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| Maajid Nawaz and Tommy Robinson |
For a few briefly awkward seconds last Tuesday, the press conference to mark Tommy Robinson's exit from the English Defence League was delayed, as his new-found Muslim allies in a counter-extremism thinktank struggled to open the door to the room of waiting television cameras and journalists.
It was an uncharacteristic glitch for Maajid Nawaz, co-founder of the Quilliam Foundation and a man frequently described as smooth and slick by those who have followed his public profile over the years since his transition from teenage gang member through to jailed Islamist extremist and, most recently, would-be Liberal Democrat MP.
However, senior figures working in the growing field of the study of counter-extremism and the rehabilitation of former extremists have been viewing its link-up with Robinson as a high-stakes gamble that has raised serious questions about the motivations of an organisation that has played a particularly controversial role.
If the latest accounts - for the financial year up to March 2012 - filed by the Quilliam Foundation are anything to go by, the high-profile injection of publicity also comes at a time when it may be facing challenging financial circumstances.
Two years after the Home Office began to wind down its funding for the organisation, those accounts show that Quilliam was facing mounting debts, while having little in the way of relative assets. Income from training, consultancy and publications were haemorrhaging, while its income from grants and donations fell from just over £900,000 in 2011 to £532,099 in 2012. » | Ben Quinn | Saturday, October 12, 2013
