Muslim Council and human rights spokesman Miqdaad Versi’s thread this morning on Islamophobia as a mainstream media phenomenon quickly went viral – but needs to be seen by everyone

One of Versi’s challenging, informative and frankly horrifying tweets this morning

Miqdaad Versi is a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain and for human rights organisation Rights Watch UK. This morning he posted a thread to Twitter demonstrating that anti-Muslim hatred is not a fringe phenomenon but rather driven and normalised by calculated propaganda from the so-called ‘mainstream’ media.

Not only that, but he shows how that normalisation provides a constant feed of ammunition to far-right hate-peddlers, who use the ‘mainstream’ fake news to support their vile narratives – and he roots it all in the tragic, all-too-real consequences of that hate seen in Christchurch last week.

The thread went viral, but needs to be read and digested by everyone who cares about justice and equality – and even more so by those who don’t. The thread is reproduced below with his permission and without further comment. Please read, digest and share:

There are a plethora of false, racist or misleading front pagers that have helped create this deeply worrying "othering" of Muslims. A small selection is here but many more exist. This thread, however, will focus on the less well known cases, to demonstrate the scale of the issue pic.twitter.com/9f1cqgQHEL — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Many will recall Hopkins' "final solution" tweet after the Manchester bombings, but here is an establishment journalist Trevor Kavanagh (he was on the Board of the press regulator IPSO) using Nazi-like language about Muslims ("The Muslim Problem")https://t.co/05FkspHBWC — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

And we should not forget Kavanagh's lie about migrantshttps://t.co/aNReQ2Nmd5 — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

And remember when Kelvin Mackenzie suggested Fatima Manji should not have anchored news including reports on Nice attack due to her faith? Trevor Kavanagh supported Mackenzie by saying Manji's wearing of the headscarf was "provocative"https://t.co/nO3GibnGDn — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Consider Andrew Gilligan – he has been at The Telegraph and The Sunday Times. His articles on Muslims have been completely found to be fundamentally wrong again and again and again and again and again due to inaccuracies (see thread below for basis)https://t.co/3eeeQeYPAy — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Here is just one example of how Gilligan's lie in The Sunday Times (picked up by other papers) spread to the far-righthttps://t.co/6N6hiKs6yO — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Individuals like Richard Kemp are given an open platform in the Sunday Times for example spouting hate such as "Islamists may have already infiltrated our armed forces"https://t.co/QmYk82ZDfy — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Or Niall Ferguson who doesn't even seem to know what he's talking about yet is given space at the Sunday Times to put out the most appalling hateful pieceshttps://t.co/zK8LGlrwLw — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Or what about James Delingpole glorifying the anti-Muslim Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), or making up false information about Muslims https://t.co/5yFeyiPZTihttps://t.co/Lhi0Ii9nQk — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Or Douglas Murray – a man who is given a platform at the BBC unchallenged to spout the view that less Islam is a solution to terrorism – and by less Islam, as he explains in the video, he means fewer Muslims. He wrote a similar article in The Sunhttps://t.co/uTViznTlPz — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

I really could go on – but it's important to move from columnists (and Gilligan) onto the framing of Muslims in our society.

e.g. The Times has no issue with falsely calling a Muslim school an "Islamist school"https://t.co/iHWHsJ6Q9O — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

What about when The Times, Telegraph, Sun, Mail Online, Express all falsely suggested a Muslim couple ran an Islamist ‘Trojan Horse’ plot in Oldham. https://t.co/mvJ7mjOY42 — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

The Express, Mail Online and The Times all falsely claim that 84% of those convicted of child grooming were Asian (actually the vast majority were white) – they all corrected after complaintshttps://t.co/2sNJh9pkGzhttps://t.co/hqHDl6VgXhhttps://t.co/fulV8zhUUu — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Or for an example of victim blaming – when an Imam was beaten to death, The Times headline was "Imam beaten to death in Rochdale, town stricken by grooming gangs"https://t.co/V2UjMjAJK4 — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

See how The Times called the Middle East Forum "respected American think tank".



ICYMI MEF is a strong Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) supporter, funded pro-Robinson protests; has said it has invited Robinson to Washingtonhttps://t.co/0HpAf42xuq — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

The Times had a "disgracefully dishonest" front page: "Christian child forced into Muslim foster care", which it continued to run on 4 front pages. It has later been proven to be entirely wrong (and it seems he knew about it before publishing)https://t.co/a0PTqWYUFF — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Many of these stories have been shared by individuals like Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson) https://t.co/phiQhk2HWo — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Daily Mail apologise for 8 serious inaccuracies that undermine the fundamental premise of the hatchet job written by Andrew Malone about Muslim immigrants in Paris – after my complaint (6 months after the original article)https://t.co/NDW9kJe1fz — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

And that article was shared by Paul Watson to his 935k followershttps://t.co/MYMipqFdWA — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

The idea of Muslims being the other, has also been promoted in other ways e.g. the Sun decided to focus on what terrorists "look like" – just imagine the consequences of this type of thinkinghttps://t.co/tPIpPXLEsR — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

There is this fetishisation of Muslim religious terms e.g. Allahu Akbar pic.twitter.com/9X5M7zW2le — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

Even basic concepts like Halal misunderstood, and misreported – with lies spread because they must "sound right" to the editor of the day. pic.twitter.com/HXkUoURUkP — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

For example, The Sun attacked Ramadanhttps://t.co/KRRFNvLGhT — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

It's just so easy for newspapers to get it wrong when it comes to Muslimshttps://t.co/qUrTQzh9ah — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

When asked where do people get their conspiratorial views about Muslims from, the answer is clear – sections of the media.



And the alt-right and far-right use these "mainstream" papers to support their narrative – a narrative that has devastating consequences. /END — Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) March 18, 2019

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