Imams Online

Online platform and project of Faith Associates presented as a voice for Islamic religious leaders; identified in leaked Breakthrough Media documents and reporting as an asset used by RICU (Home Office) for covert counter-extremism propaganda under the Prevent strategy; linked in later reporting to M&C Saatchi operations influencing Sunni clergy

Leaked document showing relationship between Breakthrough Media (and thus with RICU) of a range of allegedly independent civil society groups including Active Change Foundation, Anti-Tribalism Movement, FAST, FIDA Management, FMO, Imams Online, Inspire, JAN Trust, JIMAS, New Horizons, Plain Islam, Tiger Legends, Tim Parry Jonathan Ball Foundation for Peace, Upstanding Neighbourhoods

Imams Online - Slide from leaked Breakthrough Media presentation, 2015.

Imams Online - Slide from leaked Breakthrough Media presentation, 2015.

Imams Online is a project of Faith Associates presented as a global voice and information portal for Islamic religious leaders, imams, chaplains and scholars. It has been identified in leaked documents and reporting as an asset of British intelligence used in the covert propaganda campaign run by the Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) of the Home Office (then part of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism) to “generate and promote a credible set of moderate and respected Muslim voices.”

It is named in documents leaked from Breakthrough Media as working with Breakthrough under its contract with RICU. Reporting by Middle East Eye in 2015 stated that content for the site, including material for the Haqiqah magazine, was produced or ghost-written by Breakthrough staff and required RICU approval before publication. Breakthrough’s then director Scott Brown acknowledged that the company had provided “creative design services” for Imams Online’s work “aimed at stopping radicalisation and recruitment to Daesh.” Faith Associates and its CEO Shaukat Warraich have maintained that the platform is independent and that content is authored by imams and scholars themselves.

Activities

Imams Online was established in 2011. In 2015 it organised a Digital Summit for Imams (attended by figures including Hamza Yusuf and Abdallah bin Bayyah) and launched the online magazine Haqiqah (“the truth” or “the reality”), billed as an effort by British Muslim scholars to counter ISIS propaganda and “reclaim the internet.” More than 100 imams gathered in London for the launch. The platform has organised further digital summits, worked with Facebook, Google, YouTube and Twitter on content and digital safety, and promoted national sermon days on issues such as hate crime. In 2017, following the Finsbury Park attack, Shaukat Warraich of Faith Associates was introduced to journalists at the scene by a representative of Horizon PR (the joint venture of Breakthrough Media and M&C Saatchi); the angle emphasising the pacifying role of the local imam dominated subsequent coverage.

Leaked Breakthrough presentations and the 2015 Showcase book list Imams Online among a network of ostensibly independent civil-society groups used to deliver RICU messaging. A leaked Home Office “Prevent Strategy – Local Delivery Best Practice Catalogue” named Faith Associates as a recipient of Prevent funding (up to £43,000–£45,000) for mosque engagement and capacity building.

Links to M&C Saatchi and later operations

In 2024 leaked documents published by Kit Klarenberg on Britain’s covert Iraqi psychological-operations network described M&C Saatchi as operating sites such as Imams Online globally in order to influence Sunni clergy sermons, including messages of pacifistic solidarity with Palestine. The same material characterised M&C Saatchi as the ultimate controller of the Yalla platform in Iraq and as an intelligence cut-out with “significant experience… implementing sensitive unattributable programming for government clients.” No direct contractual link between Imams Online and IncoStrat appears in the published material; IncoStrat’s documented work has centred on Syria and related strategic-communications contracts.

People

• Qari Asim – Senior Contributing Editor; later appointed independent adviser to the Government on Islamophobia.
• Editor in Chief Shaukat Warraich – CEO of Faith Associates, founder and chief editor of Imams Online; also chief editor of the Mosque and Madrassah Quarterly.
• Managing Editor Kaashif Awan – Has worked at Faith Associates since 2014; jointly responsible with the Editor in Chief for editorial direction and strategy.
• Contributing Editor Haroon Sidat – Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Islam in the UK, Cardiff University.
• Contributing Editor Nadeem Ashfaq – Co-founder of the Light Foundation and Vice-Chair of the Preston Faith Forum.

See also

• Faith Associates
• Research, Information and Communications Unit
• Breakthrough Media
• Horizon PR
• M&C Saatchi
• Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism
• Prevent
• Haqiqah

External links

• Imams Online website
• Middle East Eye, “Google-hosted Muslim leaders summit linked to Home Office Prevent unit” (2015)
• Kit Klarenberg, “Leaked: Britain’s Covert Iraqi Psyops Network” (2024)
• BBC, “Imams try to ‘reclaim the internet’ with Haqiqah magazine” (27 March 2015)
• The Guardian, “Imam network launches site to counter Isis propaganda” (8 October 2015)