The Quiet Tolerance: How the UK Named, Investigated, and Then Ignored the Cordoba Foundation

The government called it a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. A foreign state designated it a terrorist entity. A major bank shut its accounts. And then nothing happened.

Apr 07, 2026

Between 2009 and 2018, the UK government boycotted the Muslim Council of Britain. In 2009, the then Leader of the Opposition named the Cordoba Foundation in the House of Commons as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated the Cordoba Foundation as a terrorist entity. That same year, HSBC closed its UK bank accounts. In 2015, a UK government-commissioned review concluded the Muslim Brotherhood was secretive, its denial of violence not credible, and its ideology contrary to British values. And through all of this, the Cordoba Foundation continued operating from London while the UK government took no action against it whatsoever. This is the story of that gap.

The Muslim Council of Britain was established in 1994 and grew into the largest umbrella body for Muslim organisations in the United Kingdom. For years it was the primary interlocutor between the UK Muslim community and government. That changed in March 2009 when the Gordon Brown government ended formal engagement with the MCB after its deputy secretary general signed the Istanbul Declaration, which characterised British naval vessels sent to stop arms reaching Gaza as “a declaration of war.” The MCB also refused to explicitly condemn the 7/7 London bombings in 2005. The government boycott lasted nine years.

The question is what replaced that engagement. Throughout the period of the MCB boycott, a network of organisations continued to operate in the UK, maintain access to Parliament and government, and receive public funds. The Cordoba Foundation sat at the centre of that network. The Sunday Telegraph, reporting in November 2013, documented that the Cordoba Foundation operated from Westgate House in Ealing alongside other Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisations. The newspaper reported that the Cordoba Foundation worked closely with extremist groups seeking the establishment of an Islamic caliphate in Europe. Andrew Gilligan reported that the organisation had close ties to Hamas leadership and that its founder had co-founded a related organisation with a senior Hamas commander.

The corporate record confirms the basic facts. The Cordoba Foundation existed as a UK registered company at Companies House, incorporated in 2009, with its registered office in Cardiff and a sole director, Anas Altikriti. The organisation was founded in London in 2007 by Anas Altikriti, a British Iraqi who previously served as President of the Muslim Association of Britain from 2004 to 2005. Altikriti’s father headed the Iraqi Islamic Party, which was the political arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq. The family connection to the Muslim Brotherhood leadership runs through the entire structure.

The Family Bridge to MCB Leadership

What links the Cordoba Foundation directly to the Muslim Council of Britain is blood. Azzam Young, who served as director and secretary of the Cordoba Foundation, is the son of Said Young, who led the Muslim Council of Britain as its head. This family connection means the Cordoba Foundation was not merely ideologically aligned with the MCB but was organisationally continuous with it at the leadership level. When the government was boycotting the MCB institutionally, the Cordoba Foundation remained operational through a direct family pipeline to the very leadership the government was refusing to meet.

In November 2014, the UAE Cabinet designated the Cordoba Foundation as a terrorist organisation alongside more than seventy-five other entities. The UAE, which hosts the Cordoba Foundation’s Dubai office, is a foreign sovereign state making its own intelligence assessment. The UAE’s designation specifically described the Cordoba Foundation as a body of the Muslim Brotherhood. This is not a statement from a political opponent or a newspaper editorial. It is an official designation by a foreign government.

That designation came three months after another significant event. In August 2014, HSBC closed the Cordoba Foundation’s UK bank accounts alongside those of several other Muslim organisations. The bank stated that the provision of banking services “now falls outside of our risk appetite,” declining to provide any specific explanation. The Charity Commission confirmed it was not investigating any of the organisations whose accounts were closed. So in the same calendar year, the Cordoba Foundation lost its bank accounts with one of the world’s largest financial institutions and was simultaneously designated as a terrorist entity by a foreign state. The UK government’s response was to commission a review.

The Jenkins Review and the Decision Not to Act

In April 2014, the UK government commissioned a review led by Sir John Jenkins, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, and Charles Farr, formerly director general of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism. The review concluded in 2015. Its findings were extraordinary in their candour: the Muslim Brotherhood was secretive, its denial of violence was not credible, and its ideology was contrary to our values and national interests. The review specifically identified the Cordoba Foundation as associated with the Muslim Brotherhood. The review’s own language was more pointed than any newspaper editorial. It noted that the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK claimed to act in support of Muslim communities and use London as a base for activism elsewhere, with operations in Europe, Egypt, the occupied Palestinian territories and the Gulf. The document continued: “This activity is sometimes secretive, if not clandestine.” The review did not frame that as a compliment.

The Muslim Brotherhood in the UK claimed to act in support of Muslim communities here and use London as a base for activism elsewhere, notably with other Muslim Brotherhood organisations in Europe, in Egypt and the occupied Palestinian territories and in the Gulf. This activity is sometimes secretive, if not clandestine.

Muslim Brotherhood Review Main Findings

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The review found that proscription was not the appropriate tool. The legal threshold for UK terrorism designation requires evidence of terrorism-related activity in the UK specifically, and the review concluded that threshold was not met. The government accepted this recommendation and decided not to proscribe either the Muslim Brotherhood or the Cordoba Foundation. This legal finding answered one question but left another entirely open. The government had concluded that the Cordoba Foundation was associated with an organisation that was secretive, not credibly nonviolent, and contrary to British values. The government named it in Parliament. And the government chose to do nothing.

The Foreign Affairs Committee took the unusual step of hearing oral evidence from Anas Altikriti himself, the founder of the organisation under review. The committee published its report and the government responded by accepting the Jenkins recommendation. No action followed against the Cordoba Foundation. It continued operating from London throughout the review period and beyond.

Westminster Access: Parliament, Ministers, and the APPG Machine

The inaction is even more striking when set against the documented access the Cordoba Foundation and its network maintained within Westminster. In March and September 2013, the Emirates Centre for Human Rights organised meetings inside the Houses of Parliament. The Emirates Centre for Human Rights was registered to Malath Shakir, a former director of the Cordoba Foundation and the wife of Anas Altikriti. An organisation linked by personnel to the Cordoba Foundation was holding meetings inside Parliament. Mark Durkan MP chaired the March 2013 meeting held under the auspices of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Human Rights. He subsequently stated that he had been asked to chair the meeting in his capacity as an officer of the APPG and that he was unaware of the group’s links.

In 2010, the Sunday Telegraph revealed that iEngage, an organisation linked to the Cordoba Foundation network, had been appointed as secretariat to the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia. The APPG on Islamophobia is a formally registered parliamentary group with official status. The secretariat role gives an organisation significant influence over the group’s agenda, witnesses, and published output. That role had been held by an organisation linked to the Cordoba Foundation network, and the only reason it ended was a newspaper investigation.

In 2008, Shahid Malik, then a minister in the Department for International Development, was due to speak at the opening ceremony of Islam Expo 2008 alongside Ken Livingstone. His own department raised objections about the political affiliations of the organisers. After an interdepartmental row involving Downing Street, Malik withdrew hours before the event and then contacted Altikriti directly to apologise. Altikriti told him the organisers were falsely accused of Hamas connections. The minister responsible for communities and international development had to be talked out of attending an event by his own department, then felt compelled to apologise to the organiser.

The wider network maintained equivalent access. In 2004, Ken Livingstone, then Mayor of London, invited Yusuf al-Qaradawi to City Hall. Livingstone gave Qaradawi what was described as a bear hug and a warm handshake and described him as someone who preaches moderation and tolerance. Qaradawi is the Muslim Brotherhood’s most influential spiritual figure, headquartered in Qatar. He has justified suicide bombing against Israeli civilians and called for gay people to receive the death penalty, according to documented reporting. Livingstone’s characterisation was the opposite of what the evidence showed. This was the Mayor of London hosting the spiritual leader of the global Muslim Brotherhood at City Hall and publicly defending him.

The East London Mosque and the Public Funding Question

The institutional anchor for much of this network is the East London Mosque, which serves as the primary base for the Islamic Forum of Europe, founded by members of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, which is the Bangladesh affiliate of the global Muslim Brotherhood movement. The East London Mosque’s financial vehicle is the Islamic Forum Trust, a registered charity. The accounts of that charity, filed with the Charity Commission, would show the money flows between the mosque, the trust, and affiliated organisations. That financial backbone has never been the subject of a published investigation by any UK authority.

What has been documented is the public money that built the adjacent London Muslim Centre. The London Muslim Centre opened on June 12, 2004, with approximately fifteen thousand people attending. The total building cost was £10.4 million, of which approximately £6.4 million came from public sources: the European Development Fund, the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the London Development Agency, and the SureStart national government programme. The inauguration was led in prayers by Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais, the Saudi government-appointed Imam of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, who has been documented making antisemitic statements and calling for jihad in Kashmir and Chechnya.

Anwar al-Awlaki, a senior Al-Qaeda operative subsequently killed by a US drone strike, spoke at the East London Mosque in person in 2003 and returned for a guest Friday sermon on December 26, 2003, his last in-person appearance before he went into hiding. On January 1, 2009, a video of al-Awlaki was shown at the London Muslim Centre as part of a ticketed event. The same institution that was preaching extremist content to audiences in London was being funded by UK taxpayers and hosting individuals designated by the US as a key Al-Qaeda facilitator.

The Elected Interface: Lutfur Rahman and Tower Hamlets

The political output of this network found its clearest expression in Tower Hamlets. Lutfur Rahman was elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets in 2010. His campaign was supported through organised mobilisation by the Islamic Forum of Europe and the East London Mosque network. Imams from the East London Mosque publicly endorsed Rahman as a religious duty. An Election Court found in April 2015 that Rahman had used undue spiritual influence to secure his election, a finding that is extraordinary in its wording: religious authority was deployed systematically to capture a local government. Rahman was removed from office and banned from politics until 2020. He was re-elected as Mayor of Tower Hamlets in May 2022 under the Aspire party.

The network’s interface with elected politics was not limited to Tower Hamlets. Azad Ali was a civil servant at HM Treasury while simultaneously serving as a spokesman for the Islamic Forum of Europe. He stated that British soldiers in Iraq were religiously obliged to be killed by Muslims. He was also founding chair of the Muslim Community Safety Forum and Vice-Chair of Unite Against Fascism. Mark Burns-Williamson, elected as a Labour Police and Crime Commissioner for West Yorkshire, subsequently spoke at a public event alongside Azad Ali. The extremism network had a civil servant at the Treasury and a Police and Crime Commissioner engaging with it simultaneously.

The Gap: What the Government Did and What It Did Not Do

The documentary record, taken as a whole, presents a coherent pattern. The UK government boycotted the Muslim Council of Britain for nine years because of concerns about links to extremism and a refusal to condemn the 7/7 bombings. The government named the Cordoba Foundation in Parliament as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The government commissioned the Jenkins Review, which concluded the Muslim Brotherhood was secretive, not credibly nonviolent, and contrary to British values. The government accepted the review’s finding that proscription was not the right legal tool. The UAE, a foreign sovereign state, designated the Cordoba Foundation as a terrorist entity. HSBC, a global financial institution, closed the Cordoba Foundation’s accounts. And the UK government continued to take no action against the Cordoba Foundation itself.

The gap is not a gap in knowledge. It is a gap in action. The government knew. Parliament named the organisation. The review documented the problem. A foreign ally assessed the threat and designated it. The financial system marked it as high-risk. And the organisation continued to operate from London, continued to hold meetings in Parliament through linked entities, and continued to engage with political figures. The Jenkins Review answered the legal question of whether the Cordoba Foundation could be proscribed under terrorism law. It did not answer the political question of whether the UK government should continue to allow an organisation it had named, investigated, and documented to operate from London without any regulatory consequence.

The question is not whether individual politicians had conversations with people connected to this network. The question is whether the government, having documented what it documented, had a policy for managing those conversations, and whether that policy was coherent given that the government itself was simultaneously boycotting the MCB and declining to act against the Cordoba Foundation.

Open Questions

The institutional response to the Cordoba Foundation raises questions that official sources have not answered. The Charity Commission confirmed it was not investigating the Cordoba Foundation or any of the organisations whose bank accounts were closed by HSBC in 2014. The Emirates Centre for Human Rights, which held meetings in Parliament linked by personnel to the Cordoba Foundation, is a registered charity. Whether it has ever been reviewed by the Charity Commission in relation to its connections and activities is not a matter that has been answered in any public record.

The Islamic Forum Trust, as the financial vehicle for the East London Mosque and the Islamic Forum of Europe, files annual accounts with the Charity Commission. Those accounts would show income, expenditure, grants paid to connected organisations, and governance structure. The relationship between the financial backbone of the East London Mosque network and the organisations documented in this investigation has never been the subject of a published statutory inquiry in the United Kingdom. The government boycott of the MCB and the Jenkins Review covered the ideological and political landscape. The financial infrastructure that sustains the network has not been examined in public.

The Jenkins Review concluded that proscription was not the right legal tool because the UK terrorism threshold requires evidence of UK-based activity. That is a legal finding. It does not address whether regulatory tools, Charity Commission investigations, Companies House enforcement, or any other administrative mechanism could have been deployed against the Cordoba Foundation. The government has not published any assessment of whether those tools were considered, whether they were sufficient, or why they were not used.

In March 2024, Michael Gove, as Communities Secretary, announced a new extremism definition and indicated that the MCB or its affiliates could be assessed for designation. The Boris Johnson government had begun re-engaging with the MCB from January 2021, after the election of Zara Mohammed as its first female leader in 2021. The question of whether any affiliates of the MCB, including the Cordoba Foundation, were assessed under the new definition has not been answered. The Cordoba Foundation was a named organisation. It was not proscribed. It was not investigated. It was not mentioned in any public statement about the new extremism framework.

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What the Record Shows

The Cordoba Foundation was founded in London in 2007 by a man whose father led the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Muslim Brotherhood affiliate in Iraq. The son of the head of the Muslim Council of Britain served as the Cordoba Foundation’s director and secretary, creating a direct family bridge between the largest UK Muslim umbrella body and this specific organisation. The organisation was named by David Cameron in the House of Commons in 2009 as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Sunday Telegraph documented that it worked closely with extremist groups seeking to establish an Islamic caliphate in Europe. Andrew Gilligan reported that its founder had co-founded another organisation with a senior Hamas commander and a Hamas special envoy. A foreign sovereign state, the UAE, designated it as a terrorist entity. HSBC closed its accounts. The Jenkins Review confirmed the Muslim Brotherhood was secretive, not credibly nonviolent, and contrary to British values, and specifically identified the Cordoba Foundation as associated with it. And the UK government took no action against the Cordoba Foundation.

The UK government made a choice. It chose to boycott the MCB. It chose to name the Cordoba Foundation in Parliament. It chose to commission the Jenkins Review. It chose to accept the legal conclusion that proscription was not available. And it chose not to use any other available tool against the Cordoba Foundation. That choice had consequences. The organisations linked to this network accessed Parliament through APPGs. They held meetings in the Palace of Westminster. They maintained relationships with serving ministers who felt compelled to apologise when blocked from appearing at their events. They built institutions with £6.4 million in public funding that subsequently hosted individuals responsible for terrorism. They operated a political machine in Tower Hamlets that was removed from office by an Election Court for using religious authority to win an election. And through all of this, the regulatory apparatus of the United Kingdom, which has statutory powers to investigate charities, enforce company law, and assess extremism risks, remained silent.

The official record is not ambiguous. It documents the network, names the organisations, records the connections, and reports the conclusions. What it does not explain is why the documented awareness did not produce a documented response. The government knew. The government investigated. The government concluded. And then the government stopped. The Cordoba Foundation dissolved as a UK company at some point after its activities, but the network it was part of did not. The question of why the UK government documented this network in such detail and then chose to manage it rather than confront it is a question that official sources have not answered. It is a question worth asking.

Why did the Charity Commission confirm it was not investigating the Cordoba Foundation or any organisation whose accounts HSBC closed in 2014, given the documented connections to extremism?

Did any minister or official assess whether regulatory tools beyond proscription could be deployed against the Cordoba Foundation after the Jenkins Review, and if so, what was the conclusion?

Were any parliamentarians who participated in APPG events organised by linked entities made aware of those links by the APPG secretariat, and what disclosure obligations apply to APPG events held in Parliament?

Has the Islamic Forum Trust ever been the subject of a statutory inquiry by the Charity Commission in relation to its connections to the Islamic Forum of Europe or the Cordoba Foundation network?

Under the 2024 extremism definition announced by Michael Gove, has the Cordoba Foundation or any of its linked organisations been assessed for inclusion, and what was the outcome?

Sources

Thom Aster

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