Quilliam (think tank)

2007: Foundation and terminology Quilliam was established in 2007 by Ed Husain, Maajid Nawaz and Rashad Zaman Ali, three former members of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir. Husain left in 2011 to join the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Douglas Murray, who founded the Centre for Social Cohesion (which later morphed into the Henry Jackson Society), claimed: "Around the time Ed Husain came to public notice, I recruited him to work with me (through Civitas, the organisation that originally hosted the CSC). He liked my views and I had great hopes for him to become a source for real reform. This gave him the time and financial freedom to set up [Quilliam]." a 19th-century British convert to Islam who founded Britain's first mosque. The organisation was originally called The Quilliam Foundation, but later rebranded as simply Quilliam. Quilliam defined Islamism in the following terms: Quilliam argued that Islam is a faith, not an ideology, and that "Islam is not Islamism". It also argues that "[Islamists] are extreme because of their rigidity in understanding politics". The organization's goals were mainly communicated in three ways: through the publication of reports, through involvement with the media, i.e. by taking part in interviews and discussions across Europe and the Middle East, and through its "Outreach and Training" unit, which delivers a "radicalisation awareness programme". 2008: Gaza War On 30 December 2008, just days after the outbreak of the Gaza War, Husain condemned the "ruthless air strikes and economic blockade" of Gaza city by Israel. He predicted that the result would be "rightful support for the beleaguered Palestinian peoples – and a boost to the popularity of Hamas by default". Although sent "by hard copy alone" with no electronic version, provoking protests from various groups which had been identified in the Quilliam briefing as sympathetic or supportive of Islamist extremism. According to the briefing document, "The ideology of non-violent Islamists is broadly the same as that of violent Islamists; they disagree only on tactics." Quilliam's report claimed that a unit within Scotland Yard called the Muslim Contact Unit, and "associated with Jamaat e-Islami". Other organisations listed by the Quilliam report included the Muslim Council of Britain Also said to have Islamist sympathies or to be associated with Islamist groups were the Islamic Human Rights Commission, In December 2015, Robinson, who founded the anti-Islamic organisation Pegida UK after leading the EDL, claimed that Quilliam had paid him a total of around £8,000 over a period of six months so they could take credit for his exit from the EDL, although he said that he had already decided to leave the movement before coming into contact with Quilliam. Quilliam said they had paid Robinson as remuneration "for costs associated with outreach that he & Dr Usama Hassan did to Muslim communities after Tommy's departure from the EDL". Quilliam had previously persuaded another member of the EDL, Nick Jode, to leave the EDL. Jode was persuaded by the writings and on-line videos of Maajid Nawaz speaking on behalf of Quilliam, being particularly impressed by Nawaz's debate with Anjem Choudary of the Islamist group Islam4UK. 2021: Dissolution The Quilliam Foundation Ltd was put into liquidation on 9 April 2021. The same day, Nawaz posted on Twitter: "Due to the hardship of maintaining a non-profit during COVID lockdowns, we took the tough decision to close Quilliam down for good. This was finalised today. A huge thank you to all those who supported us over the years. We are now looking forward to a new post-covid future". ==Funding==

When Quilliam launched in 2007, the Home Office provided it with £674,608 of funding. In January 2009, The Times published an article claiming that Quilliam had received almost £1 million from the British government. The article also said that some "members of the Government and the Opposition" had questioned the wisdom of "relying too heavily on a relatively unknown organisation … to counter extremism". From 2011 onwards, Quilliam received no government, i.e. "public", funding. With the sudden cut in 2011, Quilliam operated at a loss that year. According to its political liaison officer, Jonathan Russell, the removal of public funding has been to Quilliam's advantage, as "it can remain ideas-focused, non-partisan and continue its own pursuits." In 2012, the foundation received $75,000 from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, which funds the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Quilliam also won a grant of over $1 million from the John Templeton Foundation. The organisation also received £35,000 from banker and BBC chairman, Richard Sharp via his charity, the Sharp Foundation. When asked why he did this, Sharp said he was impressed by Quilliam's "efforts to combat radicalism and extremism". ==Responses==

Tactics According to Alex MacDonald in Middle East Eye, Quilliam was "regularly accused [...] of authoritarianism as well as targeting Muslim groups across the UK and tarring them with the "extremist" label with little evidence." Douglas Murray described this attitude as 'appallingly illiberal'. Sayeeda Warsi, the first female Muslim member of a British Cabinet, described Quilliam in her book The Enemy Within (2017) as "a bunch of men whose beards are tame, accents crisp, suits sharp, and who have a message the government wants to hear". After Quilliam folded in April 2021, Malia Bouattia, former president of the National Union of Students, said that "for 13 years Quilliam reinforced the idea that Muslims are a suspect community and supported the draconian 'counter-terrorism' policies being pushed by the government". She claimed the foundation "leaves behind a toxic legacy, which will continue to harm the Muslim community in the United Kingdom and beyond". a neoconservative think tank, and has described Islamophobia as "a crock". Grooming gangs In December 2017, Quilliam released a report entitled "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation – Dissecting Grooming Gangs", concluding that 84% of offenders were of South Asian heritage. This report was fiercely criticised for its poor methodology by Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail, in their paper "Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' narrative" which was published in January 2020. In December that year, a further report by the Home Office was released, showing that the majority of CSE gangs were, in fact, composed of white men. Writing in The Guardian, Cockbain and Tufail wrote of the report that "The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim". Focus on Islamism In openDemocracy, Tom Griffin criticised Nawaz for focusing on Islamism, and for defending "counterjihad" figures like Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and Frank Gaffney. The emergence of the counterjihad movement had previously been noted in the journal of the Royal United Services Institute as early as 2008. The most comprehensive study of the US counterjihad movement, Fear Inc., by the Center for American Progress, identified its key activists including Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy and David Horowitz of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, both conspiracy theorists who have claimed Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin is an agent of the Muslim Brotherhood; as well as Pamela Gellar and Robert Spencer, the co-founders of Stop the Islamization of America. These in turn were funded by a small number of key conservative foundations such as the Donors Capital Fund, the Scaife Foundations, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Abstraction Fund. ==See also==