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”, according to the judge. The Spectator has more.
Hegab, a YouTuber who posts under the name Mohammed Hijab, claimed that an article about the Leicester riots published in September 2022 had caused serious harm to his reputation and loss of earnings as a result. Hegab travelled 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, the judge found: “It was them that he was ridiculing.”
The earnings Hegab claimed to have lost included a £3,500-a-month deal to be a brand ambassador for the charity One Ummah, a £1,500-a-month advertising contract with supplements company Nature’s Blends and £30,000 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”.
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