The Twitter Feed of the Palestinian Return Centre, itself close to the UK Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, has posted a picture of UK Brotherhood leader Anas Altikriti posing together with the Youth Chief of the Malaysian Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS). According to a 2013 article by Aljazeera titled “The rising force in Malaysia’s opposition”, the PAS is “inspired” by the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood and is growing in popularity. The article begins:
Anas Altikriti (center)
Feb 10, 2013 Many of Anwar Ibrahim’s supporters joined the country’s main Islamist party when he was jailed [AFP] Anwar Ibrahim, the face of Malaysia’s opposition, has captured international headlines as a real challenge to the country’s 56-year-old government in a watershed election to be held at the latest by June this year. But even though Anwar leads the three-party opposition which includes his own party, the People’s Justice Party (PKR), it is the coalition’s third partner, the Islamist Pan-Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), which is emerging as the likely kingmaker. PAS, founded in 1951, is the country’s oldest and largest opposition party, and draws inspiration from Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. When Anwar led an opposition rally last month, PAS outnumbered its coalition partners to make up the majority of the estimated 80,000-strong crowd that gathered in downtown Kuala Lumpur. ‘A significant 75 to 80 percent were PAS [supporters]. They are quite committed,’ said Karpal Singh, chairman of the Democratic Action Party (DAP) and a member of the opposition coalition. The rally was of one the opposition’s largest turnouts, and underscored the extensive reach, discipline and organisational skills of PAS.
Anas Al-Tikriti is the son of Osama Al-Tikriti, one of the leaders of the Iraqi Islamic Partyrepresenting the Muslim Brotherhood in that country. In addition to his role at Cordoba, Al-Tikriti is one of the leaders of the British Muslim Initiative (BMI), part of the U.K. Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) had for many years been the most active organization in the U.K Muslim Brotherhood but many of the leaders of the MAB left in 2007 to form the BMI. According to an Israeli think-tank report, the breakup appeared to be the result of a conflict between traditionalists in the MAB who were unhappy with the high level of involvement in U.K left-wing politics while those who formed the BMI wished such activity to continue.
