A British newspaper editorial comment is reporting that an organization linked to the global Muslim Brotherhood has received funding from the U.K government as part of a program meant to counter extremism. According to the report:
Something called the Preventing Violent Extremism Pathfinder Fund is meant to direct pounds 45 million towards 200 projects in 70 local council areas which ministers say will help counteract jihadi and separatist propaganda. It will dispense pounds 6 million this year; but finding out precisely where the money is going has proved surprisingly difficult. Paul Goodman, the MP for High Wycombe and the Conservative communities spokesman, asked for the information last August and has only recently received a full reply. The programmes include a high number of sports schemes; others include English courses for imams and anti-extremism seminars. Inevitably, nearly all the groups in receipt of money are Muslim organisations…It is clear from the list given to Mr Goodman that some of the organisations in receipt of funding are controversial. They include the Cordoba Foundation, which has received pounds 19,000 from Tower Hamlets to organise a series of debates, including one with Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a group that Tony Blair once threatened to ban. The Cordoba Foundation was founded by the prominent British Muslim Anas al-Tikriti, former president of the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) and the son of the leader of the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq. Members of the MAB have previously indicated their links with Hamas and their support for suicide bombings abroad.
Anas Al-Tikriti is currently a leader of the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), an organization founded by ex-members of the Muslim Association of Britain. A previous post has reported on a media workshop jointly sponsored by the Cordoba Foundation and the London City Government. The newspaper report also identified the U.K Islamic Foundation as another beneficiary of the fund. Described in a U.K news program as one of “the most influential” outposts of “militant Islamist ideology” in Europe, the Islamic Foundation is also closely associated with the global Muslim Brotherhood and the Southeast Asian Islamist political party known as the Jamaat-e-Islami.