date of births, we suggest you raise this complaint with Companies House directly.”
Faith Matters unequivocally denied any misconduct in the Companies House filings. Mishcon de Reya said that “the only ‘irregularity’ appears to be that Ms Atta erroneously recorded her date of birth as April 1978, rather than April 1976, in respect of Stop Funding Hate CIC, an organisation from which she resigned in February 2021”.
Countering extremism?
On 8 March, Baroness Gohir wrote to Baroness Scott noting that the most recent Companies House statement filed by Faith Matters at the time (March 2022) “does not even mention Tell MAMA’s Islamophobia monitoring work”.
Instead, the CIC filing referred to “promoting community cohesion, countering extremism, and tackling hatred and intolerance”, as well as, “developing social media literacy skills”; “countering hatred and intolerance”, and “debunking myths and misinformation”.
In comments to Byline Times, Baroness Gohir said: “It’s a bit odd they don’t mention they monitor Islamophobia and instead talk about tackling attitudes, extremism, but don’t say what type and who. I don’t think it’s tackling extremism against Muslims but Muslim extremism.”
Mishcon de Reya flatly denied this on behalf of Faith Matters, asserting that the “extremism” referred to was to do with Islamophobic and far-right sentiment.
From 2012 to 2016, Faith Matters’ Companies House CIC documents explicitly describe running a national hate crime monitoring project. From 2017 to 2022, they don’t.
Between 2016 and 2022, the organisation received £5.6 million from the government. It received a further £1 million in 2023.
Government guidance states that CIC directors “have an important additional obligation to prepare an annual CIC Report (form CIC34) to be filed with their accounts. The purpose of the CIC Report is to show that the CIC is still satisfying the community interest test, and that it is engaging appropriately with its stakeholders in carrying out activities, which benefit the community.”
The “minimum requirements” in each annual CIC report include providing “details of what the CIC has done to benefit the community” and “details of how it has consulted its stakeholders on its activities”.
Faith Matters CIC reports should, then, contain details about Tell MAMA’s national anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring activity. In 2012, Faith Matters’ community interest company filing reported developing “a national hate crime monitoring project to counter religious hate crime”.
But in 2017, its CIC report noted that Faith Matters had provided “counselling, one-to-one advice, signposting, and pastoral care services to people affected by hate crimes through the Tell Mama project in 2016/2017”. The filing did not describe a national hate crime monitoring project.
By 2018, there was no further mention of Tell MAMA at all, but a reference to “support services for victims of anti-Muslim hate”, rather than a national hate crime monitoring project. The report also mentioned producing “research reports on extremist groups”.
From 2019 to 2022, Faith Matters’ CIC reporting over four years repeated almost verbatim the same text about its activities, saying its work focused on “promoting community cohesion, countering extremism, and tackling hatred and intolerance”. Neither Tell MAMA nor national anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring were mentioned.
The discrepancy raises the question of whether Tell MAMA’s data collection in this period could be properly characterised as a systematic national monitoring service, as opposed to something less fitting.
When asked about Faith Matters’ failure to mention a national anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring project in its CIC reports from 2016/17 to 2022, Mishcon de Reya denied any such omissions, stating: “… our client did in fact refer to Tell MAMA and its work on anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring in its CIC reports from 2016 onwards.”
Then on 10 July, subsequent to the above statement, Faith Matters filed a new CIC report referring to “hate crime work” for the first time after omitting it for four years: “Our work continues in tackling misinformation, hatred and intolerance online as well as offline. And our work has been noted as best model in hate crime work.”