Nisa-Nashim

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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.

Nisa-Nashim presents itself as a charity that aims to foster dialogue and understanding between Muslim and Jewish women, bringing them ‘closer together’ to ‘build personal friendships, grow as leaders and benefit wider society’. Its name means ‘women’ in both Arabic and Hebrew. The Nisa-Nashim website states that it raises ‘awareness of Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and women’s role in society’.[1]

The organisation operates as a network of local groups across 28 chapters. A glimpse of the role of the groups can be gleaned from the statement that Nisa-Nashim aims to ‘change the tone of the conversation, so that instead of swiftly polarising against each other, people instead learn to celebrate difference and increase trust and cooperation’.[1] This sounds warm and fuzzy if we imagine that Nisa-Nashim really is an ‘interfaith’ project, devoted to challenging prejudices against Jews and Muslims, but, in reality, the organisation exists to blunt criticism of Israel and the Zionist movement in the Muslim community. It does this by leveraging personal contacts and friendships, particularly in the wake of each new human-rights outrage and incidence of ethnic cleansing by the state of Israel in historic Palestine.

The intention of normalising Zionism in Muslim communities is evident in the ideological commitments and institutional links of those involved, from the sources of funding that the group draws upon and from the organisational structure of the group.


Origins

The Board of Deputies of British Jews claims that it 'incubated' [2]. 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.

Those involved with Nisa-Nashim fall into two categories. First of all, there are Zionists – that is, individuals who are or have been embedded in leadership or functionary positions in the Zionist movement or the government of Israel. Secondly, there are individuals of Muslim origin who are fully signed up to the Islamophobic counter-terrorism policies of the British state. Some of them, in addition, have clear, if sometimes covert, connections to a British intelligence agency, as we show below.

Connections to Zionism

Connections to counter extremism

  • Akeela Ahmed, Trustee and Director (25 May 2018–4 Jan 2021). In the accounts for 2020, Ahmed was said to ‘remain involved’ with Nisa-Nashim despite her resignation as a Trustee.[7] Her main claims to public notice are being involved in the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group with a whole hoist of other apologists for British counter-terrorism policy; and occupying a role in the Muslim Youth Helpline, which ended in acrimony in 2009 when she and her husband (the journalist Nafeez Ahmed) reportedly contacted the police to report charity colleagues to PREVENT.[8]

Connections to British intelligence

Nisa-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)[9], overseen by the Homeland Security Group, which is responsible for ‘developing, coordinating and implementing CONTEST’, the government’s counter-terrorism policy.[10] 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.[11] 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’.[12]
  • 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.
  • Saleha Islam who has run events for Nisa-Nashim is listed as staff on the website of Faith Associates a group which also has a covert connection to RICU

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’.[13] 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’.[14] 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’.[15] 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.[16] 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.[17]

Dangoor is a vice president of the JLC[18] (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.[19] 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[20]

Contact

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Nisa-Nashim About Nisa-Nashim Archived on 11 October 2021.
  2. Board of Deputies Interfaith. Archived on 28 March 2022.
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20210509231812/http://pgbsolicitors.com/team.htm
  4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/im-an-ardent-zionist-but-israels-annexation-makes-no-sense/2020/06/25/f949e6a4-b59e-11ea-a8da-693df3d7674a_story.html
  5. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/officers/ZEhC9z-aD-i0CRERQSFFpM3bNoU/appointments
  6. https://www.cage.ngo/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Repression-of-Palestine-solidarity-in-Schools-2021.pdf
  7. Nisa-Nashim [ Annual Report and Unaudited Financial Statements for the Year ended 31 December 2020], Companies House.
  8. Assed Baig Muslim Youth Helpline Closes and CEO Stands Down Amid Police Leak Row Posted on June 12, 2012. Accessed 13 April 2020.
  9. https://archive.ph/P216v
  10. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/716907/140618_CCS207_CCS0218929798-1_CONTEST_3.0_WEB.pdf
  11. https://web.archive.org/web/20211009053619/https:/isc.independent.gov.uk/how-the-committee-works/
  12. https://www.mi5.gov.uk/covert-human-intelligence-sources
  13. Nisa-Nashim Annual Report and Unaudited Financial Statement for the year ended 31 December 2020. Charity Commission.
  14. https://archive.ph/2ux2a#selection-509.81-509.223
  15. http://www.nisanashim.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Nisa-Nashim-final-2017-accounts-pdf.pdf
  16. Exilarch's Foundation NOTES TO THE ACCOUNTS FOR THE YEAR ENDED 31 DECEMBER 2019. Charity Commission.
  17. https://archive.ph/CkY5H
  18. https://archive.ph/uR6J7
  19. https://www.timesofisrael.com/jewish-group-names-uks-corbyn-top-anti-semite-of-2019/
  20. Companies House Nisa-Nashim: Officers. Accessed 21 April 2020.