Ali was community affairs co-ordinator for the Islamic Forum of Europe, an offshoot of the Islamist group Jamaat-e-Islami.
[3] According to Charles Moore, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, in 2008 Ali is a "leading Muslim networker" in Britain who described Al-Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki in 2008 as, "one of my favourite speakers...," and "blogged in favour of a man who argued that it was a duty under jihad to kill British and American troops in Iraq.
[4] In the blog he also criticised the British Foreign Secretary David Miliband after the minister had condemned the Palestinian Muslim militant organisation Hamas for encouraging attacks on Israeli civilians.
[4][10] When a documentary on the Islamic Forum of Europe was made by the Channel 4 programme Dispatches in 2010, an undercover reporter filmed Ali saying "Democracy, if it means at the expense of not implementing the sharia, of course no one agrees with that.
"[3][11] Ali later attacked the undercover reporter on the IFE's official radio station, saying: "We've got a picture of you and a lot more than you thought we had.