Zohran Mamdani’s victory to become New York’s first Muslim mayor took place thousands of miles from the UK. But at the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the campaign was being closely studied.

“We actually spent some time with his campaign team to work out what the secret sauce was,” said Dr Wajid Akhter, who took over as secretary general of Britain’s largest and most diverse national Muslim umbrella body last year.

Akhter, a GP, said he was struck by the Mamdani campaign’s communication strategy. “Even when you talk about Gaza, he would bring it back to talking about rent.”

Speaking at a busy cafe in east London earlier this month, Akhter said that what stood out most was the scale of grassroots organising central to the Democratic mayor’s win.

Akhter praised Mamdani’s ability to balance digital and traditional campaigning. “If you just do one side, you’re just another influencer. If you just have a ground campaign, it doesn’t penetrate the masses. If we can marry the two, then I think we’ve got something serious going.”

The MCB is attempting to replicate that model, with the launch of an ambitious campaign, Hungry for Change, aimed at registering Muslims to vote and drawing them into grassroots civic action.

They have recruited 200 voter champions across more than 30 areas in the run-up to the local elections, and say they have helped register several thousand people to vote, with internal figures showing 3,377 visits to the government’s registration website. The group hopes to expand the model nationwide by the next general election and remains non-partisan, Akhter said.

There are an estimated 2,000 mosques in the UK, around 500 of which are affiliated with the MCB. The organisation is reshaping how it communicates, with a focus on video, social media and podcasts.

The campaign marks a strategic shift for the long-embattled organisation. Akhter said it has struggled for more than a decade to secure government engagement, dating back to a row in 2009 when the then MCB deputy secretary general, Daud Abdullah, signed a document known as the Istanbul declaration, which advocated attacks on the Royal Navy if it tried to stop arms for Hamas being smuggled into Gaza.

The then Labour government said it would have nothing more to do with the MCB unless Abdullah stepped down. He did resign and the MCB said the views expressed did not represent those of the body, leading to a re-engagement in the last year of Gordon Brown’s government. The incoming coalition government reinstated the policy of disengagement with the MCB in 2010, and it remained in place with consecutive Conservative governments until they left office in 2025.

The policy of disengagement was enforced rigidly. In February 2024, four months into the war in Gaza, the government told the Inter Faith Network it would withdraw funding unless it removed a newly elected board member over his links to the MCB. The network refused and was subsequently defunded, a move criticised by faith leaders as political vandalism at a time when interfaith work was urgently needed.

Although Labour engaged with the MCB in opposition, it maintained the policy of non-engagement in government, a move that prompted shock and anger.

“We understand that they’re not going to engage with us out of pity, or even out of the national interest,” Akhter said. “They will eventually engage with us because they have no other choice.”

He said the council was shifting its “qibla”– the direction the Muslims pray to – away from seeking government approval and towards improving the lives of British Muslims and the wider public. He argued mosques should be reimagined as “more than just a place to pray”, acting as community hubs. Pilot schemes offering mental health first aid and CPR training in mosques have already been rolled out.

He also called for a change in how British Muslims think about charity, with more focus on domestic priorities such as knife crime, housing and the economy, rather than overwhelmingly directing “zakat”, charitable contributions that Muslims must make, overseas.

“I take inspiration from black churches during the civil rights movement, from the anti-slavery movement in this country,” Aktar said. “Every one of these movements, when they started off, felt like they were fighting against impossible odds with next to nothing in terms of resources. But the one feature they all had in common was, the people refused to give up on them.”

He argued that the rise of Islamophobic parties and politicians had made collective action more urgent.

“In a world where everyone’s going right, we dare to go left sometimes, in a world where faith is no longer popular, we stick to ours,” he said.

The self-described history buff said British Muslims should take inspiration from the country’s resistance to Nazi Germany. “They did not flinch. They said if they write the history of this country for 1,000 years, let them say, this is our finest moment. This is our moment as British Muslims. It’s that same hatred, fascism, the ideology that some people are uniquely to blame for problems of society.”

He said the community had many allies in the UK. “The majority of this country is not on the side of the right wing. They don’t believe all this nonsense, but are upset and they want change.” He rejected claims that British Muslims do not belong, pointing to polling that shows British Muslims are more loyal to the UK than the general public.

He described himself as at ease with his British Muslim identity, recalling a recent pilgrimage to Mecca. “We had people from 190 countries there, but they kept referring to me as that Brit,” he said. “They could tell us a mile off.”

Amid crowds gathering to kiss the black stone of the kaaba, “everyone was pushing and shoving,” he said. “One of my friends asked if people could just form an orderly queue. Everyone started laughing.”