Melanie Phillips and the Taqiyya odyssey

December 3, 2019 Article

The concept of taqiyya, for its obscurity, has found more relevance amongst conspiracy theorists, pseudo-scholars, and far-right cranks, who argue that this term allows Muslims to lie and deceive in the pursuit of fulfilling racialised conspiracies like ‘Eurabia’.

But in recent years, the concept has found mainstream credence, from failed presidential candidates to certain newspaper columnists.

For experts, however, like Mohammad Fadel, at the University of Toronto, the concept arose during a time of religious persecution, according to comments he gave BuzzFeed last year. He added that it came with some conditions attached, namely that an individual could temporarily hide their Islamic beliefs to escape death or torture, as long as in their hearts, they retained their Islamic faith.

It seems clear cut.

Professor Khaled Abou El Fadl, who teaches law at the University of California at Los Angeles, in comments given to the Washington Post in 2015, echoed Fadel’s point, adding that the term derives from the Arabic for “piety” and “fear of God”.

But on December 2, 2019, the journalist Melanie Phillips, writing in The Times newspaper, argued: “the doctrine of taqiyya, the command to deceive for Islam,” citing professor Sami Mukaram (who passed away in August 2012), who stated this position is ‘mainstream’ Islam.

We’ll return to this claim later.

For now, however, like Ben Carson during his failed presidential run in 2015, this contortion of the concept frames taqiyya as something far more sinister, as Carson claimed that it “even encourages you to lie to achieve your goals”.

The language is markedly similar but sits atop of castle made of sand, the foundations of which crumble upon further scrutiny. And for that, we return to Professor El Fadl, who, in his comments to the Washington Post, added that all Muslims understand that lying is sinful, and that, “there is no concept that would encourage a Muslim to lie to pursue a goal”.

Returning to Phillips’s article, her citation of Mukaram raises more questions, notably about her uses of sources. The quote she attributes to Mukaram reads: “Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam. Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practises it”.

The source, however, is not what you’d expect. The results bring you a research fellow at the controversial Middle East Forum (MEF), named Raymond Ibrahim. The MEF helped fund the legal defence fund of Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (aka Tommy Robinson), having done similar funding for the far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders years earlier. The MEF and David Horowitz Freedom Center have appeared in various reports profiling the lucrative ‘Islamophobia industry’.

One of the first examples of Ibrahim using this quote derives from an article first published on Pajamas Media in February 2009, later republished on the Middle East Forum. Deviating from later iterations of the quote, however, Ibrahim does not mention the author by name but suggests that it remains an authoritative source. Ibrahim went further, inserting the term ‘deception’ in parenthesis – an action which calls into question the legitimacy of their translation. Ibrahim, a fluent Arabic speaker, given his Coptic Egyptian background, had previously served as a regional specialist at the Near East Section of the Library of Congress. It would, therefore, be fair to question that such a translation serves an ideological motive.

A comparison of Ibrahim’s translations over the years, noting subtle but important changes.

Only in future blogs does Ibrahim refer to Mukaram by name, removing his editorialising of the translation, and inserting additional ellipses, not present in 2009, raises further questions. Other selective quotes from the same text appear in Ibrahim’s writings on The Gatestone Institute, which is accused of promoting anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia, a charge it denies.

Ibrahim has gone on to argue that Nazism and Islam are ‘supremacist ideologies’. In this contorted and caustic logic, Ibrahim asserts that Osama bin Laden follows Islam to its ‘core’, as ‘good’ Muslims lack a commitment to their faith.

This single translation swims in a toxic echo chamber, gaining new life in blogs ranging in extremes.Raymond Ibrahim’s writings have appeared on Jihad Watch, a website operated by Robert Spencer, who remains banned from entering the UK.

Others have criticised Ibrahim, suggesting that his interpretation was ‘misleading’ in what “appears to be a polemical piece interspersed with cherry-picked citations from the Quran, the sayings of the Prophet and secondary works”.

So, where did Phillips come across this particular text? We found no examples of this term on her website. Again, it leaves more questions than answers.

Google News lists just four examples where this direct quote, “Taqiyya is of fundamental importance in Islam”, appears. Of these examples, half are the words of Raymond Ibrahim. Excluding Phillips from this list, the other name is Martin Sherman, who quoted Ibrahim in a 2013 blog piece on Barack Obama. Other Google search results rank Ibrahim’s translation very highly.

Credit: Google News.

The second half of the quote Phillips uses (“Practically every Islamic sect agrees to it and practises it”) is the only time it appears on Google News as a direct quote.

Credit: Google News.

For additional background, Phillips spoke at three Middle East Forum events between May 2006 and 2010.

Earlier this year, Phillips positively reviewed Raymond Ibrahim’s latest book.

Other the years, academics and journalists explored how Phillips helped popularise the racialised conspiracy of ‘Eurabia’, notably in her 2006 book, Londonistan. Tell MAMA highlighted this mainstreaming in their recent annual report.

More broadly, however, Tell MAMA has observed how digital hate cultures focused on spreading racist, anti-Muslim, and Islamophobic content, have spread the conspiracy of taqiyya through memes, language, and image macros.

The far-right agitator, Timothy Burton, now of the disgraced Britain First, was jailed in 2017 for religiously-aggravated harassment which included repeated use of the term taqiyya. Burton had also used Twitter to praise the writings of Ibrahim in 2014.

To help the Crown Prosecution Service better understand anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia, Tell MAMA ran training to put terms like taqiyya into a deeper context, and in some cases, like with Mr Burton, were motivated by hate.

To then find this harmful falsehood again appear in a major media outlet is of obvious concern.

The post Melanie Phillips and the Taqiyya odyssey appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: Melanie Phillips, News, The Times

Timothy Martin Burton, Liberty GB Activist & Office Holder – Convicted of Religiously Aggravated Harassment

March 31, 2017 Article

For over 4 years, Timothy Martin Burton, harassed and intimidated the founder of Tell MAMA whilst using extremist far right networks to post up material targeting the faith of the founder. Details of the harassment that our founder suffered can be found HERE.

Timothy Martin Burton started off his ‘journey’ into far right extremism through the targeting of the then Director of Tell MAMA, Fiyaz Mughal, after he read an article in 2013 where Mughal was quoted within it. What transpired was a 4 year systematic campaign of harassment that led to Burton becoming a focal point for anti-Muslim haters and far right extremists from Australia through to the United States. Supporters of this individual also ended up being Pamela Geller, who was banned by the Home Secretary in 2013 from entering the United Kingdom. Her entry into the UK was regarded as “not being conducive to the public good.”

Burton went onto develop friendships with other far right conspiracy minded individuals and aided in supporting numerous blogs, statements and race hate material against Mughal, including ones that are currently being investigated. His targeting of Mughal was conducted through the Internet and was done underneath the Twitter pseudonym of ‘Catstrangler101’. The initial targeting in 2013 through this anonymous pseudonym meant that identification became a problem leading to the involvement of an external investigation company which identified the Twitter user as one Timothy Martin Burton from the West Midlands.

The interview notes after the arrest of Burton show a man who was exhibiting far right nationalist views and the interviewing notes said:

“He (Burton) stated that he has had long standing views about, as he terms it, the encroachment of Islam on the indigenous British population and how their needs are pursued to the detriment of society. Burton accepted in hindsight that he should not have sent the tweets and he would apologise to the victim.”

That apology was not to come.

In 2014, Burton was acquitted of material that was sent to the founder of Tell MAMA which involved calling him a ‘Muslim scumbag” and of promoting ‘Taqiyya’ – a concept used by far right extremists to suggest that Muslims lie to take over the State and to promote Sharia and the spread of Islam. Framed as the ‘Taqiyya’ trial by far right extremists and activists of the divisive anti-Muslim group, Liberty GB, Burton became emboldened and far right blogs consistently pumped out this term and tagged on the concept to Mr Mughal, thereby further adding insult against his faith identity. These aggressive, anti-Muslim and hateful messages continued for years through a range of blogs and sites in the UK and internationally.

Throughout Burton’s activities and the targeting of Mughal, there was ample evidence of a Muslim hater who was becoming more emboldened and extreme in his views. His initial anonymous tweets to Mughal in 2013 copied in the far right English Defence League and he also had the following text in his tweets:

“Hey Kuffar? Fed up of Islam? Don’t like your Muslim neighbours? Mosque in your area causing a problem? Call 1-800-DRONE-STRIKE – now.”

A video clip on his Twitter account showed a Qur’an burning ceremony with the following text attached to it – “I love the sound of Muzzies heads exploding in the morning.”

Burton then went onto try and build a career for himself through his affiliations with the anti-Muslim Liberty GB group that we have highlighted before. He even decided to run as the political candidate for Liberty GB in the 2016 General Elections for the Birmingham Ladywood seat, gaining only 200 votes. His campaign was based on how he had ‘stood up’ against Islam and how he had ‘won’ against Mr Mughal, a divisive position that no doubt, went down badly in the eyes of local voters, meaning that Liberty GB lost their deposit. Burton even titled himself the ‘Press Officer’ for Liberty GB where he turned up on the far right ‘Pegida’ radio station where he moaned about Muslims and Islam.

Burton however, who now felt that he had a purpose to what was an insignificant life in the public domain, relished his new found notoriety, though it was only a matter of time before he crossed a criminal threshold. This was to happen in 2017.

Liberty GB and the Link to Activities After the Murder of Jo Cox

Paul Weston – ‘Founder’ and ‘Chairman’ of Liberty GB

We have previously highlighted other key officers within Liberty GB, namely Paul Weston, who notoriously said after the murder of Lee Rigby in 2013 that ‘we are losing a racial war, we are losing a cultural war‘. He claimed that you would find ‘no white people in Tower Hamlets’ due to rising demographics of non-whites and Muslims.

In response to accusations of racism, Weston responded “If I want to avoid a civil war happening in my country, I am prepared to accept being called a racist“.

Weston quit Ukip after Lord Pearson stood down as leader. For him, the party would take a soft line towards Islam under Nigel Farage. He wrote in 2012 that “I think Islam will cause even more death and destruction in Europe over the 21st century than Nazism and Communism caused over the 20th century”.

Jack Buckby – ‘Press Officer’

Buckby’s toxic comments have previously been highlighted by us within Tell MAMA. Recently, Buckby told NUS campaigner Barbara Ntulmy “I hope you don’t get raped” in reference to Syrian refugees on Channel 4 news. However, his actions before and after the murder of campaigner and Member of Parliament, Jo Cox, have been the most revolting of statements from him.

Buckby stood in the Batley and Spen by-election after the murder of Jo Cox and months before the by-election tweeted out the following:

“Jo Cox was complicit in the rape of young girls throughout Yorkshire and beyond.”

In his own words: “nationalism is the cause we need to fight. The issue we’ve got is that young people do not associate with the word. So, as long as we keep the ideology it doesn’t really matter what word we use. Obviously, it’s all about spin.” Adding, that the language of ‘culturalism,’ which is ‘already important’ to nationalism, would help get young people involved with groups like the BNP.

When a student at the University of Liverpool, Mr Buckby tweeted a poster warning against sex with ‘intravenous drug abusers’, ‘bisexuals’ and ‘blacks’.

A now-deleted tweet from 2014 read: “Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day. Please take time to remember those who were killed at the hand of fascism & hope Islam can’t do the same.”

In recent years, his incendiary rhetoric on Islam and Muslims has not changed. Further, he has made highly offensive and extreme comments about the LGBT and Jewish communities as well, yet Channel 4 gave him a platform to air such views without informing its audience effectively about his extremist ideology.

Burton Starts Up His Activities Again in 2016

True to form, Burton was back on the scene and started his harassment of the Founder of Tell MAMA in early 2016. He harassed Mr Mughal when Tell MAMA posted a job vacancy for a Caseworker for the national hate crime project. In a blog he caricatured the face of Mughal, copied in Liberty GB activists and other far right networks and suggested a toast to Mr Mughal with a ‘bacon sandwich’. He gloated in ‘winning’ his case and all the while e-mailing from an account entitled, ‘Freedom Lovin’ Infidel’ – a reference to so-called self-styled ‘Counter-Jihadists’ who target Muslims by enlarge. He repeated the term ‘Taqiyya’ on many occasions and also linked in the notorious ‘Gates of Vienna’ blog into his correspondence. He was now a fully fledged anti-Muslim far right activist.

In one e-mail, Burton stated the following:

“I forgot to thank you for passing my communication onto the Middle East transgender organisation. I thinks (sic) that it’s wonderful that you have such an enlightened group that supports persecuted minorities in this way.

It’s such a welcome change from the backward, misogynistic seventh century attitudes that we have come to expect from the followers of your ideology.”

Bizarrely, as a key witness Burton’s defence called one Sami Aldeeb to talk about the concept of ‘Taqiyya’. Aldeeb’s tweets include material showing the Qur’an with statements saying,

“This is a declaration of war against you, your family, your friends, your values, and everything that is precious to you.” At the previous trial, Burton’s defence relied on a member of Geert Wilder’s political party.

Conviction

On the 30th of March 2017, after a 4 year campaign, Timothy Martin Burton was found guilty of the religiously aggravated harassment of Fiyaz Mughal. A 4 year campaign that saw him being found not guilty, use language that few understood the impacts of, engage with far right extremism and ultimately lead him into the docks at Southwark Crown Court.

It was the persistence and tenacity of the founder of Tell MAMA, with the hard work of the Crown Prosecution Service and the MET, which led to the conviction of this far right extremist. The statement from Fiyaz Mughal, can be found below:

“I am relieved that the jury have seen this for the criminal conduct it is. For the last four years I have been subjected to a long running hate campaign at the hands of Mr Burton. I have received unacceptable abuse which has no place in modern day Britain. The outcome of the trial sends a very clear message – racial and religious abuse is completely unacceptable and is punishable by law. It also sends a message to far right activists who break the law in targeting people through religiously aggravated harassment. You will not succeed and you will be held accountable for your actions within the laws of our land.

There is also a message for Islamist extremists and those who perpetuate an Islamist narrative of the State being against Muslims or Muslim rights not being protected. This result corrodes your toxic narrative that holds back some Muslims from reporting in and accessing justice and your manipulation of our fellow British Muslim citizens against the State and its structures, is challenged by this ruling. The legal system works for all.

For others suffering from similar abuse, my message is very clear: report any racial and religious abuse you receive to third party hate crime agencies like Tell MAMA and to the police because this behaviour breaks the law. This judgment also sends a very clear message to social media companies, which have been extremely slow to monitor and curb this type of activity, that they have a responsibility to act to ensure their platforms are not used to break the law.”

The post Timothy Martin Burton, Liberty GB Activist & Office Holder – Convicted of Religiously Aggravated Harassment appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: Far Right groups, hate crime, Jack Buckby, News, Paul Weston, Taqqiya

Timothy Martin Burton, aka ‘M-CAT’ @catstrangler101 and the Targeted Campaign

May 15, 2014 Article

The Tweets

Over the last 10 months I have been subjected to a hate campaign that involved a West Midlands based Timothy Martin Burton, who through a variety of accounts, targeted me because of my faith and on the back of a series of articles highlighting the TELL MAMA Islamophobic monitoring project. Whilst Timothy Martin Burton’s @catstrangler101 account was reported to the local police and through ACPO (Association of Chief Police Officer) contacts, no action was taken even though multiple tweets were targeted at TELL MAMA (of which I am the Director) and which specifically named me. It was at this point where we decided to act and information was provided by TELL MAMA to West Midlands Police which linked Timothy Martin Burton to the @catstrangler101 M-CAT account that had over 6,000 Twitter followers, many of them Far Right sympathisers. A look at this account provided us with an insight into the mind-set of Timothy Martin Burton when we found a tweet from the 18th of May 2012 which read:

“#ThingsWeAskGod2HelpUsWith – Getting rid of all the inbred, parasitic, welfare scrounging Muslim paedophiles out of our country for a start.”

The campaign against me was triggered off after an Andrew Gilligan article that was written in the Telegraph on the 2nd of June 2013. The subsequent campaign by Timothy Martin Burton went onto March 2014 and was conducted by Burton through Twitter and through a number of Far Right and extremist web-sites that crossed the United States, the UK and Australia. In one of the postings on a bizarre and virulently anti-Muslim Australian focussed web-site, Timothy Martin Burton stated, “Excellent post Mike, and I shall be reposting it far and wide, a strategy that will no doubt include the hire of an enormous billboard situated right outside Fiyaz Mughal’s office window.” We will come onto the statements made by that article and by Mike Holt, the owner of the site. In fact, a quick look at the site shows a campaign to donate to the Restore Australia web-site to ban the Bendingo Mosque campaign in Australia. Hardly impartial, the Restore Australia project is a patchwork quilt of xenophobic, anti-Muslim and extreme comments and articles.

So, what were the targeted tweets that were aimed at us? On the 2nd of June 2013, we received the following tweet after the Gilligan article went live on the Telegraph web-site. It was addressed to @tellmamauk, the Twitter address for the anti-Muslim hate crime monitoring project and also included the English Defence League Twitter address. Coming from Timothy Martin Burton it read:

“@Official_EDL, @tellmamauk: Let’s stick it to that mendacious taquiyya (sic) artist Fiyaz Mughal.”

For those not aware of the meaning of the word ‘Taqiyya’, we have listed the context and the meaning in this previous article. Clearly, in this context, the term was used to suggest that I, because of my faith, lied to spread, protect or further Islam. The narrative is virtually identical to the twisted anti-Semitism of Far Right groups who see Jews as maliciously wanting to subvert the Christian West by taking over positions of assumed power. In this context, it was targeted at me, because of my faith.

On the 3rd of June 2013, I received another tweet from an account named FreedomLovin’Terrier @ardentadmirer1. It read as:

“Breaking News @tellmamauk: Mendacious Muslim scumbag Fiyaz Mughal agrees not to tell any more porkies if UK Gov’t give him back his £214,000 back.” We believed this to be Timothy Martin Burton given the use of the same vocabulary in the tweet.

Again on the 3rd of June 2013, we received a further tweet from Timothy Martin Burton’s @catstrangler101 M-CAT account which stated the following:

“#MyJihad – the taqqiyya (sic) by @tellmamauk about the ‘wave of attacks on Muslims’ after the Woolwich Islamic murder.” A link was also attached to this tweet directed at us in TELL MAMA and naming me and isolating me out for my faith because of the taqiyya suggestion.

Once again on the 3rd of June, Timothy Martin Burton sent us another tweet from his M-CAT @catstrangler101 account which stated:

“@tellmamauk – I wish to report Fiyaz Mughal for being a mendacious, grievance-mongering little Muslim scumbag and I want my £214,000 back.” These tweets were retweeted by a coterie of Far Right activists on-line.

On the 9th of June Timothy Martin Burton’s M-CAT @catstrangler101 account went into action again and he targeted me specifically again. It read as:

“#MyJihad – Thanks to M-CAT, the mendacious little scumbag Fiyaz Mughal @tellmamauk has had his funding withdrawn.”The tweet ended with a link and was referenced to another article written by Andrew Gilligan which asserted that our funding had been withdrawn because TELL MAMA had, according to the Telegraph, overplayed the backlash against Muslim communities and which we had previously challenged in TELL MAMA. However, what is clear is that after the murder of Lee Rigby, there was a sharp rise in anti-Muslim hate incidents and crimes and these can be further triangulated here and here. I don’t choose to go over the whole debate since this matter is now in the past and TELL MAMA and the work that we do must move forward for the sake of the people that we are helping – victims of anti-Muslim hatred.

Timothy Martin Burton continued with his hate campaign stating in a tweet on the 15th of June 2013 through the M-CAT @catstrangler101 account:

“#FamousMuslimQuotes – “Yes infidel, Islam has always been at the forefront of medical technology. Now shut up and drink this camel piss.”

He carried on with a further tweet to the 6,000 plus followers and to the Twitter-sphere saying:

“#MyJihad Hey kuffar! Fed up with Islam? Don’t like your Muslim neighbours? Mosque in your area causing a problem? Call 1-800-DRONE-STRIKE now!” Two references were made here and the first being a twist on the use of the #MyJihad hashtag which was being used by some Muslim Twitter users to take away the violent nature of the assumptions of the word and the latter was a reference to the drone strikes conducted in a few Muslim majority countries, such as Pakistan. Burton was using this as a way of further inflaming sentiments within Muslim communities.

On the 18th of June 2013, Timothy Martin Burton, again through the now infamous M-CAT @catstrangler101 account tweeted the following:

“FYI  I don’t like having to refer to Muslims as shit-for-brains, but indoctrination with Islam removes capacity for constructive thinking.”

On the 19th of June 2013, Timothy Martin Burton went onto tweet the following:

“#MyJihad – Not all Muslims are terrorists, paedophiles, retarded fuckwits our pushy little inbred welfare parasites with shit for brains.”

“@Little_Otto – Unfortunately I am restrained by the 140 char limit but I think we can safely say that misogyny is a defining characteristic.” This tweet referred to Muslims.

“@ellierogerz @SarveshKrDev – At the end of the day, Islamic ideology is not just an alternative viewpoint. It IS pure, unmitigated evil.”

So prolific was Timothy Martin Burton on Twitter that he decided to contact us at the beginning of September 2013. Through a separate account, which we believed to be his, he tweeted through @Muhammadtehpig (sic):

“#My Jihad – the Taqqiyya by @tellmamauk about the wave of attacks on Muslims after the Woolwich Islamic murder.”The tweet was identical to the one sent to us on the 3rd of June 2013 through his M-CAT @catstrangler101 account. So here was Burton using another account which he described as, “the Sous Chef of Allah’s Snackbar. Signature dishes include bacon and pork sausages. BBQ’d over a bed of burning Qu’rans for that special charcoal flavour. #TGDN #TCOT.”

In fact, from that same account, 7 minutes later he targeted us at TELL MAMA again with the following tweet:

“Breaking News @tellmamauk Mendacious Muslim Scumbag Fiyaz Mughal agrees not to tell any more porkies if UK Govt give him back his £214,000.” This tweet was not only identical in its nature to the one on the 3rd of June 2013 sent from another account we believe was associated with him (@ardentadmirer1), it also listed monies identical in amount to the ones emanating from his infamous @catstrangler101 account. In fact a further set of tweets were sent and targeted at TELL MAMA which went on until the 22nd of September 2013.

The Arrest of Timothy Martin Burton

Timothy Martin Burton was finally arrested by West-Midlands police after we within TELL MAMA made the case of a direct link to the @catstrangler101 account. Timothy Martin Burton was bailed on the proviso that no contact was made with myself. Part of this assumption was that he would not contact the @tellmamauk Twitter address, yet on the 18th of January 2014 Timothy Martin Burton was active again on Twitter. The following tweet again demonstrated his views of Muslims or ‘Mohammedans’ as he called them. This came through his @catstrangler101 account:

“#MyJihad – Apologies for using ‘Mohammeddans’ in my previous post when what I meant was – terrorist, paedophiles and inbred welfare parasites.”

Timothy Martin Burton followed this tweet with one on the 1st of March 2014, some 5 weeks before the trial at Birmingham Magistrate’s court. From the usual @catstrangler101 account it stated:

“Threatening arrests over a tweet – the mendacious grievance-mongering taqqiyya (sic) artists @tellmamauk are at it again.”So not only did he breach his bail conditions, Timothy Martin Burton continued to target and promote anti-Muslim hate publicly and openly on the Twitter platforms, including us at TELL MAMA knowing that I would probably come across the material as the Director of the project.

Links to Far Right Sites

Over the course of 2013, we had provided significant evidence to West-Midlands police as to internet links that Timothy Martin Burton had with Robert Spencer in the US. One of the doyennes of the virulently anti-Muslim so called counter-Jihad network, Robert Spencer has been banned from entering the UK by the Home Secretary.A further appeal also failed and the initial letter from the Home Office to the anti-Muslim blogger Robert Spencer read,

“After careful consideration, she [the Home Secretary] personally directed that you should be excluded from the United Kingdom on the grounds that your presence here is not conducive to the public good.”

“The Home Secretary has reached this decision because you have brought yourself within the scope of the list of unacceptable behaviours by making statements that may foster hatred which might lead to inter-community violence in the UK.”

Furthermore, Timothy Martin Burton was responsible for writing numerous blogs about TELL MAMA and I on the virulently anti-Muslim Liberty GB site which we have raised before. Further information on the anti-Muslim Far Right Liberty GB site can be gained through this link. Interestingly during one of his discussions on the Liberty GB site in January 2014 with a Sheryl McNaught whom TELL MAMA have highlighted before, Timothy Martin Burton stated,

“Hi Sheryl, it’s interesting that TellMamaUK are monitoring your posts on this site. I’m going to make sure Fiyaz Mughal gets his clock cleaned over his fraudulent and mendacious activities. By the time this trial is over his name is going to be mud throughout the world…………… Of course Liberty GB is in no way racist or Islamophobic, so if you wish to continue posting here then feel free, there’s nothing TellMamaUK can do about it.”

Australian Pals

One of Timothy Martin Burton’s Australian pals is a Mike Holt of Restore Australia. A read of this bizarre and vitriolic twisted site with its deeply anti-Muslim views is not only stomach churning, it demonstrates the on-line virulently anti-Muslim connections that Timothy Martin Burton had built up. So coming back full circle to the earlier statement that Timothy Martin Burton made of circulating this material far and wide, this is a brief example of what Burton wanted to circulate written by the bizarre Mike Holt:

“If Islam was not in the UK……… he (Fiyaz Mughal) would not be standing on his two hind legs to bleat about an insult that called him such terrible names as mendacious grievance mongering taqqiyya (sic) artist, and a lying Muslim scumbag.”

This small segment of this virulently twisted and hate filled blog showed who Timothy Martin Burton connected with and who he had reached out to for support. (Interestingly, so buoyed up is Timothy Martin Burton that he has set up his own Wikipedia Page that can be found here. Interestingly, the person who set it up – is a certain Timothy Martin Burton).

The Verdict

On Tuesday the 8th of April 2014, after 2 hours of cross-examining by the solicitor of Timothy Martin Burton and after completely rebutting a confused and bizarre defence put up by the solicitor, I learnt that the defendant had been released. The judge stated that the CPS had not made its case on the racially aggravated harassment charges. Yet, what is worrying is that this case was less about race and more about my perceived religious background as the language and terminology shows.

One of these reasons the case failed, was because a Crown Prosecution Service who even with all of the information provided by us, could not make the case. Furthermore, this case was also based on the use of the term taqiyya which we have listed before and which the CPS did not back up with further specialist testimony or evidence. It also felt to me that the CPS was struggling to fully make the case on the terminology of anti-Muslim hate terms used – taqiyya in this case, (and given the background of Timothy Martin Burton and his links to Far Right groups), the context of the hate was clear.

On the issue of the term ‘taqiyya’, two years of work on anti-Muslim language and rhetoric shows that the frequency of the word is significant in anti-Muslim rhetoric targeted at Muslims as this article show. The CPS did miss out on the network and connections that Timothy Martin Burton had with Far Right sites and the lesson from this case is that much more work needs to be done on understanding the language of anti-Muslim hate. (Whilst, I can move on from this experience, what would the impact of such a verdict have on a Muslim visible female for example, and how would it make her feel about others or non-Muslims even).

Last but not least, what message does the verdict send out to British Muslims who may be targeted and called ‘taqiyya’ (lying because of their faith) Muslim scumbags? More than ever, what this case shows is that the CPS and its understanding of language around anti-Muslim hate lags well behind where things are today. Saying that, I will continue to work with the CPS since this is the way to ensure real change for victims who suffer targeted hate and intimidation. If we can make any changes to reduce and alleviate their suffering, then all of this would have been worth it and I am a firm believer that changes takes time and that consistency, tenacity and strong evidence builds that change. I also believe in State institutions and whilst I did not achieve the justice that I wanted, no doubt, change is coming and it is on the horizon.

Categories: MyBlog, Uncategorized