Candidates’ Manifestos: MCB Election Commissioner Khalid Sofi’s Announcement

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-raheem,

For the past two years I have served as the Secretary-General of the MCB.  I have led the organisation through the end of the pandemic to work on both building our internal infrastructure, re-engage with our vast membership and to represent British Muslims in the public space. I thank my team, staff, our affiliates and our volunteers who have supported this term of work. It has been a challenging task with a great deal of learning.

Some of what we have achieved so far:

1. Strengthening Communities

   We were able to re-engage with the affiliate base and successfully engaged with 200+ affiliates across the UK, Alhamdulilah, to ensure they feel connected to our work and their voices have been heard by the leadership. Beyond this, meeting with a wide network of stakeholders, from those in the interfaith community, to prominent community figures, ambassadors, academics, scholars of all traditions, international leaders, business sector and charities to name but some of those.
   
   Ensured visible presence of the MCB across Muslim communities and wider society, with good engagement on our social media platforms, new website and branding as well as positive feedback from members.

   The MCB received a win for HSBC- Ethnicity Awards for ‘Best Community Initiative/Charity of the Year’. This was a great testament to the hard work of our team, showing the benefit of the MCB and the value of our work.

2. Policy and Advocacy

   Building key strategic relationships with wider society, cross-party support to tackle systemic issues such as Islamophobia. Over the course of two years we hosted Parliamentary sessions, and met with over 80 MPs from across all parties on key issues.

   We have successfully managed to support our affiliates and Muslim communities through very challenging crises, I have spoken on tough issues building a strong mcb presence in media coverage such as cost of living crisis, counter- terrorism, islamophobia, with notable appearance in LBC with Iain Dale, Times, Guardian, Sky, and BBC, etc

3. Building sustainable MCB

   A central focus of this term was MCB financial sustainability, to build infrastructure and source key talent to deliver this work. By bringing in a financial controller and fundraising officer, we successfully raised critical funds in Ramadan, and for our recent dinner, working on building capacity for the organisational work, there is still much to be done on these efforts.

 

Manifesto pledges for 2023-2024

MCB is and continues to be a force of good and a place to mobilise change for our communities, which have grown in number and diversity. As we have celebrated the beginning of our 25 Year anniversary, I hope we can consolidate learning from the wisdom of our elders to develop a vision for the future for all British Muslims.

There are three key stats that will be priorities for the next term and these are based around:

• 39% Muslims live in the poorest socio economic locales (Census, 2021)
• ‘Muslims form 3% of the population but has the highest (40%) of religious hate crimes in the UK’ (UK Govt stats, 2021)
• 50% of Muslims are under the age of 24 in Britain (Census, 2021)

 

• Developing the next generation of future leaders

One of the greatest learning and feedback from affiliates is the need to develop leaders to carry forward this work.I have seen both the best and most challenging circumstances in which young people find themselves in. We therefore need to come together with our affiliates to create a culture of leadership to facilitate more support for women, young people and diverse groups to feel confident to take on leadership roles.

• Advocating policy change on critical issues impacting British Muslims

 

i. General Election strategy 2023

The work the Re-doc team in the MCB team has carried out on the Census 2021, has provided a stark reminder of the social mobility issues impacting our community.

For this General Election, we need to ensure we have our strategic policies ready and these include (i) Social mobility (ii) Islamophobia (iii) Cost of Living (iv) Climate Change (v)Counter-Terrosim among the most critical .

ii. Tackling islamophobia

Key learning this year is that the most effective way to counter islamophobia is cross party support and wider society allyship. Pressure needs to continue for a definition to be adopted but work can’t be stalled waiting. More focus needs to go onto the impact of Islamophobia on women and young people in the workplace, with our research and advocacy work pushing on change in this.

• Building capacity and scale
  

 

i. Support for capacity building for our institutions

My travels across the UK have highlighted the extensive level of development across communities and best practices in place. This work can be shared nationally, the MCB can be that platform for best practice sharing, bringing affiliates together to discuss key challenges, and good standards to build successful and effective organisations attracting and developing new talent.

Assalaamu ‘Alaikum.

I have been involved with Islamic activities since my childhood, reciting Qur’an at the opening of ceremonies and events. At university, I was the president of ISOC for two years campaigning for the right of Muslim students at the London Metropolitan University. I also worked voluntarily for Student Action for Refugees helping Muslim refugees to settle and sign posting them in colleges and university around London and West Midland.

I am also the deputy imam of my local mosque in Peckham where I teach the Tafsir al Qur’an every Saturday after magrib since 2009. I have extensive experience in interfaith works at London borough of Southwark and also represented MCB at the interfaith discussions and events.

As the assistant treasurer for two years and now acting treasurer, I’ve been fortunate to have worked with the Community Response Group helping affiliates and Muslim organisations manage their finances and resources during the Covid-19 and importantly it was a great opportunity for me to apply my finance and management experience in reducing the organisation’s expenses while securing more incomes, resulting in making MCB more independent and a sustainable organisation financially. Among the achievements is the recent data cleansing exercise of our affiliates which consisted of ensuring that our affiliates’ information is correct and up-to-date. This action has resulted in invoicing affiliation fees correctly and reducing the bad debts significantly.

My ambition is to ensure the positive continuity of the works of the MCB internally and externally prioritising:

Total engagement with Affiliates

I pledge to improve our relationship with the affiliates by

• developing a strong strategy to effectively engage with them
• actively seeking new affiliates to expand our membership base
• Making regular phone calls from the MCB office bearers to affiliates
• setting up one stop shops in every major cities
• extending engagement to all Muslim-based organisations in the UK to build bridges and to achieve unity of purpose.

 

The North and South issues

The MCB is viewed by many Muslim communities in the North as a mainly London-centric organisation with little relevance or understanding of the issues facing their communities.

To fix this issue, I am ready to work with the Secretary General and the executive team to provide a tangible presence for the MCB in the North by

• organising more events at a regional level major cities.
• engaging face-to-face meetings with members to bridge a strong relationship and eliminate the current North-South misrepresentation
• reach out to Muslim organisations and underrepresented communities and
• strengthening interaction with the diverse affiliates, blacks, whites Asians, Arabs and all walk of life, making them feel an integral part of the MCB’s works to ensure ethnic, gender, socio-economic and theological diversity are listened to.

 

Greener and better mosques

As a member of the executive, I am aware of the plan to commit to a greener and better mosque initiative, and it is my commitment to take this forward. I pledge to ensure MCB plays a strong role for mosques to be environmentally sustainable, which aligns with the principles of Islam on the importance of preserving the environment and protecting natural resources.

I will

• support our partners and affiliates implement Eco Mosque schemes to help improve their environmental impact and developing standards aimed at reducing wastefulness and promoting greater awareness of climate change
• encourage a mosque-focussed Leadership Development Programme Training & CPD for the mosque’s trustees, management team, staff and volunteers and more importantly Best Practices of mosque governance are adhered to.

Addressing future challenges for Muslims in the UK

There are a lot of challenges facing Muslims in Britain today, it is clear that a structured and national approach to addressing them is much needed.

I will ensure that MCB influence policy making in the UK by

• encouraging the new generation of youth to seek good education, employment and healthy living.
• encouraging the team, affiliates as well as Muslim communities to engage with Local and Central Government.
• ensuring fair representation in the media and the society of the diversity of our affiliates in particular and Muslim community in general

 

Conclusion

I stand ready to support the Secretary General deliver her/his pledges while ensuring that the four priorities above works well in parallel.  I will ensure that there is effective communication and team work to provide a stronger community and deliver the needs of British Muslims and achieve the MCB’s vision of “Empowering Muslim communities to achieve a just, cohesive and successful British society”. Insha’Allah (God Willing)

Lamine Konate

Assalaamu ‘Alaikum.

I have been a member of the National Council of MCB for over 10 years and as the Chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque. Both these positions have enabled me to work closely with the Muslim community.

As Chairman of Finsbury Park Mosque, Alhamdulillah, I have been able with the support of the community to transform the mosque that previously struggled to bring in 50 people for Friday prayers to a vibrant and open mosque that not only caters for thousands of Muslims for prayers and community projects from a range of ethnic backgrounds, but also serving the broader faith and non-faith needs of the wider society.

At the mosque, I continue to lead with my colleagues

• the fight against the inequality, discrimination and Islamophobia facing Muslims and Muslim women in particular, through a range of events and engagements with government officials.
• in raising funds for those in need, including survivors of the Finsbury Park terrorist attack in 2017 and the Grenfell Tower fire
• to providing insights on Muslim-related issues at the national and international level.

I have been a regular speaker on international platforms and conferences addressing community relations and experiences from Finsbury Park Mosque and the best practices that can be extracted.

The hard work of our mosque and community has been recognised by many partners and organisations, in particular the Visible Quality Mark which we were awarded by Community Matters in 2014. This was only the third time the award has gone to a faith organisation and the first time ever to be awarded to a mosque.

As a Master’s graduate in “Charity Management” from St. Mary’s University, I have dedicated my life to working with different UK charities because I know how important these charities are to our communities whether they are mosques, schools, institutions, or humanitarian charities.

I am currently a trustee in five different charities which serve different communities here in the UK and abroad including – mosques, supporting Muslim students in the UK, helping Muslims in need abroad and interfaith work.

I value the importance of engaging with wider society and people of all different backgrounds and faiths. To that effect, I represent my local Muslim community as a trustee within the Islington Faiths Forum.

Some of our key work has included launching the Street Iftar initiative that celebrates our community’s spirit. This initiative became a national project that was implemented in many mosques across the country.

In a personal capacity, I have been on the diversity panel of ITV London News for the last 5 years mainly addressing the Muslim perspective on news related to our community.

In addition to this I am a member of the Police Islington Advisory Group (IAG) and a member of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) London Scrutiny and Involvement Panel in hate crimes.

My priorities

British Muslim communities are growing and developing rapidly, with the latest 2021 Census estimating approximately 3.87 million Muslims in Britain, compared to the 2.7m from the 2011 census.

Crucially, the data has also shown that 40% of the Muslim population of England reside in the most deprived areas where they face discrimination in education, jobs and housing. This puts a huge responsibility on our shoulders as MCB to address these issues and to highlight them to the government and key policy makers.

It is within this context, that as Deputy Secretary General, I pledge to achieve this by focussing on these priorities:

• Taking MCB closer to the grassroot Muslim organisations.
• Investing more in young people and engaging them more with the organisation.
• Working closely with different organisations within the Muslim community and the wider society to tackle all forms of inequality, discrimination, racism and Islamophobia.
• Develop greater cooperation within the Muslim community particularly in the areas of social and economic development.
• Enhance the operating model for the National Council so it is a real forum for critical discussion and debate.
• Ensure fair representation of the diversity of our affiliates within the organisation.

I believe the above priorities are key to ensuring the stability and expansion of MCB in the coming years. This is essential for the organisation to continue to increase in its output and deliver more projects with greater value-add to our communities and wider society.

I stand ready to support the MCB Secretary General in their tasks and to ensure continuity and a smooth transition internally, so that externally, we can provide a stronger and community-rooted voice to the Government, media, and wider British civil society.

Muhammad Kozbar