Muslim activist Mohammed Hijab has lost his defamation case against the conservative Spectator magazine and the author Douglas Murray.
Influencer Hijab (real name, Mohammed Hegab) traveled to Leicester in the English East Midlands during sectarian conflict there in 2022, where he was filmed calling Hindus “weak cowardly people.” Furthermore, the presiding judge said that Hijab’s subsequent attempts to cover up his actions in the city that day were an “untenable…denial of vigilantism.”
On September 24th, 2022 The Spectator and Murray described Mohammed Hijab as a street agitator. When Hijab responded with a libel action saying this damaged his reputation and resulted in lost earnings, a judge confirmed the statements to be “substantially true” and dismissed Hijab’s legal challenge outright.
Embarrassingly for the Islamist influencer, documentation brought in to demonstrate his loss of earnings looked suspiciously like it was prepared on the eve of the lawsuit, specifically to secure financial damages—making it likely that Hajib intentionally lied to the court. Footage of his preaching in Leicester following local disturbances shows that he also targeted Hindus and not, as he claimed, Hindutva—a Hindu nationalist group.
Separate video evidence was produced after Hijab said he was ‘unaware’ of having given a speech in front of a van displaying images of the Holocaust. This episode, in London’s Golders Green, a predominantly Jewish neighborhood, saw him describe its Jewish residents as ‘Zionists’ without any objective basis. Again, the influencer’s actions undermined his claims that he had a reputation to defend.
The judge ruled that Hijab’s recorded conduct in both Leicester and Golders Green could potentially damage his reputation—at least as much as he alleged the Spectator article would. This, coupled with the premeditated lies brought into Courtroom 73 at the Royal Courts of Justice, led to the dismissal of the case and a well-deserved legal victory for Douglas Murray and the Spectator.
