I saw an interesting article in a recent(ish) edition of Britain’s Jewish Chronicle. It was written by Fiyaz Mughal formerly of the Tell Mama group and who is currently running a ‘Muslims Against Antisemtism’ group, which I personally would choose to have nothing to do with. In this piece Fiyaz Mughal, known to some wags as ‘Fizzy Bollocks’ due to his promotion of various forms of ‘Islamophobia’ hyperbole, comments on the aftermath of the conviction of musician and Holocaust denier Alison Chabloz for making anti-Jewish statements. Mr Mughal was specifically commenting on the allegations swirling round the Jewish community and which I have documented on this site, that he was personally close to Chabloz whilst in charge of the ‘anti-Islamophobia’ group Tell Mama which Mr Mughal founded. The resurfacing of the connection between Mughal and Chabloz is definitely making ‘Fizzy’ wriggle.
These allegations of a closeness between Fiyaz Mughal and Chabloz are particularly damaging to ‘Fizzy’ as he has now been put on the board of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. Although my personal belief is that ‘hate speech’ convictions, even that of Chabloz, are of themselves wrong, as they impinge on freedom for speech rights, I have to also admit that it is really not the best of looks for a person on the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust board to be associated with known Holocaust deniers. This blog republished some of the screenshots that purported to show a very close association between Fiyaz Mughal, Chabloz and a few other ‘interesting’ as in ‘suspect’ characters.
I understand that the issue of Fiyaz Mughal’s association with Chabloz has been a matter of gossip and discussion in some British Jewish circles, with criticism being directed at Fiyaz Mughal over this association. Fiyaz Mughal seems to have decided that there was a need for air to be cleared over these swirling rumours about contacts between himself and Chabolz and to be fair he made a pretty good stab in the article at minimising his contact with Chabloz.
Here’s the original article from the Jewish Chronicle dated 1st June 2018
As you can see he does admit having personal dealings with Chabloz as it really isn’t something he can escape from or brush off. The record of contact is there and he obviously needed to explain himself. He does try to appear to be attempting to minimise the extent of his contact with Chabloz, which I suppose is understandable to someone in Fiyaz Mughal’s position. I’m not at all surprised that Fiyaz Mughal felt compelled to address these issues as the association with Chabloz could be damaging for him now that he has become associated with the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. To have someone serving on this board who has hung round with the likes of Chabloz really doesn’t give the best impression does it? This is especially so as Mr Mughal and his groups have most noticeably targeted Jewish groups as contacts and Mr Mughal’s groups have aggressively promoted the, in my view false, idea that Jews and Muslims have a common cause.
The closeness of these links is evidenced by the intimate relationship between Tell Mama and the Jewish Community Security Trust, the voluntary entity that provides guards and security advice to synagogues. The CST has acted as advisers to Tell Mama in recent years and this has had the effect of increasing Tell Mama’s credibility with the Establishment even as its credibility among ordinary Britons has declined propitiously. All of Fiyaz Mughal’s groups, even those whom he is no longer managing, have put so much store on promoting the Jewish/Muslim ‘common interest’ idea, that the issue of Mr Mughal’s association with Chabolz could not be left to pass by without Fiyaz Mughal making the attempt to lance this ever growing boil of suspicion about the links between himself and Chabloz.
I have to admit that there is one part of Fiyaz Mughal’s article that is sound and that is the issue of those who are not as they at first seem. To be fair to Fiyaz Mughal on this occasion he is correct on the matter of false or misleading friends. This is something that many people encounter and are a problem that needs to be guarded against. We’ve all come across those types in all walks of life and in both offline and online environments. On the matter of his association with Chabloz, Fiyaz Mughal has put his hands up to being naïve about those he was once working with and this issue could be accepted at face value. Fiyaz Mughals did, to his credit, make attempts to distance himself from Chabloz when she was caught out making an anti-Semitic ‘Quenelle’ salute at Edinburgh. However, the matter of the links between Mr Mughal and Chabloz would most definitely bear further investigation. I and a number of other people are not inclined to take these sort of statements at face value whether they come from Fiyaz Mughal or from anyone else.
Although it is right and proper that Fiyaz Mughal has gone on record and attempted to clarify his association with Alison Chabloz, there is the need for this error of judgement to be punished. Moving forward it may be politic for Mr Mughal to stand down from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust Board, if he has not done so already, in order for the HMDT board to put this mess behind them. We all make mistakes, we can all trust the wrong people or make a wrong judgement call, we are after all, all too human. But, it is such a serious error of judgement to work with people in the public sphere without undertaking very basic checks to see if the person you are working with is dodgy or not, that it something that needs to be marked as such a grave judgement error that it needs some form of sanction This error could be cleared up best and the matter neutralised by removing Mr Mughal from the board of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. If I can avoid having too much contact with Holocaust denying nutcases then why cannot others, especially those with connections to government, do the same?
