Key points
Policy Exchange - one of Britain's leading institutes - publishes an investigation with a blunt verdict: “the impartiality of the British police has never been more in doubt”. The report isolates one of the causes of this crisis: the activism of internal staff networks (“Staff Networks”) and their ties to outside community and faith-based organisations. The central case study is the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) and its local branches.
The report's thesis is that, behind a declared mission of mutual aid among Muslim officers, the NAMP carries far broader political positions - to the point of hosting, on an official police website, a text branding the Israeli army a “Zionist terrorist group”, of calling for the word “Islamist” to be removed from police doctrine, and of working with organisations that the government keeps at arm's length. The authors see in this a breach of impartiality and call for a law, a “Police Impartiality Act”.
Two of the three authors, Andrew Gilligan and Paul Stott, regularly author the Policy Exchange work already reviewed by CERIF; the third, David Spencer, is a former senior officer of the Metropolitan Police. The report extends and documents CERIF reading note no. 2026/14, whose central exhibit it reproduces in an annex.
1. A report in continuity with “Blurred Lines”
The report is part of a long-running investigation. In 2023, Policy Exchange had published Blurred Lines, the first systematic examination of staff networks in the British police: it counted more than 200 of them, up 83% between 2010 and 2023, operating under disparate and opaque governance frameworks. The present investigation picks up the thread two years later, finding that the police “have not put their own house in order”.
The immediate context is a scandal: in the autumn of 2025, West Midlands Police weighed heavily in the decision to prevent the Israeli team Maccabi Tel-Aviv from playing a match in Birmingham. The affair led to the departure of the police chief, Craig Guildford, after Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood withdrew her confidence in him; an IOPC investigation (the police watchdog) is under way. The divisions that emerged after 7 October 2023 have, according to the authors, amplified the forces' inability to handle matters mixing politics and religion.
Yet the legal framework exists: the Police Regulations 2003 impose strict impartiality and prohibit any activity liable to give even the impression of partiality. The authors stress an often-overlooked point: this obligation is not confined to partisan neutrality; it extends to all contested political or ideological questions. A staff network that aligns with one side of an ideological controversy - “however virtuous the cause may appear” - breaks the rule.
2. The National Association of Muslim Police
Founded in 2007 at the headquarters of the British Transport Police - in the presence of the secretary-general of the Muslim Council of Britain -, the NAMP presents itself as the umbrella organisation for Muslim police officers (around 1,000 claimed members). Its articles, filed at Companies House, combine mutual-aid aims (recruitment, advancement and support of Muslim officers) with two broader objectives: “influencing the direction of national policing policy” and promoting “community cohesion”.
The association's governance remains opaque. The NAMP does not publish its full articles and distinguishes between “members” (officers who declare themselves Muslim) and “associates” (“allies, partners or sympathisers”), without it being clear whether the latter have a say. Registered as a Community Interest Company in November 2021 with two directors, it saw one of them resign in May 2023 - while still being presented by their force as “co-chair” - and by the summer of 2026 has only one left, a former counter-terrorism officer.
Its presence across the forces is uneven: 20 of the 43 forces (43.5%) have a local Muslim association, but the NAMP claims only 19 of them as “affiliated”, and the Metropolitan Police, the country's largest force, does not appear on its list of affiliates.
In the documents it files at Companies House, the NAMP also states that it has provided “advice” on the “ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine” and has worked, since October 2023, with the National Police Chiefs' Council, Counter Terrorism Policing and the College of Policing on questions of “diversity” and “religion”, without specifying to whom this advice is addressed.
3. The Kabbani paper
The report devotes most of its analysis to a document hosted on the NAMP's official police.uk site: “From Past Prejudices to Present Policies” (20 July 2025), signed by Khaldoun Kabbani, then president of the Scottish Police Muslim Association and vice-president of the NAMP. CERIF has already analysed it in detail (note no. 2026/14); the Policy Exchange report reproduces it in full in an annex and confirms its institutional significance.
The text presents Zionism as “a manifestation of anti-Muslim hatred” and brands the Israeli army a “Zionist terrorist group”. It describes as “alarming and unverified stories” the atrocities of 7 October 2023 - including the beheadings and sexual assaults - claims that no Israeli infant was killed and that a single child died two days after the events, and draws a parallel between Auschwitz and Israel's conduct. The report counters these claims with Amnesty International's tally - at least 36 children and 659 adult Israeli civilians killed - and recalls that the UN has documented the sexual violence as well as the beheadings.
The document's public disclosure prompted a formal intervention by the Jewish Leadership Council, which wrote to the minister for policing, Sarah Jones: hosted on an official police website, such a text is received by the public as carrying institutional endorsement, and it amounts, in effect, to casting the majority of British Jews - who identify with Zionism - as promoters of anti-Muslim hatred. The NAMP withdrew the document, then claimed it did not represent its views - even though it bore its logo, was hosted on its site and was signed by its then vice-president.
4. Counter-terrorism terminology
Beyond the Kabbani case, the report notes that the NAMP has long called for the removal, from police vocabulary, of the terms that designate Islamism. A 2022 document (“Proposal for Changes to Counter Terrorism Terminology”, signed by Alexander Gent, reproduced in an annex) and a 2023 statement on the revision of the Prevent programme argue that speaking of “Islamists” “does not help to address the ideological causes of terrorism” and “reinforces Islamophobia” by “associating Islam with terrorism”. The NAMP has made this a permanent line of work, a “workstream” named Counter Terrorism & Terminology. CERIF note 2026/14 recalled that, since 1999, the overwhelming majority of terrorism deaths in the United Kingdom have been of Islamist origin.
The report also notes an expansive definition of “anti-Muslim hatred” adopted by the NAMP, encompassing “negative media coverage” or “microaggressions” - down to telling a Muslim that “racism and Islamophobia are not a problem today”. A document co-produced with the College of Policing on faith-based accommodations for Muslim officers was removed from the institution's website in 2026.
5. The NAMP's partners
The NAMP's 2026 annual general meeting, held over two days on Greater Manchester Police premises, brought together as speakers representatives of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the British Muslim Trust, the Muslim network of the Crown Prosecution Service and the Islamophobia Response Unit. The latter was launched in 2017 by MEND, of which it is the legal arm; it is funded notably by the Aziz Foundation and Trust for London, and its head, Majid Iqbal, had spoken out in 2024 to denounce the “unjustifiable action” and the “violence” of the police during the Manchester Airport incident; one of the men arrested has since been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for assaulting a passenger and injuring a police officer.
These are the organisations from which the government has publicly distanced itself. In March 2024, minister Michael Gove named before the Commons, among the groups “of Islamist orientation”, the Muslim Association of Britain - which he described as “the British affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood” -, along with CAGE and MEND. In June 2026, the government confirmed that it would not engage with MEND, CAGE, the Muslim Association of Britain or the MCB.
When asked, Greater Manchester Police stated that this meeting had been held on its premises without the authorisation of its chiefs, and that it now requires the agreement of its senior command for such events.
6. Three case studies: West Midlands, Metropolitan, Scotland
The report develops three case studies.
West Midlands. A superintendent there combines the co-vice-presidency of the local Muslim association with the direction of the Prevent counter-terrorism programme - relaying on social media, in uniform, messages from third-party organisations. The police chief there was moreover photographed alongside Tahir Alam, a figure in the Trojan Horse affair (an attempted Islamist entryism into Birmingham schools). The IOPC investigation into the Maccabi Tel-Aviv affair remains open.
Metropolitan Police. The Met's Muslim association (around 700 members) is said to have served as a “bridge” between the leadership and the MCB, as suggested by emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act involving a deputy assistant commissioner. The report also notes that the Met's Turkish association flew at its gala the flag of the “Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus”, an unrecognised entity.
Police Scotland. The 2023 gala of the Scottish Police Muslim Association brought together the MCB's secretary-general, Zara Mohammed, and a MEND leader, in the midst of the period of governmental non-engagement. The report also notes that a former president of this association - also a member of the government's working group on anti-Muslim hatred, alongside Tell MAMA - was convicted in 2024 for embezzling the association's funds.
7. The recommendations
The authors refuse to reduce impartiality to partisan neutrality alone: it engages, they say, the whole range of contested ideological subjects, and its erosion “strikes at the very foundation on which a university - or a police force - should rest”. They set out graduated recommendations:
- a “Police Impartiality Act” unambiguously setting out the impartiality obligations of all forces, their chiefs, officers and associated bodies;
- given the risk, the outright abolition of staff networks under that law;
- failing that, strict regulation: refocusing on internal support for members alone, bringing back under police governance those networks set up as charities or companies, dissolving recalcitrant networks, strict impartiality including on partisan matters, and above all self-funding by members, with no public money, subject to annual audit.
Dr. Florence Bergeaud-Blackler
Anthropologist, Research Fellow at the CNRS (HDR)
Founding President of CERIF - European Centre for Research and Information on Brotherhood-style Islamism
cerif.eu
CERIF commentary
Contribution. The report shifts the debate from the sole controversy over the Kabbani paper to a question of governance: the status, funding and oversight of internal staff networks. It provides a rare factual basis (force-by-force figures, documents filed at Companies House, emails obtained under freedom of information law) and adopts a broad criterion of impartiality, one not reducible to partisan neutrality. CERIF reads in it a form of institutional entryism: not clandestine infiltration, but the use of an administration's internal representative bodies to relay outside organisations (MCB, MEND, Muslim Association of Britain).
Limitations. The report takes a stance, and some of its recommendations may be debated: the outright abolition of staff networks, in particular, goes beyond the object of the investigation and will have to be reconciled with freedom of association.
Why read it. Because it shows, on a major matter of core state authority, how the “fight against Islamophobia” can become the vehicle for a doctrinal capture of institutions.
In plain terms. A cause that appears purely protective - “fighting Islamophobia” - can serve as a means for an activist current to take control of an institution's doctrine, that is, of its words, its definitions, its categories, its training and its internal rules. The institution ends up adopting from within the activists' framework of thought: which words are forbidden (“Islamist”), what counts as “Islamophobia”, who is an acceptable partner.
The report also raises a question transposable to France and Europe: that of the status and funding of community networks internal to public administrations. It directly extends CERIF note 2026/14 and completes the British picture already drawn by Understanding Islamopopulism and A False Compromise.