Harris Bokhari
Harris Bokhari is the founder and a Trustee at the Patchwork Foundation, for which he won the Diversity Champion of the Year Award in early 2018. The Patchwork Foundation is a charity that aims to "promote and encourage the positive integration of disadvantaged and minority communities into British democracy and civil society."
Bokhari is a member of the "Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group", which will shape, influence and guide the delivery of the Mayor of London's Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Strategy. He is also an independent member of the "Community and Voluntary Service" of the Honours Committee.
Conservative Party campaign strategist Sir Lynton Crosby, who is a patron of Patchwork, described Bokhari as “Captain Networker”
Career
Bokhari graduated from Imperial College, London in 1999 with a BSc in Mathematics.Bokhari is a chartered accountant. In 2006, Bokhari was a manager at the London branch of 1st Ethical, founded by Sufyan Ismail. Bokhari was a former partner at Ascension Wealth Management, which ceased operations on Oct 2018.
He has written for the Evening Standard, The Independent and Times Educational Supplement.
Public Service
Mosaic Network
Harris Bokhari was appointed as first honorary patron of HRH The Prince's Trust Mosaic Network, where he is a National Advisory Board member. In 2013, he was among thirty-three philanthropists honoured by the Beacon Awards for collectively giving more than £100m to charitable causes. He was awarded the Beacon Award for Philanthropy Advocate for raising £1 million within 12 months for various charities working in deprived communities in the UK.Naz Legacy Foundation
Bokhari is also founder of the Naz Legacy Foundation, which was established in honour of the legacy of his father, Naz Bokhari, the first Muslim secondary school head-teacher in Britain. The Naz Legacy Foundation received Prime Minister David Cameron's Big Society Award in 2014.Bokhari's interfaith work has included organising the first ever engagement event between national community, women and youth leaders from the Jewish and Muslim communities meeting with the new Chief Rabbi in Finchley Kinloss Synagogue. He was one of the first Muslims to be invited to the Chief Rabbi's installation ceremony. He also organised the first youth interfaith iftar at Lambeth Palace, which brought together the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chief Rabbi, Mayor of London and over 100 youth leaders from each of London's boroughs.
In 2013, Bokhari organised the Woolwich interfaith event following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby, which brought together politicians and faith leaders like Nick Clegg the then Deputy Prime Minister, to unite British communities after the attacks.
In 2019, Bokhari led Naz Legacy Foundation organised interfaith event with the Chief Rabbi and the Archbishop of Canterbury, held at the Regent Park Mosque's Islamic Cultural Centre. The event, offering condolences over Christchurch attacks was joined by over 250 leading faith and civil society leaders as well the Home Secretary Sajid Javid and Communities Secretary James Brokenshire.
Other notable recognition
Bokhari was awarded an OBE in Her Majesty's Birthday Honours List in 2015, and was listed as an 'Equality Champion' in the Evening Standard's Progress 1000 list of most influential Londoners. He also won the Alija Izetbegovic Award for Good Citizenship from the Muslim News Awards in 2016.Simon Woolley of Operation Black Vote praised Bokhari's work "for his services to young people and interfaith... With his easy charm and steely determination Bokhari can call upon the top political figures to talk to the young men and women on his schemes. He’s even become an ambassador for the HRH Prince Charles. Well done Harris, your father, who also received an OBE, would be deeply proud of his son."
Muslim Association of Britain activism
Bokhari is described as a spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain by The Guardian and other sources. In the same period, he was a national affiliate representative for the Muslim Council of Britain from 2007-2008.By 2007, Bokhari was appointed Press Officer of the Mosques and Imams National Advisory Board.
Position on Israel
In 2002, Bokhari organised protests in London, attended by thousands of people “to express their solidarity with the Palestinians and against Israel's ongoing military operations in the West Bank." "Some protesters carried posters depicting Prime Minister Ariel Sharon behind bars and comparing him to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler," reported Ha'aretz, which said that MAB were the "organisers" of the event. At the event Bokhari called for a boycott of Israeli goods, and Jeremy Corbyn demanded that there should be "no arms, no money, no recognition and no support for Israel."In 2019, Bokhari organized the first inter-faith Iftari with the Chief Rabbi at St John's Wood synagogue. It resulted in a number of synagogues across London organising their own Iftars. Bokhari reportedly said: “We need to call out all forms of prejudice and racism in society and it is important we speak out against anti- semitism in the same way we have to speak out against Islamophobia.”
Bokhari who has been described as a “leading Muslim voice in the fight against antisemitism” was the only “Muslim leader” to join a private reception with former Prime Minister Gordon Brown at the 17th Annual Isaiah Berlin Lecture, held at Hampstead Synagogue. The reception was reported to be attended by “leading members of the Jewish community” including the Israeli ambassador and the president of the Board of Deputies.
Position on UK foreign policy
In 2006, three Muslim Labour MPs—Mohammed Sarwar, Sadiq Khan and Shahid Malik—together with 38 Muslim organisations signed a letter warning that “current British government policy risks putting civilians at increased risk both in Britain and abroad”. The MAB was one of the organisations that signed this letter. In his capacity as spokesperson for MAB, Bokhari told Socialist Worker magazine: “We have been saying that British foreign policy is a problem since day one, even before the war in Afghanistan”, and warned that if British foreign policy did not change, terrorism on UK soil would be inevitable. He went on to say: “And it is not just Muslims saying this. The two million who marched against war in Iraq were not majority Muslim. The 100,000 that marched against the war in Lebanon and Gaza are not majority Muslim. The Chatham House foreign policy research institute has been saying it. A lot of people up and down the country are very upset about Britain’s foreign policy. We would be ignoring our moral duty if we did not speak out. And it’s very naive for ministers to say that this not a problem.”Position on core British values
In 2006, Bokhari was asked by the BBC about his reaction to a British government proposal to incorporate teaching of "core British values" into citizenship classes in schools to help "tackle extremism and discrimination." In response to the previous year's London bombings, ministers wanted citizenship classes in schools to promote values shared by all communities across society, "such as freedom, fairness, civil responsibilities and democracy."In his capacity as a spokesperson for the Muslim Association of Britain, Bokhari rejected the proposal: "This is just another one of those knee-jerk reactions where we're not actually looking at the core problem. What was the reason why these people actually committed these disgusting acts? Unfortunately it was our foreign policy, it was the issue of the illegal war, the illegal occupation of Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the continuing abuses of the Palestinian people, the illegal occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state. So I think until the government actually addresses these issues unfortunately we'll keep on having these problems in the UK particularly."
Position on Danish cartoons
In February 2006, Bokhari was interviewed following the publication and distribution of the Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed concerning calls by Muslim groups to boycott the West. Speaking on the incident, Bokhari said: 'We live in a democratic society and have the right to choose what we buy. International companies have an influence over governments and the media, and can also influence global politics. They have to understand that if they're going to cause offence, then we’re not going to buy their products." Bokhari believes the boycott will spread to products made in other countries and predicts Germany will be next after several newspapers defended their right to publish the cartoons.Position on Ahmadiyya Community
In 2010, according to The New Yorker, Harris Bokhari told a group of British Muslims to vote for Labour Party candidate Sadiq Khan instead of Liberal Democrat candidate Nasser Butt, a member of the Ahmadiyya sect. “The majority of Muslims in this area are voting Lib Dem, because they think Nasser Butt is a Muslim,” Bokhari reportedly told a room of Muslim voters as the reason why they should not vote for Butt. “You need to go into the community and take these posters down…. All you need to do is just look for Sadiq Khan, Labour Party, and just tick it… Whatever else you vote is up to you.” Bokhari later told the author of this report that he "does not remember the meeting".After the election, Nasser Butt claimed that Khan's Muslim supporters had rallied around the Tooting Islamic Centre to campaign against the Lib Dem candidate due to his religion. A secret recording of a meeting at the Tooting mosque two days before polling revealed that the main voice for this approach was Harris Bokhari. Your Local Guardian reported that recordings of the event caught Bokhari telling Muslim attendees not to vote for Butt because of his Ahmadiyya affiliation, as this meant that he was not a Muslim. In the recording, Bokhari is heard to tell the audience: “The majority of Muslims in this area are voting Lib Dem, because they think Nasser Butt is a Muslim. If you don’t go in and speak to them, they’re not going to do it. They’re fed up of hearing it from the imams. They want to hear it from you. They need you to go into the community and say ‘Why are you supporting the Qadiani community?’”
In 2017, Bokhari talked about his work with young people from minority faith communities who face prejudices, including youth in the Ahmadiyya community. In 2019, he wrote in the Independent and the Evening Standardcalling out the precaution and hatred against towards the Ahmadiyya community.