Fiyaz Mughal OBE MBACP

History of Social Enterprises and Community Projects

Fiyaz Mughal has extensive experience in developing social enterprises and large-scale community projects. This blog will explore some of his specific interests including working with young people, working against extremism, promoting social cohesion and hate crime monitoring. Fiyaz Mughal has worked on unique projects that have brought national attention and recognition. In 2009, he was named an officer of the Order of the British Empire for his work in community cohesion within the United Kingdom. At the time, he was 38 years of age.

It has been this passion for developing leadership and entrepreneurship that has captured Fiyaz Mughal’s interest and how people can lift themselves out of poverty by determination, vision and a desire to overcome. He has also carried with him a passion for communities to understand, empathise and work together for the common good of their local area or for the betterment of the nation. He was inspired to carry out Muslim and Jewish co-existence work after the 2003 Gaza conflict when he was a City Councillor in Oxford. He realised that there was a rise in antisemitic rhetoric in the city against the very small Oxonian Jewish community, which disturbed him. He has never given up on this work or this passion for better Jewish and Muslim relations that led him to develop the charity, Muslims Against Antisemitism.

Fiyaz Mughal also regularly writes for national newspapers on issues affecting Muslim and Jewish communities. He continues to speak out passionately on issues of equalities and human rights and in the need to counter the extremes of politics that are buffeting the United Kingdom. He also does not step away from challenging issues and in calling out extremism, such as antisemitism that is promoted from small and entrenched parts of his co-religionists. He also regularly appears on podcasts that deal with contemporary social issues affecting communities today.  

In spite of the difficulties that Fiyaz Mughal endured when settling in Britain, (after being twice displaced from Uganda and Kenya in 1972 and 1983), he is a firm believer that the United Kingdom is the best country where people of all backgrounds can make a future and a successful life within the bounds and values of the country.

Other roles that Fiyaz Mughal undertook included advising successive leaders of the Liberal Democrats, working with successive British Governments and ministers in countering extremism, promoting social cohesion and tackling hate crimes, as well as leadership roles in local government which included the national implementation of counter-extremism training courses across the country. He maintains his interest in mental health wellbeing and is also a trained counsellor and a member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapists. His current counselling and therapy practice can be found HERE.

Press Engagement and Social Influence Work

Over the last twenty five years, Fiyaz Mughal has engaged with hundreds of press sources – through podcasts, opinion pieces, online interviews and news articles. Topics have included social cohesion, integration, identity, mental health, extremism, social norms, migration, religious abuse and the role of faith leaders. 

As a former trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust for six years, Fiyaz Mughal also stressed the need for British Muslim communities to fully engage, research and understand the role of the Holocaust and how it has shaped human rights, and why it is important to stand with British Jewish communities whenever there is antisemitism targeted towards them. This allyship and the need to challenge both antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate, has been a cornerstone of the calls that he has made on several occasions at local, regional, national and international levels. Sadly, for these actions, Fiyaz Mughal has been repeatedly threatened by both Islamist and far right extremists.