It appears that there is no limit to what Tell Mama and its management, along with Fiyaz Mughal’s other ‘front’ groups, will exploit in order to play the ‘Islamophobia’ card, as this article will show. There seems to be nothing and nobody that is considered to be off limits to them.
Introduction
There will be many readers of this blog and readers of other publications who are aware of the well-founded concerns about the Tell Mama group. As this is a long article, and has been split up into several sections, those who are familiar with the background to the Tell Mama group should skip ahead to the section entitled “Tell Mama – Cynicism unbounded.” If you are unfamiliar with the Tell Mama group, and you want to know more, then please read from the beginning. Please note that this article has extensive links and Appendices which can be found at the end of this article.
Tell Mama -The background to this story.
Any organisation, whether it is a commercial enterprise or a charity or a campaigning group, has one real asset that they can trade with, and it’s an intangible but important one, the organisation’s reputation for trust and probity. If the public or other interested parties feel they cannot trust an organisation because of their poor reputation, or, as in this case, incidents of previous dishonesty, then the organisation will be considered as suspect, dodgy, immoral or just plain bent.
One such organisation, which long ago forefeited any moral right to be taken seriously, is the ‘Islamophobia monitor’ Tell Mama. For those new to the whole sorry saga, Tell Mama is one of a growing number of groups and front or shell organisations either set up, controlled by or subject to influence by the campaigner Fiyaz Mughal. Mughal’s Tell Mama vehicle is most definitely not an organisation to be trusted, which is why it seems inexplicable that certain politicians, and the police of all people, are taking this bunch of dishonest charlatans seriously.
Tell Mama is a hate-crime monitoring group set up by the aforementioned Fiyaz Mughal. It was modelled to some extent on the much respected Community Security Trust, an organisation which has for decades monitored anti-Semitism and also advised synagogues on security matters. However, unlike the CST, which has a good reputation among the general population for accuracy in the reporting of anti-Semitic crime and attitudes, Tell Mama have been shown to the world as lacking any sort of probity or honesty in how they have undertaken their work.
Tell Mama’s greatest notoriety came following the Islamic murder of Fusileer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, London, back in May 2013. After the murder, when Britons were still reeling from the news that a British service person had been killed in the most awful way by two Islamic jihadis; Fiyaz Mughal focused not on the slaughter of a British soldier on the streets of London, but what he called ‘a rise in Islamophobia’ and claimed that 193 calls about anti-Muslim attacks had been made to his Tell Mama organisation in the week following the murder of Fusileer Rigby.
However, closer examination of Tell Mama’s claims carried out by a number of websites, journalists and others showed that Tell Mama’s claims were just dishonest. Tell Mama was categorising as ‘attacks’ stuff that was either not an attack at all, just a bit of name-calling or people saying nasty, but often factually accurate, things about Islam on social media or on message boards. Even though there was a reaction against Muslims after the murder of Fusileer Rigby, it was often very minor in nature and the number of serious attacks on Muslims or Muslim property was so small that they could be counted on the figures of one hand. In short, after Fusileer Rigby died, Tell Mama lied.
Thanks to the hard work of many, especially Andrew Gilligan of the Daily Telegraph and the Four Freedoms website and message board; Fiyaz Mughal was exposed as a fraud. Despite Fiyaz Mughal using his connections with the Lib Dems to gain access to £214,000 of public money for the Tell Mama organisation, neither Fiyaz Mughal or his Tell Mama vehicle could hide from the truth. They lost their funding and should, if there was any justice in these matters, have lost all credibility in the public sphere. Unfortunately that has not been the case and broadcasters such as the BBC still take Fiyaz Mughal seriously and still quote Tell Mama’s ‘statistics’ without much question.
Worse still is the fact that the links that Fiyaz Mughal and Tell Mama built with Police forces and other agencies are still intact. Being slapped down, as Fiyaz Mughal and Tell Mama have been by the civil libel courts, the criminal courts and by the old Press Complaints Commission, should have made those in authority wary of both Fiyaz Mughal and his front groups,; sadly it has not. To all intents and purposes, Fiyaz Mughal is behaving as if he is the premier ‘Teflon Taqiyya Artist’, and nothing can touch him. He’s even managed to use his ‘Faith Matters’ vehicle as a means of blagging his way onto a counterterrorism ‘Community Engagement Forum’ along with the Home Secretary Theresa May, and other public sector worthies along with some questionable types from Britain’s Islamic establishment (See Appendix One at the end of this piece). It should worry many to see Mughal’s name alongside that of Ms May and some organisations, such as the Ahmadiyya and others, whose primary interest is in keeping going the lie that at heart ‘Islam is a religion of Peace’.
It is obvious to many of those outside government, policing and the diversity industry, that Fiyaz Mughal and his front organisations are what we could quite reasonably call dodgy. Fiyaz Mughal has made a whole career about whining about Islamophobia, even though it has been palpably proven that Mughal himself is, as he has been described by this blog and by others ‘a mendacious grievance-mongering Taqiyya artist’.
Tell Mama, and indeed Fiyaz Mughal have been described by a commentator on the Four Freedoms website as being less interested in dealing with genuine crimes committed against Muslims and more interested in finding ways to close down criticism of Islam per se.
The commentator, Joe, on the Four Freedoms site said of Mughal and more specifically of ‘Faith Matters’, another front group of Mughal’s:
“ His prime interest in conflict resolution appears to be ensuring muslims are not the subject of criticism. “
This assessment of Tell Mama chimes with what a growing number of other observers of Tell Mama, including myself, believe. Despite their loudness on the subject of ‘Islamophobia’ even when it is almost completely non-existent, Tell Mama’s relative silence on the subject of crimes committed by Muslims, such as the epidemic of Muslim men grooming vulnerable girls, shows that the organisation is indeed interested in shutting down debate. Tell Mama seem to be trying to dominate the argument about the language used to discuss Islam, shariah, jihad etc, hence the sheer number of comments, tweets and opinion pieces that concentrate on harsh language or negative opinions about Islam. Those behind Tell Mama should realise that if the language used to discuss Islam is limited to only that which is acceptable to Muslims, then it makes it very difficult to discuss the undoubted problems that Islam both causes and brings to non-Muslim societies.
Fiyaz Mughal and Tell Mama are extremely determined that people should swallow their view. These ‘Teflon Taqiyya Merchants’ have managed to ride out questions about their honesty and probity that could sink any other third sector or campaigning entity. Fiyaz Mughal’s political connections seem to be serving him well, and as for the rest of us, not at all well to be quite frank.
If you asked me to find one word to describe Fiyaz Mughal and the Tell Mama organisation then it would be ‘cynical’ and it is a shocking example of cynicism that is at the heart of today’s story about everyone’s least favourite ‘mendacious grievance-mongering Taqiyya artists’. We can see when we look back on news reports, blog posts and discussions, that Mughal and Tell Mama are cynical beyond belief.
Tell Mama – Cynicism unbounded.
Tell Mama and Fiyaz Mughal’s cynicism has been seen on many an occasion, from the appallingly insensitive hijacking of the Lee Rigby murder in order for Mughal to push his ‘massive rise in Islamophobia’ chimera, to recruiting the veteran LGBT activist Peter Tatchell as a patron, in order to hitch Tell Mama’s extremely unroadworthy cart to another progressive horse, that of the LGBT movement. Tell Mama is an organisation with no shame and no probity, and there is often no real limit to who or what they will exploit in order to push their views. They even blatantly exploited the recent Paris massacre so that they could bang on about ‘Islamophobia’ and try to make it all about the Muslims, rather than the victims of Muslims. Nothing, not even massacres, mass rapes, or the murder of a soldier, gets in the way of Tell Mama, it’s all grist for the mill when it comes to Fiyaz Mughal’s highly questionable organisations.
I didn’t think that I could be surprised by who or what Tell Mama would exploit next but I really think I’ve seen it all now because Tell Mama have been trying to get on the currently trendy Transsexual bandwagon by running a ‘Trans Muslim’ story. At first glance this sounds like a straight up and down ‘hate crime’ story, until you start digging. Once you start digging, it’s difficult not to come to the conclusion that Tell Mama are a) ruthlessly exploiting a person with what could be mental health issues and b) they have gone large on this particular story without undertaking any background checking. According to one source who watches Tell Mama from outside the United Kingdom, Tell Mama have been touting this person round including to a meeting where police officers and members of the Crown Prosecution Service were present, as well as featuring them in articles. They’ve been doing this with this particular alleged victim of ‘Islamophobia’, despite there being much in the public domain that would make any reasonable person believe that something is not quite right with the person concerned.
We will come to the meat of this case shortly but first I’d like to say that this is a very difficult piece to write. I would normally feel quite uneasy about revealing, without their permission, a person’s pre-transition gender identity. But in this case I will do it. This is because the person concerned has not only had until recently quite an open social media presence, but also, in a former guise and gender, had gained a reputation for not exactly being a shrinking violet where mainstream media is concerned. Because there are particular aspects to this story which make the identity of the main player relevant, such as the character of the person concerned and the use to which this person is being put by Tell Mama, I believe that it is in the interests of both honesty and the public interest that this person’s previous gender identity is revealed. For what it is worth, I believe that this person is being exploited for nefarious ends by Tell Mama under the guise of ‘helping’ them.
And so to the core issue.
Back in 2007 there was an unemployed gender-confused man called Steve Cooper, then aged 32 and from Tooting, South London. He gained quite a bit of attention at the time for travelling to India and being adopted by a temple as a living incarnation of a Hindu deity. The mainstream media at the time treated the story as a bit of an ‘and finally…’ sort of piece, as can be seen from the links and reproductions below:
Here’s the report from 30 March 2007 on the then Mr Cooper’s trip to India:
“A jobless man from south London has begun a new life – as a goddess in India. Steve Cooper, from Tooting, blesses Hindus who believe he can cure their infertility.
Pilgrims head to a remote jungle temple where the 32-year-old performs the ritual
According to the Sun he lays his finger on their heads and tells them: “The goddess is here.”
Cooper was unemployed and living in a tiny flat before his move to India.
He packed his bags after Indian friends told him he looked and moved just like the ancient goddess Bahucharaji, the patron of Indian eunuchs.
As soon as he arrived at the temple in the northern state of Gujarat three months ago he was treated as a deity.
“All my life I didn’t fit in,” Cooper told the paper. “Now I’ve found my life. I plan to stay for good. I couldn’t leave now.”
He wears a holy saffron robe and lives among 80 eunuchs.
One pilgrim said she had travelled for days to be blessed by him. “My sister-in-law came here and she got pregnant immediately,” she said.
Cooper added: “They revere me and believe I am a goddess. I feel what they feel in me. When I touch people I connect with them.”
Here’s the link to the Sky story.
http://news.sky.com/story/503059/tooting-man-worshipped-as-goddess
The BBC also covered this story, like Sky they treated it very much as one of those ‘odd look at the world’ type of tales. Their coverage is more detailed, therefore I have used an excerpt from the BBC piece but as well as giving the link, have attached the complete article, labelled as Appendix Two, to the bottom of this post, just in case it disappears from the BBC site for some reason.
The BBC said:
“A British man worshipped as a goddess in India says he wants to stay there after his six-month visa runs out.
Stephen Louis Cooper has become the centre of attraction in the temple town of Becharaji in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
Devotees have been lining up to seek his blessings and some of them even take him to be the messenger of Bahuchar Mata, the goddess of Indian eunuchs, addressing him as Ma.
Mr Cooper, who says he has been diagnosed with gender identity disorder, likes to wear a sari and be addressed as a woman.
Hence his new name, Pema, meaning lotus, by which everyone now addresses him.
‘Energy’
When the BBC caught up with Mr Cooper he was sitting in the temple courtyard dressed in Indian women’s clothes, with rings in his ears and nose as people lined up to seek his blessings.
He told the BBC that he lived in London for five years before starting the journey to Becharaji.
Having failed to qualify in law from Ruskin College in Oxford, he took to working on freelance basis as an illustrator, graphic designer and a photographer.
He said he originally came from Leicestershire but had been travelling all over the United Kingdom.
“All this while I never connected to anything. During my travels I came across pictures of several Hindu gods. On seeing the picture of Bahuchar Mata in one of the shops I could feel my energy being reflected in a different way.
“It was then that people told me about this place and asked me to visit India,” he says. “
See Link here http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6546479.stm
The BBC also helpfully provided some photographs of Steve Cooper of which this is one of them.
Steve Cooper in Hindu Goddess days.
It is plain to see from these two stories that Mr Cooper may well have some issues, some that could be related to mental health and others that could be fairly described as ‘attention seeking’, especially religiously-related attention seeking. He was diagnosed with Gender Dysphoria and rather than get on with life and transitioning to the gender that he believes he truly is, he jets off to India to be treated not just as a woman, but as a goddess, or an incarnation of a goddess. You see as this story goes on, Mr Cooper looks more and more odd. Now there is nothing in general wrong with being ‘odd’, some of my best friends are decidedly ‘odd’. However none of them would be so detached from reality to believe themselves to be a goddess, screaming queens yes, but goddesses, no I don’t think so.
This could be just a minor story about an odd person who did an odd thing, except for the quite recent involvement of the Tell Mama group.
Steve Cooper did not disappear in India or even stay there for long, instead he came back to the UK and decided to embark on another religious odyssey to the extremes of belief. Steve Cooper morphed into Hannah Cooper, the transsexual, niqab-wearing Muslimah. She, for at this point the pronoun needs to be changed, appeared to be quite open about her new identity and background and again showed a complete lack of shrinking violet tendencies. She plastered pictures of her Oxford College ID card on social media and also, according to some sources for this story, she had been a bit of a high profile Social Justice Warrior for some time. Looking at the Ms Cooper’s background and life history, it’s difficult not to dismiss the idea that Mr/Ms Cooper has problems that go way beyond their gender identity issues.
Hannah (formerly Steve) Cooper’s Oxford Union Debating Society ID card. This blog has redacted the name of the college that Ms Cooper attends on the grounds that identifying her college makes it easier to physically find her.
For a while it seems that Ms Cooper was your normal run of the mill Lefty Niqabi nutter but then she came across the Tell Mama organisation and things changed. Tell Mama jumped at the chance to say ‘Oh the humanity!!’ over someone who was not only a Muslim convert, but also a transsexual. To be a Muslim and a transsesxual is to be current flavour of the month with the sort of Metropolitan Leftist whom Tell Mama need to keep well in with, so they’ve been exploiting Ms Cooper mercilessly, especially after she alleged that she had been the victim of an ‘Islamophobic’ attack.
Ms Cooper has been paraded like a pet Trans Muslim in a highly tokenistic way, for the sole benefit of the Tell Mama organisation. Despite there being a lot of questions that need to be asked about Ms Cooper’s life, her history, her politics and her mental health, that hasn’t stopped Tell Mama from going large with her at a conference on ‘hate crime’ organised by another Fiyaz Mughal vehicle, Faith Matters. If you look at the Tweet that has been most helpfully screengrabbed by one of this blog’s sources overseas, you will see that Ms Cooper is described on the conference programme as: ‘A victim of anti-Muslim hate’.
I don’t know about you, but it worries me a lot that CPS and police were present at what could only really be described as yet another Tell Mama dog and pony show and yet another chance for Fiyaz Mughal to self-aggrandise himself in front of the police, CPS and BBC staff. Note well the name of one of the members of the panel discussion, an organisation called ‘British Muslim Youth’ who are the same British Muslim Youth who tried to ‘withdraw cooperation’ with South Yorkshire Police following the revelations that thousands of mostly non-Muslim women and girls had been raped, sexually assaulted and trafficked by gangs which were almost totally comprised of Muslim men.
If you are wondering just what sort of ‘assault’ that Ms Cooper was alleged to have been subjected to, then the story becomes, as Alice once said, ‘curiouser and curiouser’.
Tell Mama have, as I said earlier, gone really big on this story, they’ve even got video but the problem is there is not much of it. This leaves some of us wondering just what has Tell Mama or persons unknown edited, out in order to make the complainant look more credible and Tell Mama look less like a bunch of mendacious grievance-mongering Taqiyya artists? The five second, yes five seconds, that’s all we’ve been given by Tell Mama, shows not much more than someone objecting to Ms Cooper filming them trying to wave the camera away and a man making a half hearted swipe with his leg. There is no context, no lead up and no proper explanation as to why this incident happened, apart from Ms Cooper objecting to being having her photograph taken, whilst wearing a niqab. She appears to have objected to this picture taking, even though it is in a public place and despite there being much genuine public concern about criminals using Niqabs and Burkahs to hide their identity. and had a go back at the person who took their picutre. What the video seems to show is some else’s reaction to being videoed by Ms Cooper.
Here is the video as grabbed from the Tell Mama website. It’s been grabbed and stored just in case Tell Mama have a change of heart and take the video down.
This is how Tell Mama have treated this case. Here is a copy of their version of the story as taken from their own website:
Tell Mama said:
“We have been working with a trans-Muslim convert to Islam who has also been homeless and who regularly suffers anti-Muslim hate at a street level. Wearing the Niqab, she has consistently documented the threats, abuse and hatred that she has suffered. The hatred has had its toll on her health and one of the most harmless and caring of individuals has been threatened and attacked in numerous incidents.
Most of the abuse against the Muslim trans-female is undertaken by white males, between the ages of 16-40. Once again, anti-Muslim bigotry at a street level, is male on female anti-Muslim and gender hate and it needs to be seen within this light.
Today, this video came to light with an open assault on her at a street level. The Muslim female recorded the material and it is truly shocking to see an assault on a female whilst passers by just look on and with no-one coming to her assistance. This is unacceptable and we will be pursuing a possible prosecution with the police on this.”
Link http://tellmamauk.org/trans-muslim-convert-to-islam-openly-assaulted-with-public-looking-on/
It’s pretty obvious from following the digital paper trail that Ms Cooper has left in the public arena, there is a strong suspicion that Steve Cooper, he of the former Hindu goddess incarnation, is now Hannah Cooper, the Niqab-wearing convert to Islam featured in this story, who is being exploited heavily by Tell Mama. It’s also very plain to see that Ms Cooper seems to have an attraction to the idea of religious extremes, and inexplicably Tell Mama have been unable or unwilling to pick up on that.
Any sensible and honest organisation that was monitoring certain crimes would have had their metaphorical red lights flash if they were confronted with Ms Cooper and her interesting, to say the least, life story. Alarm bells should have rung with the Tell Mama group about Ms Cooper. The life history, the gender disphoria, the history of religious extremes, the attention-seeking behaviour, the possible mental health issues, should all have made Tell Mama pause before not only running with this story, but also before using Ms Cooper as a stick with which to beat the police and CPS as regards ‘Islamophobia.’
That Tell Mama have not been properly vigorous in checking Ms Cooper’s antecedents, and appear to care nothing about any psychiatric issues that Ms Cooper may have or have had in the past, really doesn’t surprise me, but it does disgust me. This case goes to show that there really is nothing, not even a confused and possibly ill person like Ms Cooper which Tell Mama will refuse to exploit.
If it wasn’t for Tell Mama’s worryingly strong connections to police forces, politicians, the BBC and local authorities, this would be merely an everyday story of dishonest Islamic organisations, of which there are sadly very many. The fact that Tell Mama are using a possibly damaged person such as Ms Cooper in an effort to influence how Britain is policed and how crimes are charged, prosecuted and sentenced, should give every Briton cause for concern.
It is truly horrifying to think that this bunch of proven liars called Tell Mama could not only be having even more of a malign influence on policing as they have done already in places like the West Midlands, but are quite prepared to use anyone or anything to get the political result that they desire, which is control over whether and how Islam is discussed.
Epilogue.
This is a story essentially about the issues of probity, competence and honesty. We know from published records that Tell Mama have a history of dishonesty, but this story shows that there are questions that need to be asked as regards Tell Mama’s probity and competence.
This case attacks Tell Mama’s probity and competence, because they have seized onto Ms Cooper’s claims, and used them for their own ends and without checking to see whether Ms Cooper could be said to be a credible person or whether her allegations were credible. Tell Mama have seen the words ‘Trans’ and ‘convert’ in connection with this case and have made it a headline case because they know it’s yet another identity politics bandwagon that ‘Phoney Fiyaz and the Taqiyya Merchants of Doom’ I.e the Tell Mama group, can jump aboard.
We should not only be concerned about the corrosive effects of dishonest entities like Tell Mama on politics and in the media, but we should be very worried that Tell Mama is so close to the police and prosecutors in the UK. So close in fact that it could end up with a miscarriage of justice for someone. Tell Mama should not be in the position where they are, in their words, ‘pursuing a possible prosecution with the police on this’. It is extremely worrying to think that someone could gain a criminal record or even lose their liberty on the say so of Tell Mama and their colourful and sometimes dubious complainants such as Ms Cooper.
Links and Appendices:
Guardian article in which Fiyaz Mughal made specious and dishonest claims that there had been a massive rise in ‘Islamophobic’ attacks following the Islamic murder of Lee Rigby.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/28/woolwich-murder-200-islamophobic-incidences
Four Freedoms library on the subject of Fiyaz Mughal
TM on the Paris massacre,
http://tellmamauk.org/the-british-public-stand-for-what-is-right/
Sky article on the matter of ‘Goddess Steve’.
http://news.sky.com/story/503059/tooting-man-worshipped-as-goddess
BBC article on ‘Goddess Steve’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6546479.stm
An article on the ‘British Muslim Youth’ organisation.
Tell Mama’s version of the taunted transsexual story from their website
Trans-Muslim Convert to Islam Openly Assaulted With Public Looking On
The right-wing Jewish Defence League have published some interesting background information on Fiyaz Mughal, Tell Mama and other of Mr Mughal’s front groups. Well worth a read.
http://www.jdl-uk.org/2014/04/fiyaz-mughals-tell-mama-uk-loses-court.html
A list of articles concering the activities of the Tell Mama group from this, the Fahrenheit211 website
You can find loads more Tell Mama stories on the F211 website simply by using the search box on the site to search for ‘Tell Mama’ or ‘Fiyas Mughal’ or the phrase ‘mendacious grievance-mongering taqiyya artist’.
Appendix One
The Government’s Community Engagement Group that includes one Fiyaz Mughal.
This list was published by Abu Hudhayfah @AHudhayfah on Twitter on October 29th.
Hudhayfah, is at the very least a supporter of extremisim if not a supporter of Jihad. His timeline is full of retweets from those who support the former Gitmo prisoner Shaker Ameer. There’s also the usual Islamic guff about how evil Israel is whilst failing to comprehend the much greater violence and terror being carried out by Muslim groups.
Appendix Two
Full BBC story on Steve Cooper
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By Rajeev Khanna |
A
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Mr Cooper says he is on good terms with the eunuchs |
British man worshipped as a goddess in India says he wants to stay there after his six-month visa runs out.
Stephen Louis Cooper has become the centre of attraction in the temple town of Becharaji in the western Indian state of Gujarat.
Devotees have been lining up to seek his blessings and some of them even take him to be the messenger of Bahuchar Mata, the goddess of Indian eunuchs, addressing him as Ma.
Mr Cooper, who says he has been diagnosed with gender identity disorder, likes to wear a sari and be addressed as a woman.
Hence his new name, Pema, meaning lotus, by which everyone now addresses him.
‘Energy’
When the BBC caught up with Mr Cooper he was sitting in the temple courtyard dressed in Indian women’s clothes, with rings in his ears and nose as people lined up to seek his blessings.
H
|
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Stephen Cooper |
They touch my feet and when I touch their head I feel the love and joy – pure and taintless
e told the BBC that he lived in London for five years before starting the journey to Becharaji.
Having failed to qualify in law from Ruskin College in Oxford, he took to working on freelance basis as an illustrator, graphic designer and a photographer.
He said he originally came from Leicestershire but had been travelling all over the United Kingdom.
“All this while I never connected to anything. During my travels I came across pictures of several Hindu gods. On seeing the picture of Bahuchar Mata in one of the shops I could feel my energy being reflected in a different way.
“It was then that people told me about this place and asked me to visit India,” he says.
Mr Cooper has a picture of Bahuchar Mata tattooed on his left arm, which cost almost 100,000 rupees (more than £1,000; $2,000), he says.
The temple complex at Becharaji is visited by large numbers of eunuchs from all over India.
A trustee of the temple complex, PC Raval, told me that there is a belief that by paying their respect here they will gain manhood in their next birth.
There is a fair at the temple on every full moon night which is attended by many eunuchs. The star attraction of the last fair was Mr Cooper, whose blessings thousands sought that night.
“People here have been lovely. They touch my feet and when I touch their head I feel the love and joy – pure and taintless,” he says.
He has a visa that is valid for six months but would love to stay here for the rest of his life. “I will stay here as long as I feel welcome. Maybe for the rest of my life,” he says.
‘Keeps to himself’
During his month-long stay Stephen has picked up a few phrases in Gujarati like “kem Cho” (how are you?) and “chai levu che” (I want to have tea). He is particularly fond of the local sweet, laddoo.
“He normally keeps to himself. We cannot talk in English and he does not know Hindi or Gujarati. He just speaks in monosyllables and sits quietly in the temple meeting people,” says Gunwant Joshi, a trustee of the Ramji temple.
Mr Cooper says that he wants to learn Sanskrit and Gujarati so that he can read more about Bahuchar Mata and Hindu mythology.
He has been staying at the guest house of the temple trust and all the money given to him by the people as offerings he says he has donated to the trust.
“I do my own washing and am called by people to their homes to have food. I love wearing a sari as I find wrapping a sari very sacred,” he says.
Mr Cooper claims to be on very good terms with the eunuchs visiting the temple.
He refuses to do taped interviews and prefers one-to-one communication. And he says he feels hurt by the way the media, particularly the British press and the Indian television channels, have been reporting him. He says India is a big heart and Becharaji is its centre.
PC Raval says that it is matter of pride for the temple that a person of another faith has found solace there and wants to live there for the rest of his life.
