This is a guest post by Hafeez Gupta
Some of our readers may recall Sabin Khan (formerly Sabin Malik) from back in 2010 when it was widely reported she had conspired behind the Home Secretary’s back to get the hate preacher Zakir Naik into the country (a sackable offence for a civil servant). This incident led to calls for her resignation but Khan somehow survived; the Home Office (OSCT) having already side-lined one senior Islamist civil servant didn’t want to appear to be on an anti-Muslim crusade. More bizarrely, Khan was then promoted for her act of defiance. Despite only having a background in community cohesion (and some bogus credentials according to her former colleagues in Hounslow council), she was given a senior position to tackle extremism in communities.
News now reaches us that Khan has been busy promoting some rather dubious outfits in the Home Office; these have also been presented to Prevent Officers up and down the country as groups the government endorses (we have seen the email).
This includes the group ‘Inspire‘ which is also partly run by her sister Sara Khan (the former President of the MCB affiliate Young Muslim Sisters) and her close friend, the Islamist friendly Tahmina Saleem (MCB’s former Press Liason Officer and the former wife of Inayat Bunglawala, MCB’s former media secretary). During her time as Redbridge Prevent Lead (2008-09), Saleem selected and funded her own organisation ‘Inspire’ to the tune of £40k to deliver Prevent work in Redbridge (East London), but nothing was delivered and when questions began to be asked she left her post. Before promoting Inspire, the Home Office should first investigate where the £40k went and what it achieved? Taxpayers have the right to know and we are in the middle of preparing an FOI request to find out.
Khan has also spoken at the London Muslim Centre (LMC), the headquarters of the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE), at an Inspire conference in recent years. The LMC (which is run by East London Mosque) regularly gives platforms to all manner of extremists and it is not befitting for a senior civil servant to be speaking at this venue. It is difficult to take Inspire’s claim of championing women’s rights seriously if it continues to hold conferences at venues owned and run by Islamists.
Other groups being promoted by Khan are: The Islamic Society of Britain (ISB) – which was set up by Islamists linked to Jamaat-e-Islaami and the Radical Middle Way – a group which has also given platforms to extremists. We also hear she has also been promoting Tariq Ramadan, the grandson of Hasan Al-Banna, and founder of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.
Leaving aside Khan’s personal views on Islamism, her links to controversial figures and conflict of interest issues, she should know better than to be promoting Islamists. The Home Secretary will not be pleased to learn about this when we bring it to her attention. In the meantime, we will watch developments in the Home Office carefully!
Sarah adds: I have linked to a response to this article here, and here is a further response.
