 | The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies .(January 2025) |
|
Talha Ahmad is a British barrister and London based rights activist. He was the Treasurer of Muslim Council of Britain from 2016 to 2018 and is the co-chair of Stand Up to Racism. [1]
Ahmad became a barrister from Lincoln's Inn in 2010, and is a solicitor and advocate of the higher courts in England and Wales, specialising in civil and commercial litigation, charity, property and family law. He has been a director and solicitor-advocate (civil and criminal) of LeasideLaw Solicitors since 2018. [2]
As part of the national council, and later, the executive committee of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), Ahmad worked in various capacities, among them the chair as the membership committee from 2010 to 2014, and its yreasurer from 2016 to 2018. He was one of the candidates for the position of the office of deputy secretary general of the MCB for 2018–2020. [3]
Ahmad is the co-chair of Stand Up to Racism. [4]
He was a council member of Citizens UK and chair of Home Start Tower Hamlets.[ citation needed ]
He is also active in administrative bodies of several Muslim community institutions such as Bordesley Green Islamic Centre and Darul Ummah Redbridge. [3]
As a spokesperson for the MCB, Ahmad made many media appearances on issues such as the refugee crisis, racism in the UK, the "Trojan Horse" affair and broader Muslim politics in the region. His notable appearances on TV include the BBC Newsnight programme, BBC Sunday Politics, BBC Daily Politics, BBC Radio 4 Today, ITV Good Morning Britain, Channel 4 News, Aljazeera, CNN and SKY News. [3] [5]
Ahmad has spoken and written on the war-crimes trials in Bangladesh on Aljazeera and the Turkish state broadcaster TRT World, raising questions on the fairness of the trials and identifying them as political persecution of the opposition. [6]
He is also the host of the talk show The Conversation on TV One UK, an English and Bangla TV channel directed at Muslim audiences in the UK and Europe. [7]
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) is an umbrella body of Muslim organisations in the United Kingdom, with over 500 affiliated mosques and organisations. It was formed in 1994 in response to British government's expressed wish for a single representative body of Muslims it could talk to. It has been called the best known and most powerful of the Muslim organisations founded since 1990.
Sir Sadiq Aman Khan is a British politician serving as Mayor of London since 2016. He was previously Member of Parliament (MP) for Tooting from 2005 until 2016. A member of the Labour Party, Khan is on the party's soft left and has been ideologically characterised as a social democrat.
Sayeeda Hussain Warsi, Baroness Warsi, is a British lawyer, politician, and member of the House of Lords who served as co-chairwoman of the Conservative Party from 2010 to 2012. She served in the Cameron–Clegg coalition, first as the Minister without portfolio between 2010 and 2012, then as the Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as the Minister of State for Faith and Communities, until her resignation citing her disagreement with the Government's policy relating to the Israel–Gaza conflict in August 2014. In September 2024 Baroness Warsi resigned the Whip and left the Conservative Party.
Mohammed Afzal Khan, is a British Labour Party politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Manchester Rusholme, previously Manchester Gorton, since 2017.
Muhammad Abdul Bari, is a Bangladeshi-born British physicist, writer, teacher, and community leader. He is a former secretary of Muslim Aid, a former chairman of the East London Mosque, and a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain. He also served as the president of the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) in its early years when it was formed to organize Bangladeshi diaspora professionals in Europe. In addition to consultancy work, he has written for publications including The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, and has authored numerous books.
Babar Ahmad is a British Muslim of Pakistani descent who spent eight years in prison without trial in the United Kingdom from 2004 to 2012 fighting extradition to the United States. The US accused him of providing material support to terrorism via a website that he set up in the UK in 1996 to publish stories about the conflicts in Bosnia and Chechnya, but which in 2000–2001 allowed two articles to be posted on the site offering support to the then Taliban government in Afghanistan. The US accepted that the website was operated from the UK but claimed jurisdiction because one of the servers hosting the website was located in the US. He fought a public eight-year legal battle, from prison, to be tried in Britain but the British Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was "insufficient evidence to prosecute" him.
Imran Garda is a South African journalist, presenter, and novelist. The long-running host of The Newsmakers from 2015 to 2020, Garda returned to TRT World in 2022 with the one-on-one interview program The InnerView. He was formerly the host of Third Rail on Al Jazeera America based in New York City. Garda was also a senior presenter and producer for AJ+, Al Jazeera Media Network's all digital video news channel based in San Francisco. Previously, he worked for Al Jazeera English in Doha, Qatar and Washington, DC. He also hosted the show The Stream.
Daud A. Abdullah is a former Deputy Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain.
Tulip Rizwana Siddiq is a British politician who has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Hampstead and Highgate, previously Hampstead and Kilburn, since 2015. She served as Economic Secretary to the Treasury and City Minister from 9 July 2024 until her resignation on 14 January 2025, following allegations of misconduct.
Syed Talha Ahsan is a British poet and translator. He is winner of the Platinum and Bronze Koestler Awards 2012 for his poetry. He won the Koestler Award for his poem "Grieving",. He is also the translator of a tenth-century Arabic poem, "Above the Dust", by Syrian Abu Firas Al-Hamdani, on his captivity in Byzantium.
Husna Parvin Ahmad, OBE is a Pakistan-born British humanitarian and writer. She is the CEO of Global One 2015, a women-led INGO. She is Secretary-General of the World Muslim Leadership Forum. She was the chief executive officer of the Faith Regen Foundation.
Muhammed Abdul Muid Khan is a Bangladeshi-born British barrister and human rights activist. In 2012, he was recognised by the Bar Council, Law Society and CILEX as the "Best Human Rights Lawyer" in England and Wales.
Unite Against Fascism (UAF) is a British anti-fascist group.
Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh OBE WS NP is a Scottish politician, serving as chair of the Alba Party since 2021. She was also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ochil and South Perthshire from 2015 to 2017. A former member of the Scottish Conservatives, Labour, and the Scottish National Party (SNP), Ahmed-Sheikh served as the SNP's Trade and Investment spokesperson, Deputy Shadow Leader of the House in the House of Commons, and the SNP's National Women's and Equalities Convener. A solicitor and businessperson, and a former actress, Ahmed-Sheikh founded and formerly chaired the Scottish Asian Women's Association.
Nicklaus Thomas-Symonds is a British academic, barrister and politician who has been Paymaster General, Minister for the Cabinet Office and Minister for the Constitution and European Union Relations since July 2024. A member of the Labour Party, he has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Torfaen since 2015.
Allegations of Islamophobia in the UK Conservative Party have been made, including against senior politicians, such as Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Zac Goldsmith. Baroness Warsi, former co-chair of the Conservative Party, said in 2018 that anti-Muslim prejudice had "poisoned" the party. Many Muslim party members welcomed Warsi's comments, saying that they felt the issue had been marginalised within the party.
Harun Rashid Khan was the Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain from 2016 to 2021. The Muslim Council of Britain is a national umbrella body which currently serves more than 500 Muslim organisations and institutions in the UK. He was first elected to the position in 2016 and is the first British-born Secretary General of the organisation, and is the youngest person to be elected into the role. He was re-elected in 2018 as Secretary General, for a further 2-year term. In 2021, he was replaced by Zara Mohammed.
Marina Masuma Ahmad is a British Labour Party politician and trade unionist who has been the London Assembly Member for Lambeth and Southwark since the 2021 London Assembly election. She represented Crystal Palace and was an education spokesperson on Bromley Council.