Michael Gove to appoint new anti-Muslim hatred adviser ahead of new extremism definition next week

Mar 9, 2024 by Jill

by Christopher Hope, GB News:

The appointment will come in a week when ministers will seek to deliver on the commitment by Rishi Sunak to tackle both far-left and far-right extremism.

A critic of the Government’s approach to tackling extremism could be unveiled as the Government’s new anti-Muslim hatred tsar next week as part of a major crackdown on extremism to be launched by Michael Gove.

Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of counter-extremism group Faith Matters and Tell MAMA – a national project supporting victims of Islamophobia – is a frontrunner to be appointed as the new independent adviser on anti-Muslim hatred, GB News can reveal.

Mughal is understood to have met with Gove, who as Communities secretary works with the Home Office to tackle extremism through the Government’s Prevent programme, to agree the new role.

One Whitehall source said he was a “safe” appointment who would be expected to work closely with Tory ministers as well as Labour ministers if there is a change of government at the general election later this year.

An announcement could be made on Monday. Sources close to Gove said that Mughal was “one of a number of names we’re looking at”.

Last year, backing a review by William Shawcross which called for an overhaul of the Government’s Prevent anti-terror programme, Mughal criticised ministers for not stopping cash “channelled through Prevent to tackle extremism, being squandered on people that actually maintain the status quo”.

He told The Sun: “Tackling extremism means tackling the views, values and toxic social narratives that fuel the division and dehumanisation so associated with extremism.”

In 2022 Mughal, warned politicians not to “pander to hate and fear”. He told The Express: “We should give hope instead of hate, and courage where there is fear. That is what we ask from our politicians.”

The appointment will come in a week when ministers will seek to deliver on the commitment by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to tackle both far left and far right extremism which he said was tearing the UK apart in an address on the step of Downing Street.

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