The concept of “Islamophobia” is a tool designed to intimidate people into thinking there is something wrong with resisting jihad and Islamic supremacism. In order to deflect attention away from jihad activity and try to portray Muslims as victims, so as to shame non-Muslims into not investigating or even being suspicious of further jihad activity, Islamic supremacist groups have resorted to making it up. Hamas-linked CAIR and other Muslims have not hesitated to fabricate “hate crimes.” CAIR and other groups like it want and need hate crimes against Muslims, because they can use them for political points and as weapons to intimidate people into remaining silent about the jihad threat.
Fiyaz Mughal probably thought it was a win-win situation. He was able to further the spurious idea that Muslims are victims who warrant special privileges, and he was able to pad his report enough to keep his highly lucrative government checks coming.
“The truth about the ‘wave of attacks on Muslims’ after Woolwich murder,” by Andrew Gilligan for the Telegraph, June 1 (thanks to Pamela Geller):
Fiyaz Mughal runs a project called Tell Mama, which receives £214,000 a year from the Government to monitor anti-Muslim attacks in Britain. In the wake of Drummer Lee Rigby”s murder, he has been understandably busy.
There has, said Mr Mughal, been “a wave of attacks, harassment, and hate-filled speech against Muslims “¦ an unprecedented number of incidents”, including “a rise in street harassment of Muslims — unprovoked, opportunistic attacks from strangers as Muslims go about their lives”.
He added: “Over the past week or so, these sorts of hate crimes have noticeably increased in number and, in many instances, become more extreme.
“The scale of the backlash is astounding “¦ there has been a massive spike in anti-Muslim prejudice. A sense of endemic fear has gripped Muslim communities.”
The media, especially the BBC, have accepted the claims without question. A presenter on Radio 4’s influential Today programme stated that attacks on Muslims were now “on a very serious scale”.
Talk of a “massive anti-Muslim backlash” has become routine. And it is that figure issued by Tell Mama — of, to date, 212 “anti-Muslim incidents” since the Woolwich murder — which has formed the basis of nearly all this reporting.
Mr Mughal is in no doubt what lies behind it all. As he told a newspaper: “I do not see an end to this cycle of violence. There is an underlying Islamophobia in our society and the horrendous events in Woolwich have brought this to the fore.”
And as he put it on Today, “the [Government’s] Prevent [anti-extremism] agenda, the extremist agenda, have not been good for building confidence — the sense of fear just alienates and isolates communities.”
Yet the unending “cycle of violence” against Muslims, the unprecedented “wave of attacks” against them from strangers in the street, the “underlying Islamophobia in our society” — all turn out to be yet more things we thought we knew about Woolwich that are not really supported by the evidence.
Tell Mama confirmed to The Sunday Telegraph that about 120 of its 212 “anti-Muslim incidents” — 57 per cent — took place only online. They were offensive postings on Twitter or Facebook, or comments on blogs: nasty and undesirable, certainly, but some way from violence or physical harm and often, indeed, legal. Not all the offending tweets and postings, it turns out, even originated in Britain.
Tell Mama has no written definition of what it classes as an anti-Muslim incident, but has in the past adopted a wide definition. Last November, the cross-bench Asian peer, Baroness Flather, told a newspaper it was “pointless for the Conservatives to chase Muslim votes. They are all on benefits and all vote Labour”. Tell Mama added this admittedly crass and untrue remark to its database as an “anti-Muslim incident,” though it said it had deleted it following an explanation from Lady Flather.
Although the service says its caseworkers “carefully handle each report as it comes in, to determine whether it can be verified and justified as an anti-Muslim incident”, Mr Mughal admitted that a further 35 of the 212 post-Woolwich incidents, or 16 per cent, had yet to be verified.
He justified publishing the figure, however, saying he expected that all but a handful of incidents would be verified.
Fewer than one in 12 of the 212 “incidents” reported to Tell Mama since Woolwich — 17 cases (8 per cent) — involved individuals being physically targeted.
Six people had things thrown at them, said Mr Mughal, and most of the other 11 cases were attempts to pull off the hijab or other items of Islamic dress.
Without in any way denying the distress and harm caused by such attacks, they do stand at the lower levels of seriousness.
Seventeen is still likely, of course, to underestimate the total number of attacks. The Metropolitan Police, the only major force in Britain which breaks down “offences with an Islamophobic flag”, said there were 13 allegations of common or racially aggravated assault of Muslims reported to it in London in the week after the killing.
About 40 per cent of Britain’s 2.7 million Muslims live in the capital, so the national figure could be around 32 cases, or about one Muslim in every 100,000….