Sudden closure of Quilliam on Friday.

I found out about the sudden closure of Islamic ‘think tank’ Quilliam when I spotted rejoicing on Islamic propaganda website 5 Pillars and others. A tweet from Maajid Nawaz, one of the founders, remains to tell of the closure. Their website is gone, their Facebook page is gone, their twitter account and most of Maajid Nawaz’s tweets have gone. At the moment I can find no archive of any of their work and reports over the last 12 years. 

Due to the hardship of maintaining a non-profit during Covid lockdowns, we took the tough decision to close Quilliam down for good. This was finalised today. A huge thank you to all those who supported us over the years. We are now looking forward to a new post-covid future

5 Pillars lead with the gleeful headline 

The Quilliam Foundation: Good riddance to bad rubbish

5Pillars editor Roshan Muhammed Salih dances on the grave of the Quilliam Foundation, but warns that there will always be lucrative opportunities in the UK for those who attack Islam and Muslims. 

Alhamdullilah, alhamdulilah. Allah SWT is truly the Most High, the Just, the Humiliator, the Abaser. He has answered the duas of so many Muslims – to destroy the Quilliam Foundation. Allahu Akbar.

And He has liberated the name of the Shaykh ul Islam of the British Isles, Abdullah Quilliam, whose legacy was tarnished by people who weren’t fit to lick his boots.

Only Israel has united Muslims more in recent years than the Quilliam Foundation and its founder Maajid Nawaz. They have got up the noses of all sections of the community because we all saw them for what they were – attention-seekers whose voice was artificially amplified by government, Islamophobes and the mainstream media.

And so on…. ad nauseaum

The Middle Eastern Eye has a more measured report. Ajmal Masroor is happy, happy, happy. 

Medhi Hasan of Al Jazeera English asks a pertinent question 

Question 1: where did the 3 million dollars or so that the SPLC in 2018 paid Quilliam and Nawaz go?

The Middle East Eye has as good a round up of the social media celebrations as I could do myself. 

Many have questioned how the organisation can claim to be closing due to lack of funds given that the group won $3.375m in a settlement with the US-based Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) in 2018. The legal case took place after the SPLC had listed Nawaz as an “anti-Muslim extremist” in one of its reports

As at lease one government (ie taxpayers money, ie MY money) grant was made to them in the early years, although not recently, I would like to know what has happened to their funds. Qulliam is more than one man; there should be trustees and suchlike. A final publication of accounts wouldn’t go amiss.

Maajid Nawaz continues to host a radio show on LBC, which is broadcast every Saturday and Sunday. 

Co-founder of Quilliam, Ed Husain hasn’t mentioned anything on the subject. Yet. 

As recently as January the Telegraph was quoting the Quilliam Foundation in an article about the ethics of the fashion industry using and trying to avoid using  Chinese cotton, much of which is manufactured using Uighur Muslim slave labour.

I was never completely convinced that Quilliam were not a bunch of taqiya merchants set up to pull the wool over the eyes of naive infidels of goodwill. I find their timing of their announcement of closure (3pm on Friday afternoon only a couple of hours after the news of the death of the Duke of Edinburgh when the attention of the British press would be elsewhere) odd, and the complete and immediate removal of all archive material even odder.