Why did the Labour Government’s new faith minister, Lord Wajid Khan, kiss the ring of a Deobandi extremist? Khan demonstrated his submission to Maulana Tariq Jamil during the Deobandi imam’s visit to Khan’s Burnley constituency on February 22, 2025. It was caught on video posted to Maulana’s 8.7 million YouTube followers.
Kissing a ring is a way of humbling oneself in the presence of a religious leader and shows that the person bestowing the kiss accepts the ring bearer’s leadership and guidance in their life. It is also a display of love and affection, and a way of bonding with the religious leader.
The video shows that, after the ring-kissing in the street, Lord Khan and Maulana Tariq Jamil adjourned to a lounge, where they sat side by side in armchairs like dignitaries in an official meeting. Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick has demanded to know what they discussed. Jenrick is right to be concerned.
Tablighi Jamaat No Friend of Pluralism
Maulana Tariq Jamil is a leading Pakistani scholar of the Tablighi Jamaat, the evangelical wing of the Deobandi sect—a Sunni fundamentalist movement widely regarded as the largest Islamic revival movement in the world today, with a base in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire. The TJ urges followers to reject any compromise with Western values, cut all contact with nonbelievers, and prepare for conflict to establish Islam’s global victory.
According to a report in the Daily Telegraph, Western intelligence officials exonerate the Tablighi of direct involvement in terrorism but see the group as a key component in the radicalisation of Muslim opinion. A French intelligence report cited by Le Monde found that up to 80 percent of known extremists have, at some stage, passed through Tablighi ranks, leading to the group being labelled “the antechamber of terrorism” by intelligence officers.
In 2015, Farhad Zahid, a counterterrorism researcher from Pakistan—Tablighi Jamaat’s country of origin—reported that numerous terrorists, such as Richard Reid, who tried to blow up a plane with a shoe bomb; Jose Padilla, who was convicted of trying to detonate a dirty bomb in New York City; and American Taliban John Walker Lindh, who was arrested in Afghanistan, “all had in one way or other [been] connected to [Tablighi Jamaat] and its proselytizing activities.” More recently, one of the 2017 London Bridge attackers, Youssef Zaghba, was linked to Tablighi Jamaat according to Islamist Watch.
Clearly, the circles in which Maulana Tariq Jamil moves do not support the model of plural, secular democracy that has elevated Lord Wajid Khan to the European Parliament, the Mayoralty of Burnley, and the House of Lords. But they are ambitious for the expansion of their supremacist, fundamentalist brand of Islam in the U.K. In 2012, the Tablighi Jamaat planned to build a “mega mosque” near East London’s Olympic Park with 190-foot minarets and capacity for 12,000 worshippers. The mosque would have been the largest in Europe and three times the size of St. Paul’s Cathedral.
A body called the Newham People’s Alliance, set up to express “community support” for the mosque, blockaded the council offices where the planning committee was meeting and ran a virulent campaign against Sir Robin Wales, the mayor of Newham, calling him “Dirty Robin,” a “Zionist,” and a racist. The NPA included a number of extremists connected to Lutfur Rahman, the mayor of neighboring Tower Hamlets, who was disqualified for corruption and vote-rigging, the Daily Telegraph reported.
After failed High Court action, a bitter 13-year struggle over construction of the mosque ended when Communities Secretary Greg Clark blocked the scheme in 2015. “This proposal has created a great deal of division in Newham,” one person with knowledge of the decision told The Telegraph. “That would get a lot worse if the thing was built.” A video “obituary,” linked to the mosque’s website, made implicit death threats to the main protester against the plans, a former Newham councillor, and pictured his wife and children, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
Jamil’s History of Extremism
Tariq Jamil is known for his regressive views and his ambivalence about violence. Tariq Jamil is known for his regressive views and his ambivalence about violence. According to Pakistani media, Jamil refuses to issue fatwas condemning terrorism and, specifically, suicide bombings in Afghanistan, Kashmir, and the Palestinian territories.
He outraged public opinion even in Pakistan in 2020 when he said that the coronavirus had been unleashed on humanity because of the wrongdoings of women, blaming those who “were often scantily dressed” during an epidemic of lockdown-related domestic violence. In October 2024, a few months before his meeting with Lord Khan, Tariq Jamil was guest of honour at the Global Peace and Unity conference, hosted by Islam Channel founder Mohammed Ali Harrath, where several preachers claimed that only Islam could save humanity from the scourge of amoral Western liberalism.
Jamil is no friend to women’s rights. In an hour-long address in Urdu on October 19, 2024, he discouraged Muslim women in Britain from participating in the U.K. workforce. “You are very busy here. … The wife also looks for a job,” he said. “The husband also looks for a job. Now they are doing double job. Don’t do it! Do a single job. Cut your expenses. Make your house smaller. But don’t take a double job. The biggest wealth is children. Do not ignore this child. This is a great injustice to you!”
In his rambling sermon, Tariq Jamil cast doubt on science, saying, “Stephen Hawking is gone, who died after Einstein. Then he proved that there is one energy throughout the world. … This rich science … could not discover a great truth,” because it could not “explain what parents are, or the status of a wife. ... This science comes through the prophet; this science came to our prophet.” He reminded parents not to treat children equally because “Allah commands you concerning your children: for the male, what is equal to the share of two females.”
Jamil may discourage social mobility in favour of parenting and prayer, but he is not without material ambition himself. He is chauffeur-driven and lives in a luxurious residence with extensive landscaped grounds in Tulamba, a small town in the Punjab. In April 2021, Jamil launched a commercial Islamic clothing franchise—the MTJ brand—at a lavish, star-studded ceremony in Karachi.
Among others, the event included a video endorsement from Mufti Taqi Usmani, a former chair of HSBC’s Sharia Advisory Board.
Jamil’s Product Line Endorsed by Islamist
In his book, Islam and Modernism, Usmani responds to a question about whether jihad needs to be waged in a country like the U.K., where Islam can be preached freely. Usmani responds by quoting the Qur’an, stating, “Here killing is to continue until the unbelievers pay Jizyah after they are humbled or overpowered.” Jizyah is the subjugation tax imposed on non-Muslims under Islamic rule. Taqi Usmani was removed from the HSBC and Dow Jones advisory boards when these statements were flagged by Christian Concern, but his son remains on the HSBC Sharia advisory board. Usmani sits on several other advisory boards and is regarded as a leading Islamic authority on Sharia.
Deobandi and Salafi doctrines conjure an idealised Islamic past and a narrow, insular identity bound to Sharia-governed Islamic states. They cultivate a supremacist mindset among diaspora Muslims for whom Islam is no longer a spiritual pathway to God but an expansionist imperial project that stands against the West, against the nation-state, and against secular Muslim and non-Muslim populations. After fifteen months of demonstrations by apologists for religiously inspired violence against non-Muslim populations, the sight of Lord Khan kissing the ring of an evangelist of such doctrines does not inspire confidence in Labour’s ability to safeguard the democratic freedoms of our plural, secular democracy.