This image available on a t shirt. See link at bottom of post.
Those of us who have consistently criticised the mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya merchant Fiyaz Mughal and his equally untrustworthy organisation Tell Mama have been largely vindicated by a report by the press complaints commission.
In a judgement given last week, the PCC said that Tell Mama did exaggerate the number of anti-Muslim attacks and did include people saying unpleasant (and in many cases true) things on the internet about Islam in the tally of ‘attacks’.
Today’s Daily Telegraph reported the judgement and said:
“Ten months ago, in the paper, I revealed how Tell Mama, a project purporting to measure anti-Muslim attacks, had exaggerated the scale and nature of attacks against Muslims both before and after the murder of Lee Rigby in Woolwich. I later revealed that Tell Mama’s public funding had not been renewed after government officials raised similar concerns about its methods.
Tell Mama’s founder, Fiyaz Mughal, said that there had been a “wave of attacks” against Muslims, with 193 “Islamophobic incidents” reported to it in the first five days (to 27 May), rising to 212 by June 1, the eve of publication of our first article.
“I do not see an end to this cycle of violence”, said Mughal, describing it as “unprecedented”. Tell Mama’s Twitter feed claimed that a Muslim woman had been “knocked unconscious” in Bolton, a claim recycled in the Guardian. “The scale of the backlash is astounding,” Mughal told the BBC. “There has been a massive spike in anti-Muslim prejudice. A sense of endemic fear has gripped Muslim communities.” According to Mughal, the unprecedented spike proved British society’s “underlying Islamophobia.” These claims, and Tell Mama’s figures, were unquestioningly repeated across the media.
What Tell Mama and Mughal did not tell us at the time, however, was that 57 per cent of its 212 “incidents” took place only online, mainly offensive postings on Twitter and Facebook. They did not say that a further 16 per cent of the 212 reports had not been verified. They forgot to mention that not all the online abuse even originated in Britain.
Contrary to the group’s claim of an unending “cycle of violence” and a “wave of attacks”, only 17 of the 212 incidents, 8 per cent, involved the physical targeting of people and there were no attacks on anyone serious enough to require medical treatment. The supposed Bolton attack never happened. There were a further 13 attacks on Islamic buildings, four of them serious.
Far from being “unprecedented,” the spike in attacks was in fact “slightly less” than after 7/7, according to the assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick. Far from being unending, the post-Woolwich spike in anti-Muslim incidents fell to pre-Rigby levels within days. If there was a “sense of endemic fear” in Muslim communities, it was partly created by Fiyaz Mughal himself.”
As is Fiyaz ‘Pinocchio’ Mughal’s way, he and his organisation started a campaign against Andrew Gilligan and the Daily Telegraph that was described by Mr Gilligan as characterised as ‘bluster and misrepresentation’.
The Daily Telegraph added:
“Mr Mughal, as you can imagine, wasn’t best pleased when we reported all this. In a typically bullying campaign, he got his supporters to write round-robin emails to the paper accusing us of behaviour “better suited to the days of 1930s Germany,” wound up to attack us various luminaries who should have known better, and submitted what would became a 10-month, 127-page Press Complaints Commission complaint, full of the same misrepresentation and bluster that characterised his earlier media performances. At one point, he asked to withdraw the complaint – only to reactivate it several months later. This is, apparently, allowed.
Last week he was comprehensively defeated on all points. The PCC ruled that our reporting that Mughal exaggerated the prevalence of anti-Muslim attacks, that he had not had his funding renewed, and that DCLG officials had expressed concern about his methods, was “not inaccurate.”
This is fabulous news for all those of us,from a variety of backgrounds who are opposed to the sort of now proven to be dishonest grievance mongering as practised by Fiyaz Mughal and his Tell Mama vehicle.
This information could not have come at a better time because Liberty GB’s Tim Burton is currently on trial at Birmingham Magistrates Court on ‘racial harrassment’ charges for calling Fiyaz Mughal a ‘mendacious grievance-mongering Taqiyya artist’. This revelation must surely have some bearing on the outcome of this case, if not at today’s lower court hearing, but in any future hearing on this matter.
You do have to ask yourself, who is more credible in a courtroom, someone like Tim Burton who although outspoken is at least telling the truth as he sees it, or Fiyaz Mughal someone who has had their dishonest claims thoroughly shredded by the Press Complaints Commission.
This judgement is not only a victory for Andrew Gilligan and the Daily Telegraph but also a victory for all those of us who have quite rightly attacked Fiyaz Mughal and all those who have suffered bullying by either Mughal himself, his organisation or his supporters.
Fiyaz Mughal has been proved to be a man without credibility, lets all celebrate a victory for honesty and honest journalism.
Finally this judgement gives me the opportunity to again put up this amusing video attacking Phoney Fiyaz and the Mountebanks of Tell Mama.
Links
Original Daily Telegraph story on the PCC judgement.
DON’T FORGET YOU CAN BUY A ‘FIYAZ MUGHAL – MENDACIOUS GRIEVANCE-MONGERING TAQIYYA ARTIST’ T-SHIRT FROM THE FAHRENHEIT211 SHOP. 10% OF THE PROFITS WILL BE DONATED TO THE TIM BURTON FIGHTING FUND.
