Quilliam Caught Race-Baiting Again?
By: Regressive Left Media
Tags: Politics, Quilliam, Islamophobia, Conspiracy Theories, Twitter

By Spooner & Stubbs

Pictured above are the social media posts of senior Quilliam staff on yesterday, the 19th of March. Both David Toube (Director of Policy) and Chief Executive Haras Rafiq tweeted out evidence-free accusations that ‘Muslim WhatsApp groups’ had been inundated with a message containing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the Christchurch massacre. Toube stated that he was “told” that within these Muslim groups the message had gone “viral”. Rafiq stated that his “phone was pinging all day yesterday” with his “fellow Muslims” sharing the message “as gospel” on his WhatsApp groups. Again, no evidence was offered.

These posts were picked up on by ourselves and after contacting Muslim friends of ours involved in such chat rooms to try to verify the allegation, only one confirmed that they had seen the message and added that it had been quickly denounced by the group. In fact, nearly the entirety of our Muslim/non-Muslim Twitter contacts in general denied even seeing the message at all until the Quilliam staffers had posted it. Prominent Muslim Journalist Assed Baig, stated:

So what were Quilliam playing at? Toube was gracious enough to engage with us following the mini Twitter-storm of offence that he had caused. Toube accused those of us who had asked him for evidence of his claim as engaging in “conspiracism”, seemingly naive to the irony of such a statement. Following this, Toube doubled down and appeared to catch himself out, stating that he had seen the “screen grabs of the tweets”. Perhaps he has, though it was an odd thing to say when his original allegation claimed the messages to have been sent on WhatsApp rather than Twitter. Toube failed to clarify this when asked by ourselves.

Furthermore, Rafiq’s claim that his phone was “pinging all day” with the messages is, as has been acutely observed, perhaps more of a reflection of the people and WhatsApp groups that he involves himself in rather than those of the Muslim community in general:

As Tiffin observes, for Rafiq’s phone to be “pinging all day” with anti-Semitic messages that are confined to the extremist fringe almost certainly brings into question his role as a ‘counter extremist’ whilst indulging in such groups. Rafiq has been caught in the past giving false information to the Home Affairs Select Committee and lying about the post-release editing of Quilliam’s race-baiting (seeing a theme?) ‘Grooming Gangs’ report. Thus, from where we stand there is only two explanations for Rafiq’s claims:

He is involved, unlike all the other people we contacted and surveyed, in a number of WhatsApp groups where anti-Semites and racists abound He is over-exaggerating/fabricating his claims as means to bait Muslims

Eventually, Toube clarified that the alleged message was not “uniquely a problem of certain Muslim groups”, which poses the question: Why did he highlight the problems of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in a way which unfairly baits Muslims, provokes tensions and only helps to sow division?

Quillam have yet to offer any evidence or apology for these claims. If the tables were turned and say, an anti-Muslim message was being spread around - only for Quilliam to make evidence free-insinuations that only Jewish people were responsible for propagating it - they would rightly be called out as anti-Semites. These types of messages undoubtedly exist, but to attempt to use them as a way to smear Muslims is undoubtedly, Islamophobic.

Of course, this type of behaviour is nothing new to Quilliam and they have proven themselves to be no ally to the Muslim community time and time again. This is simply another black mark on their shameful record.