Quilliam

Quilliam is the world’s first counter-extremism think tank set up to address the unique challenges of citizenship, identity, and belonging in a globalised world. Quilliam stands for religious freedom, human rights, democracy and developing a Muslim identity at home in, and with, the West.

Extremism, a prelude to terrorism, cannot be contained by Muslims alone. Not least because religious rigidity and extremism are products of the failures of wider society to foster a shared sense of belonging and to advance liberal democratic values among all sections of society. That said, we believe a more self-critical approach must be adopted by Muslim leaders to free communities from Westophobic ideological influences, escape social insularity and facilitate the organic growth of Western Islam.

Quilliam seeks to challenge what we think, and the way we think. It aims to generate creative thought paradigms through informed and inclusive discussion to counter the Islamist ideology behind terrorism, whilst simultaneously providing evidence-based recommendations to governments for related policy measures.

Quilliam was named after Shaikh William Henry Abdullah Quilliam in order to strengthen British Muslim identity which, whilst being faithful to the basic tenets of Islam, takes into account a British context and seeks to find harmony between being British and being Muslim. Having said that, Quilliam is not a religious organisation. Rather, we seek to address issues of citizenship, identity, and belonging, which are matters that are currently pertinent to Muslims in the West.

Shaikh William Henry Abdullah Quilliam (1856-1932) was a native Englishman, a solicitor, from Liverpool, England, who was a Muslim by choice. He and many of his contemporaries embraced Islam voluntarily and established Britain’s first mosque in Liverpool, now a national heritage site. Quilliam’s community of nineteenth century Muslims were our forebears in British Islam.

The mass immigration of Muslims from the Indian subcontinent, while a welcome development, must not blur our understanding of the history of British Islam. Some academics trace the roots of Muslim presence to the eighth century, citing the Islamic minting of coins issued by Offa (d.796), King of Mercia (now known as the English Midlands). Chaucer in the introduction to his Canterbury Tales 1386 wrote of a ‘doctour of physik’ who learned from Muslim sources. In Tudor and Elizabethan times, Muslim influences were palpable in literature and trade. Captain John Ward of Kent for example, provides an instructive anecdote of his times. However, the first native Muslim community, dedicated to serving fellow Brits on the English mainland, was that of Abdullah Quilliam’s in Liverpool and, later, Lord Headley in Woking.