Two groups associated with the Muslim Brotherhood are part of a British advisory body that has completed a set of proposals for “core standards and constitutions” for Britain’s mosques and Islamic centers. According to one media report:
The new proposals to set out core standards for mosques have been drawn up by the year-old Mosques and Imams National Advisory Body (Minab), set up by the Al-Khoei Foundation, the British Muslim Forum, the Muslim Association of Britain and the Muslim Council of Britain.The draft constitution for the regulatory body, released yesterday after months of internal consultation, proposes increasing the skills and competencies of imams, developing mosques as centres of community cohesion, citizenship and dialogue and strengthening accountability and governance. It also proposes improving access of women and young people to mosques. The new body, according to its constitution, would also provide advice on the suitability of imams and scholars coming from abroad.Mosques that sign up to the core standards framework would receive practical advice, guidance and support from Minab, a body first recommended by an official government inquiry in the wake of the 7/7 bombings in London.
Another media report described the content of the proposals, designed to combat extremism, as follows:
Among the core standards set out in the draft, and seen by The Observer, is the stipulation that members must offer programmes that ‘actively combat all forms of violent extremism within the society at large’. All mosques will have to carry out regular checks on their staff, and offer mainstream religious teaching. But the code, drawn up by members of the four main Muslim organisations, will also offer Muslim women much greater protection. Imams will be expected to make it clear to their followers that forced marriages are completely ‘unIslamic’, as are violence or harassment in domestic disputes.
The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) is a long-standing Muslim Brotherhood group in the U.K. but as previous posts have reported, it has recently become relatively inactive as its key leaders departed to former the British Muslim Initiative. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is an umbrella group largely dominated by organizations affiliated with the Brotherhood. The MCB has recently fallen out of favor with the British government who has come to seen the group as less than helpful in the fight against extremism. Sources in the U.K describe Al-Khoie, on the other hand, as a much larger presence in the UK and as a pro-Jewish Iraqi Shiite schismatic sect whose UK headquarters in London is in a former synagogue which they “lovingly restored.” The same sources describe the British Muslim Forum as a Pakistani attempt dating back several years to build a moderate umbrella group.