Facebook
X
LinkdIn
Copy Link
The Spectator and Douglas Murray have today won a defamation claim brought by Mohammed Hegab, who “lied on significant issues” in court and gave evidence that “overall, is worthless.”
The judge rejected Hegab’s claim because the videos he publishes are ‘at least as reputationally damaging to him as the article’
Hegab, a YouTuber who posts under the name Mohammed Hijab, claimed that an article published in September 2022 about the riots in Leicester, England, had caused serious harm to his reputation and loss of earnings as a result. Hegab traveled to Leicester in September 2022 after disturbances between local Muslims and Hindus there had begun, and gave a speech to a group of Muslim men, the majority of them in balaclavas, masks, hoods or caps, in which he said “if they believe in reincarnation, yeah… what a humiliation and pathetic thing for them to be reincarnated into some pathetic weak cowardly people like that.” Hegab said this comment was referring to Hindutva – a Hindu nationalist group – and not Hindus. But it was “substantially true” to say that he was referring to Hindus, a London judge found: “It was them that he was ridiculing.”
The earnings Hegab claimed to have lost included a £3,500-a-month ($4,600) deal to be a brand ambassador for the charity One Ummah, a £1,500-a-month ($2,000) advertising contract with supplements company Nature’s Blends and £30,000 ($40,000) for a Ramadan fundraising campaign with the charity Salam.
But messages that he relied on for these claims “have the appearance of being contrived for the purpose of these proceedings,” the judge said. They addressed Hegab formally, despite coming from people who knew him well; they blamed the article; and they “provided material that would be necessary to support a claim for financial losses… when one might not generally expect such detail.” They also arrived at “roughly the same time, which was several weeks after the article, but very shortly before a letter of claim was sent.”
The judge found that “as a witness [Hegab] was combative and constantly argumentative… arguing his case rather than giving straightforward responses.” He made an “untenable… denial of vigilantism” over his actions in Leicester. He made claims that were “not credible” when he said he was unaware of having given a speech in front of a van displaying images of the Holocaust on another occasion in the north London neighborhood of Golders Green. He also “described the Jewish people he encountered in Golders Green as “Zionists” without any objective basis.”
The judge rejected Hegab’s claim because the videos he publishes are “at least as reputationally damaging to him as the article” and so “it cannot be inferred that the article caused, or would be likely to cause, additional serious reputational harm.”
