MSM — Main Stream Maajid
Ignorance might be bliss but is it any excuse?
By J Spooner & Stubbs
On the 20th of October 2017, the websites of The BBC, The Daily Mail, Vice News and The Independent all published articles which recycled a story from the Ottawa Citizen the previous day, headlined “Ottawa man not guilty of sexual assault because he thought he could have sex with wife anytime”. The article stated that in Canada a Palestinian man had been found not guilty by a court for raping his wife because their culture dictated that non-consensual sex was simply part of marriage. All of the articles, which more or less printed the same story, mirrored the Citizen in quoting the judge, who stated that the male probably did have non-consensual sex with his wife. Additionally, it was uniformly reported that because the male did not know he was committing a crime (due to his culture, silly!), this was the reason as to why he was found not guilty.
Immediately, Quilliam’s Maajid Nawaz saw his opportunity and, instead of spending 10 minutes to find and read the court transcript, tweeted links to this article, stating shamelessly “In Canada, it seems, you can rape your wife, if you’re from a culture that allows raping wives #LowExpectations”. Although the link had been inferred in the online articles, Nawaz’s tweets were far more blatant, accusing the court of bias/double standards due to the defendant’s ‘culture’.
This of course led to the inevitable anti-Islamic, xenophobic sentiment (that which Nawaz claims to work against) as shown in the huge amount of replies by Nawaz’s followers to this tweet, such as:
Turns out that ten minutes of research would have been all that was required to have enabled Nawaz to publicly set the record straight regarding the horrible misreporting done on this story. The court record can be found here. A two minute read on the Canadian offence of sexual assault can be seen here. Firstly, the Ottawa Citizen has a lot to answer for. Secondly, this research is all that the MSM media outlets needed to do before blindly regurgitating the Ottawa Citizen story. And thirdly, as a public ‘Muslim reformer’ and former political prisoner, Nawaz should be overwhelmingly familiar with the dangers that misinformation can pose to minorities in society. If Nawaz was sincere, he would have approached this deceitful article with an ounce of scrutiny, and/or done his homework.
Ten minutes of research from Nawaz would have enabled him to read the transcript and understand that actually, the defendant was found not guilty because “The accused denied ever having sexual relations with his wife without her consent”, NOT because he had non-consensual sex, believing he was allowed to do so. The judge lamented that although the couple ‘probably’ had non-consensual sex, these specific allegations could not be backed up by sufficient enough evidence, and thus the male was found not guilty. The reason, given by the media and jumped on by Nawaz, that the court let the man off because it was part of his culture, was complete fabrication. It never happened. In this instance, Nawaz played his part in creating further anti-muslim sentiment over something that the media completely misrepresented. Unfortunately, this is one of a host of examples whereby Nawaz pushes media myths, ultimately leading to unjust vilifications of the very group of people he claims to want a better world for.
Back in June, Nawaz again got fingertips wagging on social media after his latest Bill Maher interview where he announced he was launching a libel suit against the SPLC. However, what went wholly unnoticed, was what he said following this announcement. In conversation with Maher, Nawaz stated that:
“(British) security services (in response to the three 2017 Jihadi attacks) said — We only have the capacity, to monitor three thousand suspected jihadists, at any one given time, they said we are at full capacity. Now that would be worrying enough Bill. Then they went on and they said, however, though we are at full capacity at 3,000, we really need to be monitoring 23,000. Because that’s how many there are out there in the United Kingdom.”
Replying to Maher’s response of “23,000?” Nawaz confirms “jihadists, who are ready to attack…That’s 23,000 that they wish they could monitor”
23,000 Jihadists ready to attack? Well now that would be enough to have the Quilliam Foundation licking their lips. If only it were true. Nawaz, who had again been getting his fix of mainstream press, choosing to cite (presumably) the May 27th article from The Times headlined: “Huge scale of terror threat revealed: UK home to 23,000 jihadists”.
Further reading of the article however, reveals:
“About 3,000 people from the total group are judged to pose a threat and are under investigation or active monitoring in 500 operations being run by police and intelligence services. The 20,000 others have featured in previous inquiries and are categorised as posing a “residual risk”…Sources say that the pool of “former subjects of interest” has swollen to 20,000 during the years of Islamist threat since 2001.”
So reading the full article reveals that in actual fact, there are currently 3,000 people under investigation by counter-terrorism services, whilst there are 20,000 on a list of people of ‘former interest’ or ‘residual risk’, which can include anyone who has been of interest, for any reason, since 2001. In other words, all we know is that there is 3,000 individuals currently under investigation and since 2001, 20,000 who have been investigated at one point, an amount of which may/may not require further monitoring. For Nawaz to equate this to “23,000 Jihadis ready to attack” is deliberately misleading and at the least recklessly hyperbolic. But that’s not the end of it.
Further digging into this story shows that it was actually released first by The Independent on the 26th of May (published at 23:37 PM). Shockingly, this initial article actually stated that the figures of 20,000 and 3,000 people under investigation related not to ‘Jihadis’ at all but rather ‘people’ or ‘individuals’. This is a vital distinction as just two months earlier the same paper published another article, again quoting British Intelligence figures, and was headlined: “One in three terror suspects in UK now white amid rise in far-right extremism”.
Bearing this in mind and based on the information at hand, a more accurate and reasoned statement would have gone something like “there is potentially 2000 ‘jihadis’ currently under investigation with 13,500 who have been investigated since 2001 and potentially may need further monitoring.” Nawaz’s point would perhaps still have been just as prescient had he used these figures, yet he chooses to adopt lies and hyperbole in an attempt to strengthen his argument further. Again, Nawaz becomes a key vehicle for the MSM misinformation campaign that (whether knowingly or not) uses falsities and fabrication, which in turn succeeds in entrenching anti-Muslim bigotry further.
Nawaz leaves behind him a trail of anti-Muslim/Islam misinformation (or more cynically viewed, disinformation) that pulls anti-Muslim extremists into his slipstream. Following the horrific Nice truck terror attack of 2016 Nawaz took to Facebook to counter the claims of the ISIS attacker’s own family that Bouhlel wasn’t a Muslim. Walid Hamou told MailOnline:
“Bouhlel was not religious. He did not go to the mosque, he did not pray, he did not observe Ramadan. He drank alcohol, ate pork and took drugs. This is all forbidden under Islam…He was not a Muslim, he was a shit. He beat his wife, my cousin, he was a nasty piece of work.”
This reality creates a problem for Nawaz. His bottom-line depends on preserving the myth that his brand offers genuine solutions. Vulture-like, he hovers over ‘Islamic’ terror attacks while touting his services (for a monthly fee) before the blood of the innocents has dried. Nawaz needs ISIS and Al Qaeda attackers to be ardent adherents of Islam so he spins the facts to make them fit. Here, even managing to ramp up the pre-existing hysterical hate on the Muslim community by playing to Islamophobic tropes:
So according to Nawaz, you’re a real Muslim if you beat your wife. Are we then to infer that this was Nawaz’s views during his self-proclaimed ‘radical’ period? As is clear from the quote; the attacker’s family do not claim he isn’t Muslim because he beat his wife. They claim he isn’t Muslim as he demonstrated no interest in Islam, rejected its teachings and lived a wholly un-Islamic life of drink, drugs and bacon.
And it gets worse. By fault or by design he has pushed genuine anti-Muslim propaganda:
Speaking out against violence against women is noble. Using doctored graphics to demonise the Muslim community is inexcusable. Doing so as a Muslim is unforgivable. Yet this is precisely what Nawaz has done. Nawaz’s tweet linking Muslims to “violence against women” is unquestionably damning yet at the same time it is also highly deceptive. The actual Thomson Reuters poll was conducted exclusively with people from Arab states; which are all ‘Muslim majority”. The graphic used by Nawaz had been surreptitiously doctored to completely distort it’s meaning. “How Arab States Compare For Violence Against Women” had been removed!
Spot the difference…
Nawaz later clarified his ‘mistake’ regarding the reposting of this anti-Arab/Muslim propaganda (he had little choice, once it became public). Using ignorance as an excuse to push fake news is something Nawaz can always reliably fall back on in these situations. Yet, following this exposure of the doctored image and when challenged on it, Nawaz could have shown his sincerity and condemned the false narrative and warned about the effects of fake news on minorities in society. Instead, his reply: “apparently, it’s really not that misleading”, before linking to another survey.
If Nawaz is to use these all these figures and articles as tools to fashion opinion and build an argument from his influential public platform, then he has a responsibility to make sure that the information he is quoting is correct. Otherwise he comes across as, at best recklessly incompetent (on a subject he is a supposed expert on) or at worst, highly deceptive, manipulative and fraudulent. Nawaz shows a careless lack of integrity when it comes to taking these matter seriously, as exemplified in the above examples. Something which is rather shocking given the profile he tries to project and the public work he and his organisation claim to do. For these reasons ignorance is hardly a reasonable excuse. Nawaz and Quilliam should be leading the way in sifting through the bullshit when it comes to Muslim stereotyping, and leading by example in calling it out.
Unfortunately, these examples are not exceptions to the rule, but rather part of a consistent, longstanding pattern of behaviour from Nawaz. His well rehearsed Modus Operandi is to jump on any mainstream media coverage that breathes life into his and Quilliam’s agenda, and continue to regurgitate it blindly using his influential public platform, regardless of how accurate it is. In some instances, ten minutes of his own research is all it would take for Nawaz to uncover fabrications and disinformation in the media being used to target and attack Muslims. Instead he uses it to his own advantage, assisting him in pushing his own product. Is 10 minutes a long time? Is ignorance any excuse? Well apparently it’s yes to both, when you have a business to run.
