‘One lesson well understood in both Stalin’s Russia and Nazi Germany was that propaganda is most effective when it is backed by terror.’…Sir Alan Bullock.
We refuse even to face it, let alone to stop it.
The Met’s head of counter-terrorism said that there had been an increase in reported hate crime in the wake of the Woolwich attack: “Every single incident is horrible but compared with previous times we have had slightly less,” she said.
Dick added that while there had been “horrible” attacks on Mosques there had not been any very serious assaults reported. “It has started to reduce now,”
The BBC however has taken a different view and continue to push the narrative that Fiyaz Mughal of ‘Tell Mama’ put out…that Muslims were under attack….and the attacks are still rising in numbers.
After the Woolwich incident, Tell Mama claimed that there had been a “sustained wave of attacks and intimidation” against British Muslims, with 193 “Islamophobic incidents” reported to it, rising to 212 by last weekend.
Mughal, said he saw “no end to this cycle of violence”, describing it as “unprecedented”. The claims were unquestioningly repeated in the media.
Perhaps the BBC should have asked Saif Rahman about his experiences as an ex-Muslim, an Apostate….how he has been under constant threat and how he has received 139 death threats for leaving Islam.
He’s just one person…and that’s 139 death threats for him alone….Tell Mama claimed it had 212 examples of ‘Islamophobic incidents’ for the whole population of near 3 million Muslims in the UK.
Is the BBC interested in Saif Rahman? No. Are they concerned that one man has received 139 death threats? No.
But then again the good people of the BBC love Yusuf Islam…they love his music and go to his concerts…and yet he is the man who said not only should Salman Rushdie be killed but he would personally execute him if he were in an Islamic country.
Curious now though that the BBC have stopped referring to ‘Tell Mama’….but now refer to Fiyaz Mughal as coming from ‘Faith Matters’:
Fiyaz Mughal, from interfaith group Faith Matters, said Mr Robinson’s condemnation was “hollow”.
Why might the BBC not want to refer to ‘Tell Mama’?
Could it be that the group is now widely discredited?
Mughal’s claims under the guise of ‘Tell Mama’ of a wave of Islamophobic attacks has been debunked…..but even before Woolwich ‘Tell Mama’ was being sidelined by the government for presenting figures and data that ‘didn’t stack up’:
‘However, The Sunday Telegraph has now learned that even before Woolwich, the communities minister, the Liberal Democrat MP Don Foster, called Mr Mughal to a meeting and said that Tell Mama’s grant would not be renewed.
The organisation has received a total of £375,000 from the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) since last year.
“Mr Mughal was giving data on attacks to DCLG which wasn’t stacking up when it was cross-referenced with other reports by Acpo [the Association of Chief Police Officers],” said one source closely involved in counter-extremism.
“He was questioned by DCLG civil servants and lost his temper. He was subsequently called in by Don Foster and told that he would receive no more money.”
A senior Liberal Democrat source confirmed the sequence of events, saying: “There was a bit of a spat. He was called in and told that Acpo had cast doubt on his figures. He was told that he would be closely monitored for the remaining period of the grant and that there would be no more money.” ‘
£375,000…for one year, adding up police statistics…not bad work if you can get it.
Could there be a link between ‘Tell Mama’ having its funding withdrawn and the sudden ‘spike’ it found in Islamophobic attacks after Woolwich? Could it be that it hoped to ‘encourage’ the government to think again and start dishing out the handouts once more?
It’s a shame that the BBC can’t find the time or will to investigate organisations like ‘Tell Mama’ that milk the System dry and far from helping to reduce ‘community tensions’ actually helps raise them by exaggerating any threat levels.
Perhaps the BBC could start with claims that ‘Tell Mama’ had been using its funding to launch legal attacks against people that criticise it as reported in the Telegraph:
Tell Mama has also been using its budget to threaten members of the public with libel actions for criticising it on Twitter.
In mid-May, before Woolwich, one Jewish activist, Ambrosine Chetrit, received a threatening letter from solicitors after she tweeted that “Tell Mama are sitting on Twitter on the EDL hashtag, threatening anyone and everyone whose comments they do not like about Islam”.
Tell Mama also objected to a tweet in which Ms Chetrit said it was “trying to close down pro-Israel [Twitter] accounts daily”.
Other recipients of legal threats at the same time include Atma Singh, a former race adviser to the then Labour mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who received a legal letter from Tell Mama after tweeting that it “gives a platform to Islamists”.
Tell Mama did not claim that either of these individuals was racist or anti-Muslim. But it said their tweets were false and “defamatory” of Mr Mughal, had “damaged” his reputation, causing him “distress and embarrassment”, and demanded immediate apologies and damages. Up to four other people are believed to have received similar threats.
The letters were written by Farooq Bajwa, a solicitor who has acted for a number of Islamists and Islamist sympathisers, including the Palestinian radical leader Raed Salah and the Respect MP George Galloway.
The letters to Mr Singh and Ms Chetrit were sent to their private home addresses, neither of which are in the public domain. Ms Chetrit’s lawyer, Mark Lewis, who has acted for many phone-hacking victims, has reported Mr Bajwa and Tell Mama to the police after they refused to say how they obtained the information.
“I have been instructed to resist the claim,” said Mr Lewis. “It has no merit. I have not had any response as to how my client’s name and address were obtained.”
Mr Singh said: “I find it absurd that someone can threaten people on this kind of basis and use libel in this political way. This is nothing to do with Islamophobia – they are just trying to shut down debate.”
Ms Chetrit said: “It is very worrying and scary. All the people who have been threatened by Tell Mama are pro-Israeli.”
Charles Moore in the Telegraph spells out exactly what is wrong in this country when the BBC and government get into bed with the wrong people:
It is less than a month since Drummer Lee Rigby was murdered in Woolwich, yet already the incident feels half-forgotten. In terms of the legal process, all is well. Two men have been charged. There will be a trial. No doubt justice will be done. But I have a sense that the horror felt at the crime is slipping away.
The media, notably the BBC, quickly changed the subject. After a day or two focusing on the crime itself, the reports switched to anxiety about the “Islamophobic backlash”.
‘I sing no song for the once-proud country that spawned me,’ wrote a sailor who fought the Japanese in the Far East, ‘and I wonder why I ever tried.’
