According to a report published by The Daily Telegraph, Britain's first female Muslim Cabinet Minister Baroness Sayeeda Warsi has been accused by a Muslim leader of handing out official posts in Whitehall to radical people linked to Islamist groups enabling them to enter the political system.
Until recently, Fiyaz Mughal was a former member of a “cross-Government working group on anti-Muslim hatred” set up in 2012 by Lady Warsi and Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister.
The group, which directly reports to the Prime Minister, includes officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), the Ministry of Justice, the Home Office, the Department for Education, the Foreign Office and the Crown Prosecution Service. It has continued to operate even after Warsi's August 2014 resignation from the government over Britain's policy on Gaza.
Mughal has reportedly claimed that the 'radicals or former radicals and their allies' were given the official posts by Lady Warsi included a man involved in an “unpleasant and bullying” campaign to win planning permission for the controversial London “mega mosque” proposed by a fundamentalist Islamic sect.
Some members of the group are also accused of using their seats at the table to urge that Whitehall work with Islamist and extremist-linked bodies, including one described by the Prime Minister as a “political front for the Muslim Brotherhood”.
Others are said to have demanded the lifting of bans on preachers from entering Britain, including controversial televangelist Zakir Naik.
The Telegraph however reported that all members of the working group are not Islamist or radical sympathisers and there is no suggestion that any member is a supporter of violent extremism.
