[6] Along with Stop the War Coalition (StWC) and Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, it has co-sponsored various demonstrations against the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.
[citation needed] In 2004, its president Anas al-Tikriti stood down to become a candidate for Respect in the Yorkshire and the Humber region for the 2004 European Parliament elections.
[15] In 2005, the MAB took control of Finsbury Park Mosque and expelled followers of the extremist cleric Abu Hamza al-Masri whom they accused of "promoting hatred".
[16] The MAB opposed the US extradition request for Babar Ahmad, a UK IT specialist[17] who was accused of operating websites which offered support to the then Taliban government in Afghanistan.
At the UK Stop the War Coalition conference in January 2003, the Alliance for Workers' Liberty moved a motion to dissociate from MAB.
"[25] According to Paul Goodman in The Daily Telegraph, MAB's founder Dr Kamal Helbawy admitted in 2005 “to still being a member of the Brotherhood and has been denied entry to America.
It is the straight way to pleasing God and I would do it if I had the opportunity.’”[26] In November 2014, the organisation was listed as a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates.
In 2014, a classified UK Government Review into the Muslim Brotherhood commissioned by then Prime Minister David Cameron concluded that while the Muslim Brotherhood have preferred “non-violent incremental change” this is largely “on the grounds of expediency, often on the basis that political opposition will disappear when the process of Islamisation is complete.” The Review found that the Brotherhood “are prepared to countenance violence – including, from time to time, terrorism - where gradualism is ineffective” and have “deliberately, wittingly and openly incubated and sustained an organisation - Hamas - whose military wing has been proscribed in the UK as a terrorist organisation...
El-Hamdoon claimed that the government's accusations were politically motivated, as his organization had criticised Cameron's foreign policy on Iraq.
[32] On 14 March 2024, Michael Gove, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, speaking in Parliament, named the organisation as one of several regarded as "a cause for concern", under a newly introduced official UK Government definition of extremism.