It was two years ago this month that Martin Bright answered his phone to someone who would only identify himself by saying that he “worked in the Foreign Office”.
Bright, then the Observer’s home affairs editor, had just written a lengthy article probing the beliefs, alliances and origins of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), who at that stage had the ear of several key ministers and had been welcomed across much of Whitehall as a voice of Muslim moderation.
In the piece, the writer alleged that “the leadership of the MCB and some of its affiliates sympathise with and have links to conservative Islamist movements in the Muslim world and in particular Pakistan’s Jamaat-i-Islami, a radical party committed to the establishment of an Islamic state in Pakistan ruled by sharia law”. As a result, he reported, more genuinely moderate Muslim voices were being squeezed out.
Click here to read the rest of the interview.
Bright’s Blog will resume at the end of August when Martin returns from annual summer break.
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