Nisa-Nashim

Nisa-Nashim is an interfaith organisation claiming to bring 'Jewish and Muslim women together to inspire and lead social change'. In reality it is a Zionist backed group dedicated to normalising Zionism in the UK Muslim community.

Origins

The Board of Deputies of British Jews claims that it 'incubated' . Nisa-Nashim claims that it was co-founded by two people one Muslim the other Jewish. In reality there were three co-founders as documents at companies House show.

Connections to counter extremism

Connections to British intelligence

Nis-Nashim has multiple connections to British intelligence.

• One director is a prevent official (Hifsa Haroon-Iqbal). Since January 2013, Haroon-Iqbal has worked for the Department for Education as West Midlands Regional PREVENT Lead (HE & FE), overseen by the Homeland Security Group, which is responsible for ‘developing, coordinating and implementing CONTEST’, the government’s counter-terrorism policy. The HSG also ‘leads on the management and delivery of the Prevent programme, in partnership with Counter-Terrorism Police, and local, national and civil society delivery partners’. It is not widely known that the HSG is one of the seven agencies and departments that form the UK intelligence community, alongside others such as MI5, MI6 and GCHQ. In other words, PREVENT co-ordinators like Haroon-Iqbal, while not directly employed by an intelligence agency, are overseen and co-ordinated by such an agency, making them ‘assets’ or ‘agents’ of British intelligence. The latter term is used by MI5 to describe individuals who are ‘not formally employed by MI5’ but acting on behalf of the state, as compared to its staff, who are referred to as ‘officers’.
• Both Marks and Siddiqi have attended events run by New Horizons in British Islam a project run by - among others - Siddiqi's husband Naved. This is a project that has received covert support from the Home Office propaganda unit RICU which is part of the Homeland Security Group - in other words, part of the British intelligence apparatus.

The future?

Nisa-Nashim has had some success in encouraging participation in its events and in its main aim of presenting itself as an innocent interfaith endeavour. However, it has faced significant criticism in the Muslim community, as is admitted in their annual report in both 2019 and 2020, the latter of which states: ‘The climate of suspicion that our work is motivated by a political agenda continued in 2020’. As a result, the organisation bemoans the difficulty of operating during the COVID-19 pandemic with reduced access to ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘potential donors’. Total income declined from £82,359 in 2018 to £54,685 in 2019 and down to only £427 in 2020. This would appear to suggest that the project may be heading for difficult times or possible extinction.

Funding

On its website, Nisa-Nashim says it is ‘funded by the Department for Communities and Local Government [DCLG] and is supported by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Nisa-Nashim is also grateful for the support of David Dangoor’. A 2015 report on the organisation’s launch elaborated that £30,000 was given by DCLG ‘with additional financial backing from the Board of Deputies’. In 2016/17 Nisa Nashim worked with M and C Saatchi, who gave in-kind support through the Building a Stronger Britain Together Programme, funded by the Home Office for a ‘strategic review of our marketing and communications’. The DCLG’s successor body, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, gave a further £30,000 in both 2017/8 and 2018/9.

David Dangoor is a philanthropist whose family Exilarch’s Foundation funds a variety of conservative and Zionist causes including the Islamophobic Henry Jackson Society and three leading pro-Israel groups – the BoD, the JLC and the Community Security Trust. The foundation has also given money to the Jerusalem Foundation – an organisation involved in promoting settlement activity in occupied East Jerusalem in contravention of international law. In early 2021, it was announced that Dangoor was gifting £2 million to the Royal United Services Institute, a Whitehall-based think tank at the centre of the military-industrial complex in the UK.

Dangoor is a vice president of the JLC (to which his foundation gave £450,000 in 2016 and £100,000 in 2019). He is also a trustee of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre UK, the British wing of the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Zionist organisation that named Jeremy Corbyn as the anti-Semite of the year in 2019. In its 2019 annual report, Nisa-Nashim thanked Dangoor ‘especially’ for support of its ‘core activities’.

Among other financial supporters have been the pro-Israel World Jewish Congress and the Fayre Share Foundation – a philanthropic group run by the Zionist activist Maurice Ostro, which ‘works closely’ with the pro-Israel Council of Christians and Jews and the government funded Faiths Forum for London.

In sum, the main funding sources for Nisa-Nashim have been the government counter-extremism budget and Zionist organisations.

People

• Akeela Ahmed Role Active Director Date of birth, August 1978 Appointed on 25 May 2018. Occupation Self Employed
• Miriam Nina Gitlin Role Active Director, Date of birth September 1963. Appointed on 25 May 2018. Occupation Lawyer
• Hifsa Haroon-Iqbal Role Active Director. Date of birth July 1964 Appointed on 25 May 2018. Occupation Civil Servant
• Denise Nicole Joseph Role Active Director Date of birth November 1962 Appointed on 27 September 2016. Occupation Chartered Accountant
• Ahmereen Reza Role Active Director Date of birth November 1961 Appointed on 25 May 2018. Occupation Housing And International Development Consultant
• Julie Margaret Siddiqi Role Active Director Date of birth October 1971 Appointed on 27 September 2016 Occupation Consultant
• Judith Flacks Role Resigned Director Date of birth July 1989 Appointed on 25 May 2018 Resigned on 31 December 2019 Occupation Head Of Campaigns
• Laura Marks Role Resigned Director Date of birth April 1960 Appointed on 27 September 2016 Resigned on 9 September 2019 Occupation Consultant