Quilliam was established in 2007 by Ed Husain, Maajid Nawaz and Rashad Zaman Ali, three former members of the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir.

[2] Douglas Murray, who founded the Centre for Social Cohesion (which later morphed into the Henry Jackson Society), claimed: "Around the time Ed Husain came to public notice, I recruited him to work with me (through Civitas, the organisation that originally hosted the CSC).

[9] The organization's goals were mainly communicated in three ways: through the publication of reports, through involvement with the media, i.e. by taking part in interviews and discussions across Europe and the Middle East, and through its "Outreach and Training" unit, which delivers a "radicalisation awareness programme".

[10] On 14 June 2010, a strategic briefing paper with a covering letter signed by Nawaz and Hussain was sent to Charles Farr, director of the Office for Security and Counter-Terrorism (OSCT).

[14][15] Bunglawala added: "In effect, Quilliam – a body funded very generously by the government through Prevent – are attempting to set themselves up as arbiters of who is and is not an acceptable Muslim.

Both Robinson and Carroll began taking lessons in Islam from Quilliam member Usama Hasan, and stated their intention to train in lobbying institutions.

Quilliam said they had paid Robinson as remuneration "for costs associated with outreach that he & Dr Usama Hassan did to Muslim communities after Tommy's departure from the EDL".

[23] The same day, Nawaz posted on Twitter: "Due to the hardship of maintaining a non-profit during COVID lockdowns, we took the tough decision to close Quilliam down for good.

[28] According to its political liaison officer, Jonathan Russell, the removal of public funding has been to Quilliam's advantage, as "it can remain ideas-focused, non-partisan and continue its own pursuits.

[33] According to Alex MacDonald in Middle East Eye, Quilliam was "regularly accused [...] of authoritarianism as well as targeting Muslim groups across the UK and tarring them with the "extremist" label with little evidence.

[36] Sayeeda Warsi, the first female Muslim member of a British Cabinet, described Quilliam in her book The Enemy Within (2017) as "a bunch of men whose beards are tame, accents crisp, suits sharp, and who have a message the government wants to hear".

[30] Quilliam worked with the Henry Jackson Society,[38] a neoconservative think tank whose Associate Director, Douglas Murray, supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq[39] and has described Islamophobia as "a crock".

[40] In December 2017, Quilliam released a report entitled "Group Based Child Sexual Exploitation – Dissecting Grooming Gangs", concluding that 84% of offenders were of South Asian heritage.

[41] This report was fiercely criticised for its poor methodology by Ella Cockbain and Waqas Tufail, in their paper "Failing victims, fuelling hate: challenging the harms of the 'Muslim grooming gangs' narrative" which was published in January 2020.

[42][43] In December that year, a further report by the Home Office was released, showing that the majority of CSE gangs were, in fact, composed of white men.

Writing in The Guardian, Cockbain and Tufail wrote of the report that "The two-year study by the Home Office makes very clear that there are no grounds for asserting that Muslim or Pakistani-heritage men are disproportionately engaged in such crimes, and, citing our research, it confirmed the unreliability of the Quilliam claim".

[46] In openDemocracy, Tom Griffin criticised Nawaz for focusing on Islamism, and for defending "counterjihad" figures like Robert Spencer, Pamela Geller and Frank Gaffney.