A new organization established by a charity that claims the Prevent anti-extremism strategy “actively harms Muslims” has been awarded a $2.5 million Government contract to monitor Islamophobia.

The newly formed British Muslim Trust will be funded by two foundations set up by African-born Muslim billionaires Asif Aziz and Shabir Randeree. It won the bid to take over from Tell Mama, a group that had monitored anti-Muslim hate crimes for 13 years. Tell Mama’s funding was abruptly cut earlier this year, which it described as part of a “malicious campaign” to discredit its work.

After a six-week bidding process, the British Muslim Trust won the Government contract and is due to begin work in early autumn. Announcing that it had won the bid, Lord Khan, Minister for Faith, said: “The rise of anti-Muslim hatred in this country is alarming and deeply concerning. That’s why we established this new fund: to ensure we’re doing everything we can to deeply understand the situation our Muslim communities are facing.”

But questions are already being asked about exactly who will be monitoring hatred and how they will define it. “This government has just given a huge amount of money to organizations with no measurable background of monitoring anti-Muslim hate at a national level,” says Tell Mama founder Fiyaz Mughal, an expert in extremism and hate crimes.

A second source, who also works in the Muslim hate crime space, added: “This is a bizarre decision to award such an important contract to an organization with a limited track record, very little grassroots support and set up by a controversial property magnate. It makes little sense and is unlikely to succeed.”

Ahmed’s researcher husband, Nafeez Ahmed, wrote that Michael Gove’s 2024 definition of extremism — which included several Muslim groups — was an attempt to install “the architecture of a new far-right authoritarian politics that will erode democratic accountability”. Meanwhile, Ahmed herself is chairing the Government’s taskforce, which has pledged to develop a clear definition of Islamophobia — a conflict of interest that Shadow Minister of Equalities Claire Coutinho has called out.

While South Africa-born banker Randeree’s foundation has been supported by King Charles III, his partner in this new organization, billionaire property magnate Asif Aziz, is a controversial figure.

Born in Malawi and brought up in Britain, Aziz is known as “Britain’s meanest landlord”, having created a multi-billion-dollar fortune buying up larger properties and turning them into flats. He has transformed the West End of London by purchasing Leicester Square’s Trocadero, which contains a hotel that includes a large Islamic center. He also bought the world’s oldest YMCA in Bloomsbury and subsequently closed it.

As well as paying for the Ramadan lights in the West End, his Aziz Foundation funds the Centre for Media Monitoring (CMM), which is run by Muslim Council for Britain spokesman Miqdaad Versi. The Muslim Council for Britain has its roots in Islamist group Jamaat-i-Islami and is boycotted by the Government because of its alleged links to extremism.

A recent study of the reporting work of the CMM by the Policy Exchange, meanwhile, found that many news reports — such as coverage of Islamist terrorist attacks — were wrongly labelled Islamophobic by the organization.

The Aziz Foundation has also expressed its enmity towards the Government anti-extremism program Prevent, which works to “de-radicalize” children and adults who are susceptible to terrorism and extremism.

In a 2021 tweet, the Foundation said: “The Aziz Foundation’s values do not align with those of the Prevent policy, which actively harms Muslims.” The following year, it funded a fellowship to investigate Prevent within universities “to help ensure Prevent is not used in ways that cause harm”.

It also supports the Islamophobia Response Unit, which was originally set up by Muslim Engagement and Development (Mend), a campaign group accused in the Commons of extremism.

Until a few weeks ago the Aziz Foundation, which also sponsors Muslim students through British Universities, had a mentor on its books who openly backed efforts to de-proscribe Hamas, saying he was “proud to have contributed” to a recent failed legal submission. Dr Tarket Younis, a senior lecturer in psychology at Middlesex University, also wrote on Twitter: “Our work isn’t done until all Zionists are removed from our institutions and shamed, alongside all racists, into nothingness”. His page on the foundation’s website disappeared after a newspaper article looked at his social media activities.

“The public needs to look very carefully at who the other groups the Foundation behind this has funded,” adds Mughal. “We cannot and must never allow people and groups with values that are fundamentally different to British values and traditions get a foothold in the country where so many died for the freedoms we so casually enjoy today.”

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Nicole Lampert is a journalist based in London.

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