James Brandon
James Brandon is a Senior Research Fellow at the Quilliam Foundation and a former Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Social Cohesion a think tank set up by Civitas "following widespread and longstanding concern about the diminishing sense of community in Britain"[1]. He is also a contributor to the attack blog Harry's Place.
Career
- James Brandon is a journalist who has reported on Islamic issues from Europe, Africa and the Middle East for a wide range of print and broadcast media. In 2003-4 he helped found the Baghdad Bulletin, the first English-language newspaper to be set up in Iraq since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
- Since then he has reported on the growth of Islamist groups in more than a dozen countries, writing analysis for Janes' and the Jamestown Foundation among others. In 2006 he became the first western journalist to interview the leaders of Pjak (the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan), the largest Kurdish rebel group in Iran.
- Brandon has also appeared as a commentator on Islamic issues on CNN, BBC and Sky News. Most recently he worked as an editor for al-Jazeera television in Qatar. He has an MA in Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London.[2].
Centre for Social Cohesion
Brandon gave an account of his time at the Centre for Social Cohesion in January 2009:
- until recently I worked with Murray at his Centre for Social Cohesion, which I joined because, in mid-2007, few other thinktanks were willing to seriously address the problem of Islamism at all. My time there was a constant struggle to "de-radicalise" Murray and to ensure that the centre's output targeted only Islamists – and not Muslims as a whole. This October, however, I had finally had enough of this constant battle and resigned. To his credit, Murray has privately retracted many of his more noxious comments – but he apparently lacks the courage to do so publicly.[3]
Affiliations
- Quilliam Foundation - Senior Research Fellow
- Centre for Social Cohesion - (formerly) Senior Research Fellow
- Harry's Place - contributor
References
- ↑ About Us (Accessed: 6 September 2007)
- ↑ Centre for Social Cohesion, Who we Are (Accessed: 4 January 2008)
- ↑ James Brandon, Reining in the Preachers of Hate, guardian.co.uk, 13 January 2009.
