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Islamism, also known aspolitical Islam, the use ofIslam as a source of political identity and action, has existed in theUnited Kingdom since the 1970s, and has become widely visible and a topic of political discourse since the beginning of the 21st century.
Islam in the United Kingdom has grown rapidly due toimmigration since the 1980s. According to the 2021 Census, Muslims make up approximately 6.5% of the population in England and Wales, totaling around 3.9 million people. This reflects an increase from the 2011 Census, which recorded Muslims at 4.9% (2.7 million).[1][2]
Radical Islam has been present in Great Britain since the 1970s, but had not received wider public attention prior to the7 July 2005 London bombings;terrorism in Britain during the 1970s to 1990s was mostly due to theNorthern Ireland conflict, and it was only after the 2005 incidents that the presence of radical political Islam in Britain was widely recognised and studied.[citation needed]
Dawatul Islam is an Islamist organisation based in London, founded in 1978[3][unreliable source?] from theJamaat-e-Islami Pakistan-originatedUK Islamic Mission to cater to East Bengali Muslims in Britain after the founding of the country of Bangladesh in 1971.[citation needed]
Syrian IslamistOmar Bakri Muhammad moved to the United Kingdom in 1986, and established a chapter ofHizb ut-Tahrir, and laterAl-Muhajiroun ("The Emigrants"), which was proscribed under theTerrorism Act 2000 on 14 January 2010.
Social disturbance began in the Muslim community in England in 1988 with the publication of the satirical novelThe Satanic Verses in London.[citation needed] The book was condemned with a fatwa the following year.[4]
In 1989, anIslamic Party of Britain was founded by aSheffield-bornconvert.[citation needed]
TheIslamic Forum of Europe was founded in 1990, reportedl by former members of theJamaat-e-Islami-affiliated group Dawatul Islam, with whom it came into conflict over management of theEast London Mosque "throughout the late 1980s"[5] resulting in "two High Court injunctions" in 1990 in "response to violence" at the mosque.[6]
TheIslamic Society of Britain (ISB) was set up in 1990 to promote Islamic values.[7][8]The Young Muslims UK, established in 1984, was incorporated into ISB as its youth wing. In 1997, some supporters of theMuslim Brotherhood "broke off" from ISB to form theMuslim Association of Britain.[relevant?]
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The Saved Sect operated from 2005 but was banned in 2006.The extent of the phenomenon was illustrated during theJyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy of 2006, whenAl Ghurabaa, successor organisation to the disbandedAl-Muhajiroun, called Muslims to "Kill those who insult the Prophet Muhammad", resulting inextensive protests in London.[citation needed]
Following the 2005 terror attacks, the phenomenon of Islamism within the resident Muslim population in Britain receive wider interest.An early publication wasLondonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within (2006).Undercover Mosque aired in 2007 (with a2008 sequel).Islam4UK led byAnjem Choudary (aBritish Pakistani born in the UK 1967) had been active from 2009. It has also been banned under theTerrorism Act 2000 on 14 January 2010.
Since 2006, theIslamic Forum of Europe (IFE) has been under scrutiny as fostering Islamist politics among Bangladeshi immigrants.[9] IFE and theEast London Mosque, have hosted extremist preachers includingAnwar al-Awlaki.[10] ADispatches documentary aired on 1 March 2010 suggested the IFE are an extremist organization with a hidden agenda that went against Britain's democratic values.[11]Dispatches quotedAzad Ali, the IFE's community affairs coordinator, as saying, "Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing thesharia, of course no one agrees with that".[12] Responding in a comment piece in the Guardian newspaper,Inayat Bunglawala of theMuslim Council of Britain suggested that many of the people interviewed on the programme had "hidden agendas of their own" suggesting that Jim Fitzpatrick's claim of theLabour Party having been "infiltrated" by IFE was motivated by upcoming elections.[13]The IFE and YMO were featured in the bookThe Islamist (2007) byEd Husain, where he explains that the YMO attracts mainly English-speaking Asian youths, providing circles or talks daily at the East London Mosque; while teaching aboutIslam, it covers the political system of the religion.[14]
TheIslamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC, established in 1997) was classified as "a radical Islamist organisation that uses the language and techniques of a human rights lobbying group to promote an extremist agenda" by theStephen Roth Institute in 2005.[15]
Thefirst sharia court, also known as sharia councils, began operating in the United Kingdom in 1982, and the number in operation has grown to 85 by 2024. ATimes investigation found that there are a growing number of Muslims from across Europe and North America seeking the services of British sharia courts, with the UK now dubbed as the 'western capital' for sharia courts.[16][17]
In 2013 there wereMuslim patrol incidents in London.
