Azad Ali is a British activist and a spokesman for the
Islamic Forum of Europe
The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) is an Islamic organisation based in the United Kingdom with affiliates in Europe.Muslim Safety Forum The Muslim Safety Forum (MSF) is a British-based organisation set up to challenge the "unfair focus on the Muslim community when it came to policing activities and enforcement of anti-terror policing legislation". It was founded in 2001 and comprise ...
, is Vice-Chair of
Unite Against Fascism
Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is a British anti-fascist group.
Its joint secretaries are Weyman Bennett and Sabby Dhalu, formerly of the National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR). Its chair is Steve Hart of Unite the Union and its assistant secre ...
Islamic Forum of Europe
The Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) is an Islamic organisation based in the United Kingdom with affiliates in Europe.Jamaat-e-Islami. According to fascism and anti-fascism specialist Nigel Copsey of
Teesside University
, mottoeng = Deeds Not Words
, established = 1930 – Constantine Technical College1969 – as Teesside Polytechnic 1992 – gained university status
, type = Public
, endowment = £0.23 m (2019/20)
, chancellor ...
, this brought
Unite Against Fascism
Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is a British anti-fascist group.
Its joint secretaries are Weyman Bennett and Sabby Dhalu, formerly of the National Assembly Against Racism (NAAR). Its chair is Steve Hart of Unite the Union and its assistant secre ...
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.
The Daily Telegraph
''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally.
It was f ...
'', in 2008 Ali is a "leading Muslim networker" in Britain who described Al-Qaeda terrorist
Anwar al-Awlaki
Anwar Nasser al-Awlaki (also spelled al-Aulaqi, al-Awlaqi; ar, أنور العولقي, Anwar al-‘Awlaqī; April 21 or 22, 1971 – September 30, 2011) was an American imam who was killed in 2011 in Yemen by a U.S. government drone strik ...
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 m ...
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam
Abdullah Yusuf Azzam ( ar, عبد الله يوسف عزام, translit=‘Abdu’llāh Yūsuf ‘Azzām; ) was a Salafi jihadist, a Palestinian scholar, and theologian of Sunni Islam. During the Soviet–Afghan War of the 1980s, he advocated " ...
, Osama bin Laden'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
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
. In the blog he also criticised the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband after the minister had condemned the Palestinian Muslim militant organisation
Hamas
Hamas (, ; , ; an acronym of , "Islamic Resistance Movement") is a Palestinian Sunni-Islamic fundamentalist, militant, and nationalist organization. It has a social service wing, Dawah, and a military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam ...
for encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians. The exposé was by ''
The Mail on Sunday
''The Mail on Sunday'' is a British conservative newspaper, published in a tabloid format. It is the biggest-selling Sunday newspaper in the UK and was launched in 1982 by Lord Rothermere. Its sister paper, the ''Daily Mail'', was first pub ...
'', whom Ali unsuccessfully sued in 2010.
When a documentary on the Islamic Forum of Europe was made by the
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service ...
programme '' Dispatches'' in 2010, an undercover reporter filmed Ali saying "Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the sharia, 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
Andrew Paul Gilligan (born 22 November 1968) is a British policy adviser and former transport adviser to Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister between 2019-22. Until July 2019, he was senior correspondent of ''The Sunday Times'' and had also served ...
, who produced the documentary, has labelled Ali as an " Islamic fascist".