Every single statistic a Brexit campaign used to claim Sadiq Khan had helped turn London into ‘Londonistan’ in a racist Twitter post is false.

Leave.EU posted the offensive message this morning, accompanied by a large picture of London Mayor Sadiq Khan , a mosque and a group of muslims at prayer.

It claims: “British multiculturalists feed Islamic fundamentalism. Londonistan, built on the sad ruins of English Christianity.

And the image includes a list of statistics: “423 new mosques. 500 closed churches. 100 sharia courts”

Not one of these statistics is true. The post is 100% fake news.

Here’s why.

Update:

Leave.EU deleted the tweet this evening, telling the Mirror: "We recognise that the statistics were misleading and as such removed the tweet."

They added: "It’s clear that a whole range of Muslim community issues is extremely sensitive but it does not escape the fact that the cultural shift in our communities is a real one and needs tackling - our tweet was insensitive by highlighting facts from research that has been rightly proved not to be totally truthful."

1: No, there aren’t 423 new mosques in London

(Image: PA)

This figure appears to have been sourced to a conspiracy theory blog called YourNewsWire.com. The site is run by two men in Los Angeles, who publish a wide range of entirely made up news articles alongside aggregated US politics news.

Among their other big hits last year were claims Justin Bieber had told a bible group that paedophiles run the music industry, that the US Centres For Disease Control had admitted the flu vaccine was “deadly”, and that there were multiple gunmen involved in the Las Vegas shooting.

YourNewsWire cited a blog post by the right-wing think thank the Gatestone Institute, who themselves cited a blog called Muslims In Britain, which catalogues British mosques.

If you follow the number back to the source, it’s not actually a list of new mosques. It’s a list of all the mosques. Some of them were built in the 1970s. There’s more information in this Snopes article .

2) No, 500 churches have not recently closed in London

(Image: PA)

This is also based on figures from the Gatestone institute, via YourNewsWire, and it’s also untrue.

The figure is originally sourced to a Wall Street Journal article from 2012, four years before Sadiq Khan was elected, when Boris Johnson was Mayor of London.

The claim is based on a Royal Institute of Surveyors report from 2006, a full decade before Sadiq Khan was elected.

And even this 12 year old figure is ropey. The figure relates an estimated number of churches in the UK (not just London), which were converted into homes between 2001 and 2006.

What it doesn’t include is the number of churches that have opened since 2001.

In fact, according to a 2013 survey, around 700 new churches opened in London between 2005 and 2012 - and the UK saw a 2% net increase in the total number of churches between 2008 and 2015.

3. No, there aren’t 100 sharia courts in London

(Image: AFP)

First of all, there aren’t any sharia courts in London, because sharia courts don’t exist.

When people talk about sharia courts, they’re really talking about sharia councils, who arbitrate on religious matters including divorce, but which have no legal jurisdiction or power to overrule British courts or laws.

And even if you’re talking about sharia councils, there aren’t 100 of them in London.

Leave.EU told the Mirror they got it from the same Gatestone Institute report, but the report doesn’t cite a source for it.

An Independent Review into the application of Sharia Law , commissioned by the Home Office and published last month, said there was no accurate statistic on the number of sharia councils, in England and Wales but that estimates vary from 30 to 85.

The report notes: “Sharia councils have no legal status and no legal binding authority under civil law. Whilst sharia is a source of guidance for many Muslims, sharia councils have no legal jurisdiction in England and Wales. Thus if any decisions or recommendations are made by a sharia council that are inconsistent with domestic law (including equality policies such as the Equality Act 2010) domestic law will prevail.

“Sharia councils will be acting illegally should they seek to exclude domestic law. Although they claim no binding legal authority, they do in fact act in a decision making capacity when dealing with Islamic divorce. Common misconceptions around sharia councils often perpetuate owing to the use of incorrect terms such as referring to them as ‘courts’ rather than councils or to their members as ‘judges’.

“These terms are used both in media articles but also on occasion by the sharia councils themselves. It is important to note that sharia councils are not courts and they should not refer to their members as judges. It is this misrepresentation of sharia councils as courts that leads to public misconceptions over the primacy of sharia over domestic law and concerns of a parallel legal system.”

Leave.EU also cited a pamphlet by Denis MacEoin , published by the Civitas think tank, which claims there are 85 courts operating in the UK whose decisions are “legally binding and can be enforced by county courts and high courts provided both parties in a case have agreed to be ruled by sharia law.”

This would appear to be a reference to the Muslim Arbitration Tribunal (MAT), which are a completely separate entity from sharia councils. They have existed since the early 2000s and operate under the Arbitration Act.

While it’s true MAT decisions can be upheld in formal courts, this can only happen if the decision meets certain standards, and not if they contravene English or Welsh law. Any decisions must be reviewed by a legally qualified judge.

On top of that, only about 10% of MAT cases involve family matters - 70% of which are the granting of Islamic divorce. The rest is commercial arbitration.