Change.org removes petition calling for the destruction of mosques after removal of slave trader statues

June 11, 2020 Article

Change.org has removed a petition which called for the destruction of mosques in response to the toppling and removal of statues of the slave traders Edward Colston and Robert Milligan.

The petition, titled “If the statues go, the Mosques go too,” called on Black Lives Matters supporters to target mosques (as apparent symbols of slavery) and had gained over 500 signatures in one day before its removal for breaching the platform’s rules on hate speech.

On Twitter, the petition had generated various harmful comments, with one such tweet calling for the use of bulldozers.

Credit: Twitter.

Others tweeted that the “mosques can go anyway…”.

Signatories on the change.org petition included individuals based in the United States, Chile, Spain, and Australia, from the location information provided on some profiles who had made public statements after signing the petition.

Some UK-based users who signed the petition had made racist comments, referring to Muslims as “medieval savages” as others made broader racialised anti-Muslim and Islamophobic comments – from accusing all Muslims of being terrorists to forms of ‘cultural othering’, including about the perceived number of mosques in a ‘Christian country’.

Change.org has clear policies on hate speech, limiting content (including petitions, usernames, comments) that “attack or malign an entire class of people based on characteristics such as their age, color, disability, ethnic origin, gender identity, nationality, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, medical condition, or veteran status.”

The platform also holds discretion when enforcing its Terms, including the closing of accounts or removing harmful content.

We welcome the swift action regarding hateful content on their platform.

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Black Lives Matter, News, petition

How the far-right weaponised a clip of the call to prayer to spread hate on Twitter

April 29, 2020 Article

A trial public broadcast of the Islamic call to prayer (the adhan, azaan) in West London has been weaponised by the far-right on Telegram and Twitter to spread racialised conspiracies of hate.

Credit: Twitter.

The short video, which first appeared on Twitter on April 24, coinciding with the beginning of the holy month of Ramadan, and would also appear a day later, after the journalist Aina Khan, shared the video, having remarked on its ethereal beauty, adding that public broadcast was a trial.

Within hours, and in the days ahead, the video was presented in a different, more harmful context when messages began to link the clip to racialised conspiracies of forced demographic changes.

As reported last week, the racialised and conspiracist manipulation of out-of-context videos had appeared on far-right Telegram channels had re-circulated from the same Twitter accounts, with one account boasting more than 60,000 video views – a ten-fold increase on what some of the earlier, non-inflammatory posts had generated.

Academics have explored how the far-right continues to weaponise visual content on social media with attention paid to the neo-fascist British National Party (BNP). Broader research explores the use of meme culture, and how the far-right adapt to new technologies for hyperpartisan, ideological pursuits.

A regional BNP Twitter account had captioned the shared video, “Retweet if you think this is Noise Pollution.”

This idea of ‘noise pollution’ and mosques has been explored by various academics, who have compared complaints about the East London Mosque broadcasting the adhan over loudspeakers in 1986 to similar protests against the Liverpool Mosque founded by Abdullah Quilliam in 1889.

Due to the ongoing coronavirus lockdown, mosques remain closed nationwide, and to remind Muslims of their togetherness in this holy month, mosques in parts of Europe, the United States, and in Canada, have been granted special dispensation to broadcast the azaan over loudspeakers.

In the city of Halifax, for example, in the Ontario province of Canada, approval was given to broadcast the azaan over loudspeakers at sunset throughout Ramadan.

In Minneapolis, in the United States, Mayor Jacob Frey granted a permit for Dar Ul Hijra Mosque to broadcast the azaan five times a day for the public during Ramadan, with loudspeakers directing the prayers towards Muslims living in the Riverside Plaza apartments, as to not to disturb businesses and other residents.

Before Ramadan began, other cities like Paterson, in New Jersey, announced changes to its ordinance to allow for exceptions to its noise regulations for various religious worship. Some mosques in Paterson, however, were publicly broadcasting the azaan, others do not. Officials added that there was no record of mosques in Paterson receiving noise summons for broadcasting the call to prayer.

This gesture offers a source of solace and comfort for Muslims observing the lockdown, with mosque doors remaining closed throughout the holy month.

Tell MAMA continues to urge Twitter to deal with the far-right accounts pushing such incendiary, misleading content.

 

 

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Categories: News, Telegram

Shropshire Police debunk malicious tweet about a mosque ‘ignoring’ the coronavirus lockdown

March 30, 2020 Article

Shropshire Police and other Twitter users have debunked a malicious tweet which claimed that a ‘mosque in Shrewsbury’ was ignoring the coronavirus lockdown.

The offending tweet, published on March 26, from a user who claimed ‘to have spoken to the mosque’ and was ‘horrified’ to find that it was still open, adding that the people inside could be ‘super spreaders’ of the virus, and urged the police to act.

Credit: Twitter.

The Shrewsbury Muslim Centre, however, has continued to observe the lockdown since the government’s advice changed earlier this month. In a statement published on March 19, the centre added, as with many places of worship, spoke of their acute concern about the virus and would, therefore, cease holding Friday (Jummah) prayers until further notice.

Credit: Shrewsbury Muslim Centre.

Shropshire Police tweeted yesterday evening that “Probably because there is no Mosque in Shrewsbury. There is a prayer centre & it has been checked and is fully compliant with the current government requirements.”

Other Twitter users condemned the flagrant attempt at stirring up anti-Muslim hatred and Islamophobia, writing, “Shropshire Police thanks for standing up in favour off against the hater who want to pour petrol and stir up tensions in the community.” One user added that “There isn’t a mosque in Shrewsbury ya daft racist,” as another user replied, “You’re a super spreader of lies and racism.”

Some condemned the user for wasting police time and resources, adding that, “Wasting police time, Russ. You’re nowhere near my town. Thank goodness.”

The tweet did attract attention from a plethora of nationalist and far-right accounts, but a clear majority of the replies condemned the malicious tweet.

When asked what they were going to do about such hateful conduct, Shropshire Police replied that it had been “all duly recorded & reported.”

Tell MAMA urges users to report the malicious tweet, as others have done so. We welcome the quick debunking by Shropshire Police and others who challenged this malicious and inflammatory tweet.

You can get advice from our confidential and free helpline on 0800 456 1226. Or through our free iOS or Android apps. Report through our online form. Or contact us via WhatsApp on 0734 184 6086.

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Categories: Coronavirus, News, Shropshire Police

No, the Muslims praying in this video aren’t ignoring the coronavirus lockdown. It’s far-right fake news

March 26, 2020 Article

A viral and misleading tweet which attempted to portray a group of Muslims in Wembley, north-west London, ignoring government advice on social distancing during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, has drawn wide condemnation and reports concerning its breach of Twitter’s hateful conduct policies.

The tweet, which appeared on the platform at 9:43 am on March 25 from a far-right account (which also promotes antisemitic and Islamophobic conspiracies, including the far-right obsessive interest in the obscure concept of taqiyya) has gained over sixteen-hundred retweets as of writing.

The tweet tried to claim that the Muslims were ‘arrogantly’ ignoring medical advice. But after researching the origins of the video, after several members of the public reported the tweet to our service, Tell MAMA can confirm, with a high degree of confidence, that the video is several weeks old, a version of which appeared on Facebook on March 3. Photographs, however, uploaded to the platform on February 28, shared in a negative review of Wembley Central Masjid, from a Muslim man, had lamented how the mosque had been closed for six weeks (over an internal dispute), adding that Friday (Jummah) prayers had to take place on a pavement in the rain.

Six days before the viral anti-Muslim and Islamophobic tweet from the @FormerWorshiper account, the mosque had announced on Facebook that it had suspended all congregational services and activities, reflecting the updated governmental advice regarding the coronavirus pandemic.

Credit:Facebook/WembleyCentralMasjidOfficial

Tell MAMA urged users to report the inflammatory tweet yesterday afternoon.

Others have done the same, writing, “FAKE. It hasn’t rained in London in days. Also, look at this racist’s timeline and report it.”

Various Twitter users also highlighted the lack of rain in London (as the video was filmed during in rainy conditions), and condemned its deliberate stoking of anti-Muslim and Islamophobic tensions.

Some were taken in or emboldened by the propaganda, writing, “How about they are arrested & deported for breaking the curfew!!! Remind me, who rules Britain?!!!”. Others called for the police to disperse an event which had occurred weeks prior, as one user even responded that the army should intervene. More ideologically motivated accounts added that Islam should be banned.

Several far-right channels on the encrypted messaging app Telegram would share a GIF of the video, including Britain First, hours later, gaining several thousand views.

We have urged Twitter to revise its policies and allow users to report tweets designed to mislead that stoke racial and religious hatred. And make that request again.

In an effort to promote social media and internet research skills, we have released an educational video for communities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Fake News, News

Katie Hopkins: the viral power of an anti-Muslim falsehood on Twitter

February 24, 2020 Article

A viral tweet from the far-right commentator Katie Hopkins further demonstrates the need for Twitter to allow users to report content designed to deceive and pass as news.

Hopkins, was, for a brief time, suspended from Twitter for breaching its hateful conduct policies, but the ban was temporary.

The tweet, posted at 9:31 pm on February 23, begins, “Beautiful Indian lady punched in the face by Muslim man in racist attack in Birmingham.”

Credit: Twitter.

Hopkins then offers a partial unattributed quote from Meera Solanki (the woman assaulted), who described how the man, described as Asian in police reports, approached them during dinner, as he “seemed to have a problem with me being an Indian girl with a multi-racial group of friends”.

Ms Solanki was punched and briefly knocked unconscious after attempting to stop the same man from directing his anti-Chinese racism towards her friend Mandy Huang. This individual had followed the women after they had left the restaurant and made comments towards Ms Huang like “take your f****** Coronavirus and take it back home“ and referred to her as a “dirty c***k”.

Katie Hopkins, of course, provides no evidence to show this perpetrator is Muslim, but her use of the hashtag ‘#LittePakistan’ serves two distinct and revealing functions: it racialises and stereotypes that Muslims in Birmingham are Pakistani (despite 8,681 British-Indians in Birmingham self-identifying as Muslim in the 2011 Census); and, from an ideological position, seeks to foster divisions between Indian and Pakistani communities, given her pro-Modi posturings last year regarding Kashmir. She appeared outside of the United Nations in Geneva with David Vance according to an interview with ANI News last September. Some, however, have questioned the veracity of Hopkins claim of speaking inside of the UN building.

Academics have documented, more broadly, how at around the same time, the European far-right had made solidarity visits to Kashmir, even after foreign journalists and politicians had been denied entry, following the scrapping of Article 370, which stripped the state of Jammu and Kashmir of its relative political autonomy, forcing it to abide by the Indian constitution.

This example of racialising Muslims, functions through the deliberate blurring of Asian and Pakistani communities, despite not all Pakistanis identifying as Muslim. In Birmingham alone, just over 6 per cent of British-Pakistanis self-identified with other religions (as 7,177 chose not to state their religion), including 597 Christians, 441 Sikhs, and 213 Hindus in the 2011 Census.

Credit: Nomis.

Racialisation, for other academics, concerns the process of identifying and stereotyping groups through cultural identifiers like religion and comes with spatial and geographic significance for discriminated groups. The idea of racialisation also “relies upon asserted inherentisms, and it reinforces cultural hierarchies and privilege.” Others argue that racialisation impacts Muslim men and women in gendered ways, as “Men are more likely to be viewed as if they are disloyal and a threat to national security.” Whereas for Muslim women, they argue, the hijab is ‘othered’ as a cultural oddity or threat, raising questions about national identity and loyalty. Discrimination in housing in education creates the racialisation of geographical space

Other examples of anti-Chinese and anti-East Asian racism following the coronavirus outbreak have included physical acts of violence, racial bullying in schools, discrimination (on public transport and in places of work), and microaggressions where individuals have moved away from them on public transport. Several universities have issued press releases condemning racism against their students.

A spokesperson for the Birmingham Chinese society has stated that abuse has always existed but some were using the virus as a pretext for racial harassment, abuse, and violence.

She explained: “We wear masks to protect others from our coughs and sneezes. Some wear them as protection against pollution. Some women wear them because they don’t want to be seen without make-up. We do it to protect others, not ourselves.”

Anyone with information about this ssault is urged to contact West Midlands Police by quoting the crime reference number 20BW/39330Q/20 if you have information about the assault by calling 101 anytime, or by using their Live Chat function (8 am to midnight).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Fake News, Katie Hopkins, News

How far-right fake news continues to go viral on Twitter

February 5, 2020 Article

A viral and inflammatory falsehood about ‘Muslim-only housing’ in London exemplifies the need for Twitter to fix an enduring problem: removing content designed to deceive and pass as news.

The company has taken welcome steps to counter electoral misinformation but falls short of other platforms in allowing users to flag and report false news stories.

Credit:Twitter.

The tweet was posted at 4:36 pm GMT on February 4, by the user @jjsmith1245, claimed that: “The ‘North London MUSLIM Housing Association‘ is building homes for, well, Muslims.  Supported by the Muslim Mayor of London, it looks like an entire little ghetto estate of brand new Muslim-only households is being created.”

Credit: North London Muslim Housing Association (NLMHA)

None of which is true, of course, as the North London Muslim Housing Association, welcomes applicants irrespective of background.

The Canadian far-right website Rebel Media made similar false claims about the North London Muslim Housing Association in July 2017, weeks earlier, the blog post cited by @jjsmith1245 first appeared online.

And the @jjsmith1245 account often shares far-right talking points on Twitter, including perverse anti-Muslim conspiracies such as the obscure concept of Taqiyya, which has also found mainstream credibility in the writings of the Times columnist and author Melanie Phillips.

It gained further traction when it was shared by the former Daily Express columnist and MEP Patrick O’Flynn, who tweeted that, “I’ve never got why ethnically and now religiously exclusive housing associations are permitted,” but was challenged in the replies, including from high-profile figures, including the journalist Fatima Manji and Jonathan Portes, Professor of Economics at King’s College.

The erroneous tweet, from O’Flynn however, was not deleted as instead, a further tweet acknowledged the error, confirming that the housing association does indeed accept all applicants.

This clarification gained little traction when compared to O’Flynn’s original, erroneous tweet, which, as of writing, stands at over 230 retweets.

The original link shared by @jjsmith1245 and others directs users to a blog site called “England’s England” or “Christopher’s England”. For its obscurity, the website has published a plethora of articles steeped in conspiracist, racialised, and hateful content about Muslim and Jewish communities.

The blog cited by @jjsmith1245 first appeared online in June 2017, and, in that same month, another blog piece claimed that Muslim and Jewish communities control ‘most’ of the food chain in the UK, as both faith groups “brought with them the mentality of a return to the Stone Age”.

Years earlier, a blog post described how the notorious Holocaust denier and Nazi apologist David Irving had spent time in prison for “daring to speak freely and express himself and his views about the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust”. Other blog posts recycle the antisemitic canard about Jewish people and the media.

It claims that Islam is a “totalitarian political cult-like ideology” and speaks of “warring religion viruses, born of the inbred desert tribes of the Middle East thousands of years ago”.

One notable invective propagates ideas of resentment and victimhood politics, as it laments perceived examples of individual and social disadvantage, including, that it was legitimate, in their eyes, unfair of others to refer to him as a Brit as shorthand for British, but not to refer to someone of Pakistani background as a “P*ki”. As the previous Tell MAMA report highlighted: “A sense of victimhood underscores this intensification of emotion fuses with the power of myth-making to a broader cultural pessimism which is a feature of mainstream and more obscure far-right and radical right ideologies, and therefore, identifying the digital pathways which connect disparate far-right groups”.

In broader political terms, some academics have argued that a defining feature of the Trump campaign in 2016 was its reliance on ‘white victimised toxic masculinity’ – where segments of his supporters overlooked or disavowed their societal privileges by centring their belief of being ‘disrespected or violated by the political establishment,’ as proof of their apparent exclusion from politics.

The “Christopher England” page has its own Twitter account (@christopher_eng) where anti-Muslim and Islamophobic views are easy to find.

Nor is this the only recent example of old falsehoods gaining traction online.

Where appropriate, Tell MAMA has flagged tweets from the accounts of @christopher_eng and @jjsmith1245 for what it considers breaches of its hateful conduct policies.

 

 

 

 

 

The post How far-right fake news continues to go viral on Twitter appeared first on TELL MAMA.

Categories: Fake News, News

Government’s AI adviser calls for tougher regulation of social media

February 4, 2020 Article

New regulations on social media companies should be tightened to include more transparency around how firms target users online, an independent advisory board on artificial intelligence (AI) has said.

The Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation (CDEI) has urged the Government to also focus on online targeting because the public is concerned about how the technology is being used.

In a new report, it said an analysis of public attitudes on the issue found that many appreciated the value of targeting – where platforms use people’s online habits to target them with content they believe will interest them – but were also concerned about the potential for such data to be exploited.

The CDEI has published three sets of recommendations as part of its research, urging the Government to hold any companies which use online targeting to a higher standard of accountability, as well as calling for transparency of online targeting systems to be increased and more control be given to users to edit how they are targeted.

A number of high-profile internet and social media platforms, including Google and Facebook, use different forms of online targeting to show users adverts or other content which they believe will interest users.

CDEI chairman Roger Taylor said: “Most people do not want targeting stopped. But they do want to know that it is being done safely and responsibly. And they want more control.

“Tech platforms’ ability to decide what information people see puts them in a position of real power. To build public trust over the long term it is vital for the Government to ensure that the new online harms regulator looks at how platforms recommend content, establishing robust processes to protect vulnerable people.”

Last year, a White Paper on online harms published by the Government proposed stricter regulation for internet and social media companies, including a statutory duty of care and measures to increase web safety, particularly in protecting young and vulnerable people from illegal content, while making tech giants liable to fines or criminal prosecution if they breach their responsibilities.

According to the CDEI report, only 29% of people trust platforms to target them in a responsible way, and 61% said they were in favour of greater regulatory oversight of online targeting.

Only around a third of those asked (34%) trust internet companies to change their settings when they ask them to.

Last month, a separate report by the Royal College of Psychiatrists said social media giants should be forced to hand over data and pay towards research into their potential harms.

In response to the CDEI research, Dr Bernadka Dubicka, chairwoman of the child and adolescent faculty at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: “We completely agree that there needs to be greater accountability, transparency and control in the online world.

“It is fantastic to see the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation join our call for the regulator to be able to compel social media companies to give independent researchers secure access to their data.”

The post Government’s AI adviser calls for tougher regulation of social media appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Centre for Data Ethics, News, Royal College of Psychiatrists, social media companies

How a debunked anti-Muslim falsehood contines to endure

January 3, 2020 Article

It began with a leading question, saturated in the same racialised falsehood it linked thousands of Twitter users to on December 31, suggesting that a Muslim had attacked a child in Sweden due to their eye colour.

Despite numerous debunkings in recent years, the story found a new life following a tweet from David Vance (@DVTAW), which boasts 145,000 followers, and benefits from a verified badge.

Credit: Twitter.

Vance linked to an obscure pro-Trump website which headlined their fake story, “Swedish child beaten by muslim immigrant for having blue eyes”.

This version of events, however, is as wilfully misleading as the previous iterations, hollowing out the facts of the Swedish-language news article, to further an anti-Muslim and Islamophobic agenda.

The @DVTAW tweet has gained just over 7,000 retweets, as journalists and others countering the falsehood, gaining prominence in the replies, as some responded with the discriminatory, hateful, and violent language such propaganda seeks to elicit.

Credit: Twitter.

Twitter reserves the right to remove the privilege of verified status to users who promote hatred against groups based on ethnicity, religious identity, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease. Such conduct also breaches the company’s broader hateful conduct policies.

The implementation of such a policy, however, for a variety of far-right personalities and groups is, at best, inconsistent.

The enduring appeal of such conspiracist thinking is attached more broadly to what academics contend is a form of ‘group polarisation’, often a banal daily occurrence can in extreme cases, morph into behavioural changes: from adopting maximalist thinking of their previous beliefs, practising self-segregation, developing a mistrust of others, or increasing their potential for violence.

Conspiracy theories endure because they “reduce highly complex phenomena to simple causes”, creating false hierarchies of knowledge, where information deemed ‘stigmatised’, by ‘untrustworthy’ mainstream institutions, finds validation elsewhere, according to Professor Michael Barkun.

Following a failed political career in 2010, gaining a mere 1,856 votes for the Traditional Unionist Voice, and having his blog A Tangled Web removed from Squarespace for repeated breaches of its hateful conduct policies that same year, Vance has gained a much bigger audience on social media, which includes indulging the grotesque anti-Muslim conspiracy of taqiyya, and ideologically-driven conspiracies about the slow ‘Islamisation’ of the UK, as other tweets routinely link Islam to violence and terrorism. This racialised lens is extended to Muslims, who are painted more broadly as antisemitic, violent, or as sexual predators.

Vance has used his Twitter account to promote anti-Soros conspiracies, invoking the language of ‘globalists’. The Anti-Defamation League does not consider the term to be intrinsically antisemitic but it will adopt such connotations when applied to Jewish people, groups of Jewish people, or areas where Jewish communities live. On April 29, 2017, Vance tweeted that the then French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron was “an open borders globalist Soros stooge”. Soros, born to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1930, was 11-years-old when the pro-fascist government had begun deporting thousands of Jewish people to Nazi-occupied territories, and when the war ended, Soros was just 14. But it has not stopped years of rabid conspiracies about his alleged Nazi collaboration, none of which are true.

Other conspiracies placing Soros at the centre of political events and funding have become decidedly mainstream in recent years.

Nor is Vance’s blog site without its continued controversies, as a post by Peter Moore, uploaded on Holocaust Memorial Day in 2018, read: “Today is, of course, the day that many people tweet about something which happened long ago, far far away. “But we must remember”, they say. It’s pretty difficult to forget, since some people never stop banging on about the Holocaust, but lets remember”.

Other notable tweets from Vance include depoliticising the far-right, terroristic murder of Jo Cox MP, and pro-Assad and pro-Putin soundbites.

The popular transphobic slur “tranny” has appeared in multiple tweets from Vance.

He has posted flagrant falsehoods about the violent nature of the transatlantic slave trade, and the role of Britain, adding that “(UK) Africans should view this history with gratitude”, despite the vast financial sums, totalling £17 billion, given to slave owners in the UK as compensation.

On January 2, 2020, Vance liked a tweet in praise of a book he authored from a user with the logo of the neo-fascist British National Party, who boasted the username @destroylefties despite Vance tweeting years earlier of his disdain for the party.

Away from Twitter, Vance spent parts of last year speaking at the conference of the far-right For Britain Party and speaking alongside Katie Hopkins in Geneva, siding with the Modi government on Kashmir.

All the inflammatory and misleading content highlighted in this article remain on Twitter as of publication.

 

 

 

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Categories: David Vance, Fake News, News

Twitter Takes Down Thousands Of Accounts Linked to Iran

June 13, 2019 Article

Twitter has removed almost 5,000 accounts it believes are linked to the Iranian government with the aim of manipulating conversations about political and social issues.

The social network has been cracking down on state-backed information operations as part of an effort to clean up its platform of fake news.

In its latest disclosure, Twitter removed more than 1,500 accounts which tweeted nearly two million times with global news content angled to benefit the diplomatic and geostrategic views of the Iranian state.

Another 2,865 accounts originating from Iran were taken down for using false personas to target conversations about political and social issues in Iran and globally, while another 248 accounts were banned for participating in discussions related to Israel specifically.

“We believe that people and organisations with the advantages of institutional power and which consciously abuse our service are not advancing healthy discourse but are actively working to undermine it,” said Yoel Roth, head of site integrity at Twitter.

“Our site integrity team is dedicated to identifying and investigating suspected platform manipulation on Twitter, including potential state-backed activity.”

The company also suspended 130 accounts linked back to Spain, which it discovered were directly associated with the Catalan independence movement, spreading content about the Catalan referendum.

Only four accounts linked to Russia were taken down this time round – down from the 518 Russian accounts it reported back in November – as well as 33 from Venezuela engaging in platform manipulation.

The move comes at a critical time for social networks, as they look to shake off accusations of not doing enough to tackle misinformation and the spread of harmful content, such as terrorism-related posts and hate speech.

Twitter’s legal, policy, and trust and safety lead, Vijaya Gadde, recently admitted that she has “no doubt” that content on Twitter and other social networks could contribute to radicalisation, while revealing that 1.6 million accounts have been taken down related to terrorism.

According to the executive, 90% of terror-related content taken down is detected by Twitter’s own technologies proactively without any users reporting it.

The post Twitter Takes Down Thousands Of Accounts Linked to Iran appeared first on Faith Matters.

Categories: Iran, News, radicalisation, terrorism

Conservative Cllr John Moss suspended over anti-Muslim Twitter conduct

June 7, 2019 Article

The Conservative Party have suspended a councillor after a complaint was made over their social media conduct last month.

Cllr John Moss, Conservative councillor for Larkswood ward in Waltham Forest, was named in a BuzzFeed News article concerning historic anti-Muslim and Islamophobic social media posts last month.

Cllr Moss has since apologised “unreservedly” for the comments and removed them from his Twitter account. He added that the comments “were not intended to be malicious, but they were careless.”

Credit: Facebook

The councillor has stated that he intends to meet with his local imam to apologise to him and to those who attend the mosque.

A Tell MAMA investigation, however, had unearthed several tweets which were then reported to the Director of Governance and Law at Waltham Forest Council on March 1, 2019.

Inflammatory tweets uncovered by Tell MAMA included the statements, “I’m sad to say Islam is damaging to women almost everywhere” and “Of course, the real abuse of animals because of outdated dogma is halal and kosher slaughter.”

Credit:Twitter/John_J_C_Moss.

He signed a Change.org petition in 2016 which called for UK-wide ban on halal slaughter, adding that halal and kosher slaughter should be “consigned to history”.

Credit:Twitter/John_J_C_Moss.

Cllr Moss replied to The Times columnist David Aaronovitch, on March 24, 2016, “Nothing to do with Islam either I suppose?” after Aaronvitch’s had tweeted “The Brussels terror attacks have nothing to do with Brexit. My @thetimes column this morning.”

Credit:Twitter/John_J_C_Moss.

It was after the terror attack in Brussels in March 2016 that Cllr Moss had tweeted: “In the name of a “god” which nobody can prove exists, by followers of a “prophet” that nobody can criticise = a death cult.”

Credit:Twitter/John_J_C_Moss.

A tweet from late 2014 read: “Just seen a fully Burka’d women driving a BMW playing George Michael at full volume #ironyalert.”

Waltham Forest Council responded to Tell MAMA’s complaint and concluded that “We are also of the view that the social media posts were not made by Cllr Moss in any official capacity but were private posts unconnected with is his official council role.”

The Twitter biography of Cllr Moss had read “Conservative Councillor & Affordable Housing Champion”. His official councillor biography on the Waltham Forest Council website linked to his @ John_J_C_Moss Twitter account. His biography has since been updated to read “On holiday”.

Cllr Alan Siggers, Conservative group leader for Waltham Forest, told the East London & West Sussex Guardian on May 30, that: “Myself, the deputy leader and chief whip interviewed John for his side of the story and we were satisfied that he does not have an Islamophobic bone in his body”.

Tell MAMA welcomes the decision to suspend Cllr Moss from the Conservative Party. We called for an inquiry into anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia in the Conservative Party following the London Mayoral election campaign in 2016, a call we repeated last year.

Cllr Moss will also undergo diversity training and will donate his salary for the month to a charity of the imam’s choosing.

 

 

 

 

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Categories: Cllr John Moss, Conservative Party, News