Britain’s most controversial Islamist television station faces an investigation from Ofcom, the nation’s broadcasting authority, which received complaints that the channel continues to promote jihadist terrorism, Jew-hatred, and Wahhābī-Salafi Islamism. The investigation was prompted by a complaint filed by Taj Hargey, a prominent Muslim scholar associated with Oxford University.
The Islam Channel attracts over two million British Muslim viewers daily. It is deemed the foremost outlet for Islamist propaganda in the United Kingdom, according to findings from the now-defunct Quilliam Foundation, which labeled it the “most significant and influential” satellite channel in Britain in a 2010 report.
With its audience of 60 percent of British Muslims, the Islam Channel “has become a template for other Islamic networks to follow,” the Quilliam Foundation warned.
Founded in 2004 by Tunisian suspected Islamist Mohamed Ali Harrath and accused of giving a platform to Al Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, the free-to-air television network reportedly received a £2 million investment in 2007 from the overseas arm of Al-Shiddi Group, which has links to the Saudi Arabian royal family.
New Complaints
Hargey, director of the Oxford Institute for British Islam, has submitted a report to Ofcom accusing the Islam Channel of multiple breaches of Ofcom’s Broadcasting Code between November 2024 and January 2025. Reports indicate that in his complaint, Hargey, a leading reformed-minded Islamic scholar, alleged that the channel repeatedly praised Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks, compared Israel to the Nazis, provided a platform for radicals, failed to maintain impartiality in its reporting, and misled viewers regarding key facts.
An Ofcom spokesperson said the regulator is “assessing the complaints against our rules but are yet to decide whether or not to investigate.” The Islam Channel did not respond to a request for comment from Focus on Western Islamism (FWI).
The channel’s “persistent lack of impartiality, spread of harmful rhetoric, and engagement in political advocacy appear to directly contravene the principles set out in the Broadcasting Code,” Hargey stated in his complaint letter obtained by Britain’s The Telegraph.
The Islam Channel’s “persistent lack of impartiality, spread of harmful rhetoric, and engagement in political advocacy appear to directly contravene the principles set out in the Broadcasting Code.”
The network consistently depicts Islam as besieged by a repressive West; presents Hamas, Iran, and jihadi groups as legitimate “resistance” movements against Western liberal democracies; and fails to include the Israeli government or pro-Israel voices in its coverage of Gaza, Hargey said.
Hargey highlighted the channel’s rhetoric against Israel, including a speech by Ismail Patel, founder of the Friends of Al-Aqsa and joint organizer of recent pro-Palestine marches, in which he labeled Israel “a violent racist colonialist enterprise.”
Hargey further accused the network of portraying a one-sided view of events and promoting Wahhābī-Salafi Islamism while marginalizing Shia, Sufi, Ahmadi, and secular liberal Muslims.
Referring to the terrorist attack by Axel Rudakubana, who murdered three young girls at a dance class in Southport in July 2024, Hargey noted that the Islam Channel’s news program used the killer’s sentencing to attack the government’s counter-terrorism program Prevent while failing to report that Rudakubana possessed an Al Qaeda training manual.
The network championed terrorist and Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui as an innocent Muslim victim of the “War on Islam” in a January documentary, without mentioning her links to Al Qaeda and her attempts to kill U.S. officers, Hargey said.
Hargey’s allegation is supported by an Islam Channel news clip posted on Facebook that states Siddiqui is serving an 86-year U.S. prison sentence under “highly contested circumstances.” The network claims she was “abducted in 2003 with her children” and that “her case is fraught with missing evidence, allegations of torture, and human rights violations.”
“Islam Channel epitomizes hideous Islamic fundamentalism in the U.K. It purports to represent British Muslims, but its sectarian ideology is nothing but an insidious initiative to mainstream Muslim extremism and fanaticism in this country,” Hargey told The Telegraph.
Islam Channel Previously Sanctioned
Ofcom’s website records multiple breaches by the Islamist channel.
In 2007, the regulator fined the network £30,000 for breaking the broadcasting code by having pro-Hamas activist and “apologist for terror” Yvonne Ridley present news programs while she was a candidate in local elections. Ofcom’s code forbids candidates to act as news presenters, interviewers, or presenters on any program during an election period.
The channel, which has provided leading Muslim Brotherhood activists with a platform, was censured by Ofcom in November 2010 for five programs advocating for marital rape, violence against women, and describing women who wore perfume outside of the home as “prostitutes.”
In November 2020, Ofcom imposed a £20,000 fine on the Islam Channel for an episode of The Rightly Guided Khalifas, which “ascribed a perpetually negative characteristic to Jewish people; namely, corrupting Holy Books and seeking the destruction of Islam in both ancient and more recent times.” Ofcom also found that the program contained “uncontextualized antisemitic hate speech.”
In September 2023, Ofcom fined the Islam Channel £40,000 for a one-hour documentary titled The Andinia Plan—a conspiracy theory alleging a plan to establish a Jewish state in Patagonia, the southern region of South America governed by Argentina and Chile.
“This documentary program amounted to hate speech against Jewish people. The content was also potentially offensive and not justified by the context,” Ofcom ruled.
Harrath, the channel’s founder and chief executive, was placed on the Interpol wanted list in 1992 after Tunisia accused him of attempting to create “an Islamic state by means of armed revolutionary violence.” He has denied all charges against him. Harrath received refugee status and indefinite leave to remain in the U.K. in 2000. Interpol later removed Harrath from its wanted list. Harrath maintained the criminal proceedings against him were political.
Channel’s Extremist History
A 2010 Quilliam Foundation report, titled Re-Programming British Muslims: A Study of the Islam Channel, found that the network had made “inflammatory statements” against Sufi and Shia Muslims and had engaged in Holocaust denial. According to the report, the network’s advice to women “went beyond traditional, mainstream Islamic opinions on the issue and resulted in a number of women being told that they were not even allowed to leave the house without the permission of their husband.”
“The majority of their verdicts were a result of their Saudi-influenced insistence on complete segregation between men and women,” the 106-page report noted.
The report also cited instances of the network misrepresenting facts on the Arab-Israeli conflict, including the claim that “the Israeli army helps Jewish extremists,” and notes that Israel is “consistently depicted as malicious, dangerous and deceptive.”
“The treatment afforded to non-Muslims on the Islam Channel was particularly troublesome due to the large number of Muslims who watch the channel,” the Quilliam report warned, citing as an example how “non-Muslims are referred to disparagingly as ‘kuffar’ [rejectors of truth].”
The channel openly acknowledges that one of its goals is to proselytize non-Muslims by “crafting powerful and compelling content to spread dawah to our non-Muslim neighbors, sharing the true message of Islam.” Viewers were advised that giving out Christmas cards or joining Christmas celebrations is un-Islamic, as is greeting non-Muslims with a full Islamic greeting.
“The gravest failure concerning the Islam Channel is its failure in combating extremism,” the report concluded. The network regularly featured presenters with extremist tendencies, advertised the works of extremist preachers, and gave slots to radical Islamist organizations like Hizb ut-Tahrir and controversial preachers like Abu Usama at-Thahabi.
