which organised that conference and whose director at that time was Syed Ghulam Nabi Fai – a Pakistani Kashmir lobbyist arrested by the USA for spying and illegal lobbying, and according to US prosecutors the Justice Foundation's Kashmir Centres in UK, USA and Saudi Arabia are run on behalf of the Pakistani government and its military intelligence Inter-Services Intelligence Agency. Ahmed was created a life peer, Baron Ahmed, of Rotherham in the County of South Yorkshire, on 3 August 1998. Although there have been many claims that he was the first Muslim life peer, including by Ahmed himself, or the first male Muslim peer, he was in fact the third Muslim life peer; the other two, Baroness Uddin and Lord Alli, were raised to the Peerage on 18 July whereas Lord Ahmed was so raised on 3 August. There have been earlier Muslim hereditary peers, the first being the 3rd Baron Stanley of Alderley in 1869. He led the first delegation on behalf of the British Government on the Muslim pilgrimage of the Hajj. At home, he spoke on wider equality issues, and spoke several times on issues of race, religion and gender; he advocated legislation against religious discrimination and forced marriage. He tried to calm tensions following the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001. However, on 23 February 2005, he hosted a book launch in the House of Lords for the controversial Swedish writer Israel Shamir, during which the latter claimed, among other things: "The Jews like an Empire.... This love of Empire explains the easiness Jews change their allegiance.... Simple minds call it 'treacherous behaviour', but it is actually love of Empire per se." Shamir also claimed, "Jews... own, control and edit a big share of mass media", a statement that was to be echoed by Lord Ahmed in 2012. Although this invitation raised some controversy, Ahmed firmly refused to discuss the matter. In August 2006 he was a signatory to an open letter to prime minister Tony Blair criticising the UK's foreign policy. On 19 June 2007 Ahmed criticised the honouring of Salman Rushdie with a knighthood because of what he saw as Rushdie's offensiveness to Islam. He was reported to have said, "It's hypocrisy by Tony Blair, who two weeks ago was talking about building bridges to mainstream Muslims, and then he's honouring a man who has insulted the British public and been divisive