Muhammad Abdul Bari (; born October 1953), is a Bangladeshi-born British physicist, writer, teacher, and community leader. He is a former secretary of Muslim Aid, a former chairman of the East London Mosque, a former secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, and has served as the president of the Islamic Forum of Europe (IFE) in its early years when it was formed to organize Bangladeshi diaspora professionals in Europe. In addition to consultancy work, he has written for publications including The Huffington Post and Al Jazeera, and has authored numerous books. He has been described as one of the most powerful Asian Muslims in Western Europe. In 2006, Time Out put him at #7 on its list of movers and shakers in London. He has also been listed as a community leader in The 500 Most Influential Muslims. Early life and education Abdul Bari joined the Bangladesh Air Force in 1978, after studying at Chittagong University. He married in 1981 and left the Air Force the following year. After moving to the United Kingdom, he earned a doctorate in physics from King's College London in 1986 and joined Royal Holloway, University of London, as a postdoctoral researcher. There, he became involved in community work. He began teaching after completing a Postgraduate Certificate in Education (PGCE) at King's College London in 1991. He spent five years teaching science at a secondary school in Haringey, London, and joined the Tower Hamlets Education Authority as a special educational needs specialist in 1997. Career TELCO is now a branch of Citizens UK (CUK), an alliance of local community organizing groups in London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Milton Keynes, and Nottingham. Abdul Bari is a member of CUK's National Council and advised CUK's Commission on Islam, Participation, and Public Life, which was created in September 2015 to confront rising Islamophobia since the 7 July 2005 London bombings. He served on the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games Board (LOCOG), which was responsible for preparing for and staging the 2012 Summer Olympics. In 2014, he created the website Head2heart as a sociopolitical commenting platform, in addition to his business website AmanaParenting, which provides parenting support and consultancy work. He created a bilingual (Bengali and English) YouTube channel under the same AmanaParenting banner, in 2015 to advise on parenting in a pluralist society. In 2018, Dr Abdul Bari consolidated his two previous websites and