Here is one from the Department of Corrections. Muddassar Ahmed, an advisory council member at the Atlantic Council in Washington writing in the Arab News, says I am “the notorious extremist banned by the UK government since 2013.”
This kind of defamation is nothing new, and ordinarily I ignore it, but I thought I’d state my position for the record in case there are any fair-minded readers out there who want to know the truth. What makes one a “notorious extremist” these days? Do I fly planes into buildings for my god, behead those who believe differently from me, take sex slaves from among women who believe differently, or exhort others to do such things? Sorry, no. I believe in a society that does not establish a state religion, and that guarantees and protects the right of all its citizens. Such a society must value and protect the freedom of speech. Accordingly I oppose Sharia, because it establishes Muslims as a special class having rights that others do not have, denies the freedom of speech, and institutionalizes discrimination against women, non-Muslims, and others.
If that’s notorious extremism, everyone should be a notorious extremist.
The fog of delusion, disinformation, and deception grows ever thicker.
And yes, I was banned from entering the UK in 2013. Here’s why: the letter to me from the UK Home Office said I was banned for saying: “[Islam] is a religion and is a belief system that mandates warfare against unbelievers for the purpose for establishing a societal model that is absolutely incompatible with Western society because media and general government unwillingness to face the sources of Islamic terrorism these things remain largely unknown.” This is a garbled version of what I actually said, which is that Islam in its traditional formulations and core texts mandates warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers. And it does. Prove me wrong, Mr. Ahmed.
“I am a British Muslim, and Anjem Choudary does not represent me,” by Muddassar Ahmed, Arab News, June 18, 2019:
…Yet achievements such as theirs very rarely hit the top of search results when looking up “Muslims” or “Islam.” Instead, if a search does not end up promoting hate preachers such as Choudary who distort Islam from within, it often leads to webpages that defame Islam from without. Such websites include Jihad Watch, run by Robert Spencer, the notorious extremist banned by the UK government since 2013…
Despite the rampant fake news on these sites, their popularity means that Google continues to elevate them, driving a self-reinforcing cycle of viral disinformation that repeatedly pushes the same toxic message: Muslims and Islam are a threat to the West.
In reality, Google actively buries sites that tell the truth about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, including this one. But that’s not enough for Muddassar Ahmed: he wants even more censorship.
And as for Ahmed’s claim that Jihad Watch publishes “rampant fake news,” I ask him to produce even one example of something we have posted that is false. Not something you dislike, Mr. Ahmed, but something you can demonstrate to be false. Happy hunting.
Does the Atlantic Council know or care that a member of its advisory council traffics in such reckless and baseless defamation?