by Damon L Perry, The Critic
The British Muslim Trust (BMT) — led by the Aziz Foundation and the Randeree Charitable Trust — has been entrusted with recording and monitoring anti-Muslim hate incidents. This is a role with significant potential to influence the ongoing policy debate around Islamophobia.
The Home Office has awarded BMT a contract of £2.6 million over three years to create the official mechanism for collecting and publishing data on anti-Muslim hate incidents across the UK, including those that fall outside police reporting systems. The money comes from a new taxpayer funded “Combating Hate Against Muslims fund”. Interestingly, the word “Islamophobia” is absent from official descriptions of the new monitoring system and its fund. This is significant given that ministers are still deliberating over the adoption of a formal definition of Islamophobia.
Although BMT will not define hate crime in law, the question is whether it will have the power to define what counts as “anti-Muslim hatred” for the purposes of public reporting, media framing, and policy discussions? It seems it will be able to determine the categories, count the incidents, and shape the datasets presented to the Government and the public.
Of particular interest within this arrangement is the Aziz Foundation, established in 2015 by property magnate Asif Aziz, who came to public attention for controversially planning to convert part of London’s Piccadilly Trocadero, which he has owned for some years, into a mosque. The Foundation is a curious choice for a partner. It has explicitly stated that its “values do not align with those of the Prevent policy, which actively harms Muslims”. The Foundation also believes that “higher education (HE) is … an incubator of institutional Islamophobia” and states that “eradicating Islamophobia [is] central to its social mission”. To this end, it has funded over £9 million in postgraduate scholarships, awarding around 660 master’s scholarships and 71 paid internships — exclusively for British Muslims.
While this scholarship programme appears philanthropic, its strategic focus is activism-driven. These scholarships support Muslims to study at universities such as UCL, Sussex, Goldsmiths, Liverpool and Sheffield in disciplines such as journalism, law, policy, and media — sectors that shape public perception and legislative agendas. The Foundation does not merely fund equitable education; it cultivates influence. Its choice of partnerships provide a clue as to what kind of influence it seeks to spread within Britain’s institutional fabric — one that appears to emphasise Muslim victimhood.