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
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.”[1]
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.[2]
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.[2][3]
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.[4]
Leaked documents published by Kit Klarenberg in 2024 describe M&C Saatchi as the “ultimate controller” of Yalla, a Baghdad-based youth-oriented news and social media platform presented as an independent “social activism” project but functioning as a flagship component of a British intelligence-led psychological-operations apparatus in Iraq. The apparatus, constructed to counter ISIS propaganda, remained in place after the formal end of major combat operations.[4]
According to the leaked material:
- “Spooky advertising giant M&C Saatchi is the platform’s ultimate controller.”
In submissions to the Foreign Office the company boasted of its “significant experience… implementing sensitive unattributable programming for government clients.” To conceal its role it described a standard method:
- “establishing ‘a separate business entity’ as a public front company, and using ‘reliable’ contacts to ‘build in-country networks’ of influencers, journalists, and other content creators. ‘Production staff who speak local dialects to enhance credibility and authenticity as well as down-range cultural advisors’ are specifically recruited.”
For the Iraq operation it pledged:
- “The use of VPNs associated with Iraqi/Kurdish diaspora will add another layer of unattributability. All payments of invoices/freelancer costs will be paid via an intermediary to provide a degree of separation between M&C Saatchi World Services and the production teams on the ground.”
Yalla was ostensibly launched by young local journalists in 2015. By 2019 it claimed more than five million followers (92 per cent inside Iraq, 35 per cent women) and employed approximately 100 freelance reporters, influencers and comedians producing original content in Kurdish and Arabic. Public profiles described it as “editorially and financially independent” and as young Iraqis’ “most trusted and reliable source of information.” The leaked files show British expenditure of £4,300,000 on the platform in 2019/20 alone, with a further £4 million allocated for the following year, covering the website, Instagram, YouTube and Arabic, Kurdish and English-language Facebook pages. Output and operations were intensively directed by British intelligence.[4]
M&C Saatchi sought to use the platform for a “far-ranging influence campaign” intended to “promote a sense of personal agency and increase community cohesion” in former ISIS territories. It pledged to:
- “bombard target audiences with expansive multimedia psyops, intended to highlight and encourage ‘personal agency, community cohesion and national unity’ among Iraqis young and old.”
The company stated it would work with “youth psychologists and training experts to develop a range of evergreen modules, each comprising a series of social videos and interactive graphics that live across Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and that users can consume at their own pace.” Modules were designed to create “a user experience which is similar to mentoring or life-coaching programmes.” Content was “hosted natively” on Yalla platforms while influencers were encouraged to cross-promote via their own channels. Local staff were to “work with national and local TV and radio to repackage the content into broadcast material in order to maximise its reach.” M&C Saatchi claimed to have “relationships with a wide range of media outlets across the country” and anticipated leveraging them so that:
- “The influence campaign will be disseminated across a range of key media touchpoints for the target audience. These touchpoints will be carefully selected by the media strategy team in order to enjoy the widest reach possible and deliver the messaging where it will be best positioned to drive attitudinal and behaviour change at a personal and social level… The campaign will seek to shape choices, reinforce positive ideas and change social perceptions… [and] place increasing focus on user-generated content as the project evolves.”
Targeting was described as granular, with the ability to identify “audience segments and even specific individuals.” An example campaign was a travel series featuring three comedians from the South, the North and Baghdad designed to “frame the multiethnic history and heritage of Iraq as a potential source of political and economic strength.”
The same leaked submissions record that M&C Saatchi also managed operations that exploited “tribal leaders and religious clerics” as propaganda megaphones, specifically to promote “Sunni Arab self-governance in a positive manner.” The firm outlined its experience:
- “working with particular [Islamic] leaders to support them in articulating their ideas and vision through well-written articles, training them in how to deliver speeches and support on the organisation of events.”
The documents further state that M&C Saatchi “clandestinely operates globally-read websites, such as Imams Online, seeking to influence the Sunni clergy’s sermons in ways that directly and indirectly further British interests.”
The activity sat within a wider British intelligence “target audience analysis” conducted in 2015 that advocated sustained messaging through local channels, exploitation of ethnic and religious divisions, and efforts to counter Iranian influence. The Yalla operation is presented as one component of a psychological-warfare apparatus that was never dismantled after the formal campaign against ISIS.[4]
People
- Qari Asim – Senior Contributing Editor; later appointed independent adviser to the Government on Islamophobia.[5]
- 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.[6]
See also
- Faith Associates
- Research, Information and Communications Unit
- Breakthrough Media
- Horizon PR
- M&C Saatchi
- Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism
- Prevent
- Haqiqah
- Imams Online
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)
Notes
- ↑ Breakthrough Media, Showcase book, 2015. Leaked document.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Middle East Eye, “Google-hosted Muslim leaders summit linked to Home Office Prevent unit”, 2015.
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Kit Klarenberg, “Leaked: Britain’s Covert Iraqi Psyops Network”, 2024.
- ↑ Imams Online Imam Qari Muhammad Asim. Accessed 13 April 2020.
- ↑ Imams Online About us. Accessed 13 April 2020.