It has been 10 years since Sir John Jenkins' landmark inquiry into the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK was wrapped up but he says the need to understand the movement's role is now even more pressing.
The former diplomat was commissioned by then British prime minister David Cameron in 2014 to examine whether the organisation was contributing to extremism and fracturing social cohesion.
These concerns are as prescient as they were back then, if not more so given the way the war in Gaza is shaping the political narrative among British Muslims.
Asked if he believes his report was a wasted opportunity, Sir John replied with a firm “yes ... it’s what I’ve said”.
“I just think governments need to act,” he told The National. “The first thing they should do is pay attention. Then they need to develop expertise. Then they need to monitor the actions, words and deeds of all these groups in all the languages they use.”
The anniversary of Sir John’s report comes at a time when the left of British politics is coalescing, particularly around the issues of Gaza and Islamophobia, to mount a new challenge to centrist politics.
The roots of Mr Cameron’s decision to commission the report can be traced to a speech he made to the Munich Security Conference in 2011, in which he set out his views on Islamic extremism and radicalisation.
While he did not mention the Brotherhood directly, he talked about “the existence of an ideology, Islamist extremism” that was driving terrorist attacks in Europe. “Governments must also be shrewder in dealing with those that, while not violent, are in some cases part of the problem,” he told the audience.
His views about the Brotherhood began to crystallise as fears were mounting that the group could begin using Britain as a base to plan extremist activities. The Brotherhood held a meeting on its strategy in London in 2013, a report said at the time.
Launching the inquiry at No 10 Downing Street, Mr Cameron said the government wanted to encourage people to move away from the path of extremism and “challenge the extremist narrative that some Islamist organisations have put out”.
"What I think is important about the Muslim Brotherhood is that we understand what this organisation is, what it stands for, what its beliefs are in terms of the path of extremism and violent extremism, what its connections are with other groups, what its presence is here in the United Kingdom.
“Given the concerns about the group and its alleged links to violent extremism, it's absolutely right and prudent that we get a better handle of what the Brotherhood stands for, how they intend to achieve their aims and what that means for Britain."
Sir John’s background made him a natural choice to lead the review. He joined the Foreign Office in 1980 after studying Arabic at the School of African and Oriental Studies in London.
He conducted the review itself alongside Charles Farr, who was director general of the Office for Security and Counter Terrorism at the Home Office, who examined the Brotherhood's ideology and activities in the UK.
Sir John visited 12 countries and met representatives of governments, political movements, religious leaders, academics and other independent commentators. Information was provided by diplomats, as well as security and intelligence agencies.
The report found that "aspects of Muslim Brotherhood ideology and tactics, in this country and overseas, are contrary to our values and have been contrary to our national interests and our national security".
Mr Cameron stopped short of banning the group, despite his admission that membership or association with the Muslim Brotherhood was a "possible indicator of extremism".
Since the Jenkins report was published, the questions raised about the Muslim Brotherhood continue to hover in the background but have never been at the heart of the debate concerning Islam and British society.
Other nations have begun to look seriously at the influence of the Brotherhood, most notably France, which has announced a crackdown to tackle its influence. Measures include the disbanding of endowment funds and a new mechanism to freeze assets.
This follows a report, written by former French ambassador Francois Gouyette and prefect Pascal Courtade, which said more must be done to stop the spread of political Islamist extremism.
The report identifies Muslims of France (Musulmans de France), formerly the Union of Islamic Organisations of France, as “the national branch of the Muslim Brotherhood in France”.
European progress
Sir John uses the example of Austria, which set up the Dokumentationsstelle Politischer Islam (Documentation Centre for Political Islam) in 2020 as part of an anti-extremism drive regarded as one of the most vigorous in Europe.
In one major report on the Muslim Brotherhood presented to politicians in Vienna in 2021, the centre revealed the group had established vast influence in Europe, with public bodies unwittingly funding it through well-meaning outreach to minorities.
The centre’s remit was widened this year and it was given government department-like status, meaning it interacts directly with the Austrian Parliament and fields questions from MPs.
Unfortunately, similar means by which the UK government can get to grips with the Brotherhood are not in place, Sir John pointed out, despite believing his report should have acted as a catalyst to start recruiting officials with relevant skills.
“What I said in 2014/15 to Cameron was you need to have expertise at the heart of government, which is looking at all these groups, looking not just to what they say in English, but looking at what they say in every language they speak, which includes Bengali, Punjabi and to an extent Persian etc and looking at what they do and they money flows.
“I said I couldn’t do it, I’m one person doing a report with Charles Farr and three people working for us. We didn’t have the time or the expertise but I said to Cameron, if you want to do this properly you’re going to need to devote resources to it.
“I said to Cameron, you need to follow the money, because that'll tell you everything about how this works.”
He believes the UK wasted an opportunity by not putting in place the means of dealing with the potential threat to British social cohesion posed by the group.
“I think it's detrimental to social cohesion, because I think they undermine the principles of liberal democracy.”
But “while you can see the stuff happening in general around you, it's very hard to see governments taking a proper stance against it. It's very difficult to sustain attention in the sort of parliamentary democracy we have these days. Every issue is five minutes, and then it's gone.
"It's the ability to sustain attention and they didn't sustain attention on the Brotherhood review. People just kicked it into the long grass and thought ‘you know, this is too difficult, too provocative, Cameron shouldn't have done, we'll just try to ignore it’.”
The Labour government that took power in July 2024 has begun changing the faces on government bodies, partly in response to rising political pressure within its own electoral base.
Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell Mama, a charity that monitors anti-Muslim hatred in the UK, has accused the government of being too weak on Muslim Brotherhood influence after his own organisation's funding was cut by the government in March.
Over time, Mr Mughal says he has experienced a rising influence of agenda-based loyalists not only in Labour but across politics. "After the report, we were building up some momentum and some knowledge about where the Muslim Brotherhood was in terms of its development in the UK," he told The National.
"The unfortunate thing is after that, nothing was done on the back of that report. The Tory government was completely consumed by Brexit and literally did nothing to move on from the Muslim Brotherhood report. That meant the Muslim Brotherhood had an opportunity to regroup.
"What these people had realised about me is that I was not an Islamist and they couldn’t control me" and that he was a moderate rival to them.
"They couldn't control me, and they were resisting and they were undermining me. I was thinking 'why are these guys that I've known for years undermining me?'
Mr Mughal, who sat as a Liberal Democrat councillor, said he faced a Brotherhood smear campaign against him after Tell Mama began working with the Community Security Trust, which also works with the Jewish community.
"I worked for the party for 13 years and during that time I would make introductions to the senior leadership of the Lib Dems, of a range of Muslim organisations that engaged with the Lib Dems.
"I then started a lot of interfaith work with Jewish communities but I noticed that I was getting pushback from the very people that I had introduced and engaged with."
"The realisation was it was because I started Tell Mama to go into the Islamophobia area, which we know is another area that they [the Brotherhood] actively used to recruit. The Muslim Brotherhood pushback was a secret, significant factor that was pushing against me."
After his recent loss of funding, he believes Gaza has given the Brotherhood new impetus and a foothold in the Labour Party.
"I can honestly tell you, this has supercharged the Muslim Brotherhood to the degree that the activist base, the social media base of Islamist organisations, has hugely gone up. When the Conservative government went, they were all over Labour. They are in every part of Labour right now."
The Muslim Brotherhood today, compared to when Mr Cameron commissioned the report are "much more politically savvy" and "much more able to penetrate the establishment system", he said.
"It’s deeply concerning because, you know, in the end I'm a Muslim but I like the values of the UK. There's some bits I disagree with, like some of their foreign policy. But the reality is I love the kind of values where everyone can just get on and do what they want to do. These guys don't want those values."
Sir John fears the Gaza conflict has raised the opportunity for Muslim Brotherhood-style influencers to sit at the forefront of the debate in politics and policy. “I think it's becoming an issue, a bigger issue publicly,” he said. “I mean, clearly not all of them, perhaps a majority, are informed by other issues, by other concerns, but it's there and it's being exploited politically. But I think this is the first time we've really seen that happening.”
