The Centre For Social Cohesion

Sohaib Saeed, a spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), the UK-branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, has begun a campaign on Facebook.com against the Quilliam Foundation, a new thinktank which aims to tackle Islamic extremism among British Muslim.

Saeed's Facebook group, titled 'The Quilliam Foundation does NOT represent Islam', accuses the group of "seeking to cuddle up close with the Government and be the new absolute word in True-Pacifist-Islam-Not-Nasty-Islamism."

British Muslims for Secular Democracy (BMSD) held their officially launch event in central London yesterday.

Their official launch consisted of a debate chaired by Baroness Faulkner called ‘The Secular State – the best option for Muslims?’ The panel consisted of BMSD chair Yasmin Alibhai Brown, Ed Husain, Usama Hasan and Inayat Bunglawala.

Another May, another Mayor mercifully less prone than some to praising preachers of hate, and now, to add further icing to the cake of all who long for this country to return to the days when it was a tolerant, peaceful and civilised place in which to live, another moderate Muslim organisation to join the recently launched Quilliam Foundation in tackling the pockets of extremism and intolerance that remain among Britain’s Muslim community.

The jury in the airline bomb plot have listened to recordings in which an alleged plotter is giving another lessons in how to present a suicide video.

The conversations allegedly took place in 2006, and were picked up by an undercover recording device placed in the east London flat which the prosecution claims the men used as a bomb factory.

Cambridge and Edinburgh universities today announced plans to open new research centres for Islamic studies.

The centres are being funded to the tune of £16 million by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud, chairman of the Kingdom Foundation.

Peace campaigner and former hostage in Iraq Norman Kember has said that he is helping to fund radical preacher’s Abu Qatada’s bail.

Abu Qatada, who won an appeal against deportation which the government is currently trying to overturn, had appealed for Kember’s release when he was captured by the militant Swords of Truth group in Iraq in 2005.

Hassan Butt, a former member of al-Muhajiroun who claims to have rejected jihadist ideology, has been arrested by British police under anti-terrorism laws.

Butt was arrested at Manchester airport on Saturday as he tried to board a flight to the city of Lahore in Pakistan. According to the Manchester Evening News he had brought his ticket for the flight just 45 minutes before it was due to depart.

Who can fail but to be deeply moved, if not humbled, by the magnanimous words of compassion spoken by the mother of sixteen year old Jimmy Mizen, London’s latest teenage murder victim?

They were directed at the family of her son’s suspected killer, another local teenager for whom the police are searching and whose family the victim’s own are believed to know.

The West Midlands Police and Crown Prosecution Service have today been forced to apologise 'unreservedly' in the High Court and pay £50,000 damages to Channel 4's Dispatches programme 'Undercover Mosque.' Readers will remember that the Dispatches programme, broadcast last year (and view-able here), showed preachers at a number of British mosques making comments which were anti-semitic, sexist and homophobic.

But in an astounding decision, the police decided to investigate not the preachers of hate, but the Dispatches crew themselves, attempting to charge them with stirring up racial hatred.

Two men have been arrested at the University of Nottingham under the Terrorism Act.

Police said the men, aged 30 and 22, were arrested on Wednesday morning. One is reported to be a student and the other a former student. Campus premises related to the two men are being searched.