Three years after Islamists and their cheerleaders in the media blamed Hindutva for the 2022 Leicester riots, the High Court of Justice in England on Tuesday (5th August) debunked the fake news aimed at giving a clean chit to Islamic extremists.
The court made the observations during a defamation case, filed by an Islamist named Mohammed Hijab against weekly British political and cultural news magazine, The Spectator.
In an article titled ‘Leicester and the downside with diversity’, which was published by the magazine on 24th September 2022, columnist Douglas Murray referred to Mohammed Hijab as ‘street agitator.’
Claims held by Mohammed Hijab, of Hindutva to be the cause of the Leicester unrest, to be false: Case of Hijab v. Spectator. pic.twitter.com/Jtugblj7Ae
— Charlotte Littlewood (@CharlotteFLit) August 7, 2025
While recounting the Islamist’s past attempts to whip up a mob on the streets of London, the article stated, “This week Hijab cropped up in Leicester to whip up his followers. Among other things he told them that Hindus are ridiculous people, not least because of their belief in reincarnation. Hijab claimed that the Hindus must live in fear because they have been reincarnated as such ‘pathetic, weak cowardly people’. ‘I’d rather be an animal,’ he went on.“
Hijab claimed that The Spectator article resulted in loss of thousands of pounds in fees and thus sued both the magazine and the columnist.
In the end, the Islamist lost the defamation suit and the court held that the article is “substantially true, and it is not materially inaccurate.”
Findings of the High Court of England & Wales
However, the most significant observation of the court was that Hindutva was not responsible for the 2022 Leicester riots.
In Paragraph 53 of the judgment copy, the Judge noted, “The claimant’s (Mohammed Hijab) account as to his basis for attributing responsibility to the Hindutva does not withstand scrutiny. He had not been in Leicester in the days and weeks leading up to his speech. He had no first-hand knowledge of the events and was not in a position to make a direct first-hand informed assessment.”
Mohammed Hijab claimed to have based his theory of ‘involvement of Hindutva’ on a video clip of masked men chanting ‘Jai Shree Ram’ and marching past a Muslim neighbourhood. The court pointed out that the video was posted online, two days after his inciteful speech targeting the Hindu community.
“A difficulty with that account is that this video was only posted online two days after the claimant’s speech. It cannot therefore have informed his knowledge of events at the time he gave his speech. When that was pointed out, the claimant said he did not know if this was the “exact video” that he had seen, but that he had seen material with the same elements,” the court observed.
It further added, “The claimant relied on the chants of “Jai Shree Ram” but he did not have any convincing reason for asserting that this was necessarily an indicator of the Hindutva as opposed to Hindus who do not subscribe to the Hindutva ideology. The claimant, in his oral evidence, said he had seen Hindutva flags when he was in Leicester. This was not in his witness statement. In any event, he did not profess any detailed knowledge of Hindu vexillology, and he was in no position reliably to attach particular significance to individual flags.“
In reality, the said flags were saffron in colour and were put up in the temples on the occasion of Krishna Janmashtami celebrations.
The court highlighted that Mohammed Hijab based his claims of Hindutva on social media posts of Islamist Majid Freeman (whose identity in the court documents was protected and his name replaced with ‘CVB’).
“It is clear that the claimant followed CVB’s social media posts, and CVB asserted that there was Hindutva involvement. But CVB’s tweets elicited responses from the police which warned that unsourced assertions should not be taken at face value. The claimant has had sufficient academic training to know about the dangers of placing any great weight on CVB’s contested tweets,” it stated.
The High Court of England & Wales contended, “The fact is that the claimant was in no position to make a reliable assessment of the political or ideological views of each of the individual men who were involved in the disturbances…He denounced the opposing faction of Hindu men as “the Hindutva” for his own rhetorical and propaganda purposes, just as he described the Jewish people he encountered in Golders Green as “Zionists” without any objective basis, and to suit his own narrative.“
The Judge also exposed the anti-Hindu mindset and ideology of Mohammed Hijab.
“The phrase “if they believe in reincarnation” was not a genuine conditional clause that sought to distinguish Hindu Hindutva from non-Hindu Hindutva. It was a rhetorical device intended to inflame sectarian tensions by inviting ridicule of a central tenet of Hinduism,” he concluded.
When Mohammed Hijab incited Muslims to attack Hindus in Leicester
In September 2022, Islamist ‘scholar’, Mohammed Hijab, was seen mocking Hinduism and inciting Muslims to attack the Hindus in Leicester.
In a video that surfaced on social media, he was seen interacting with mask-clad Muslim men and encouraging them to teach the local Hindu population ‘a lesson’.
“When I was on social media, I saw these people (Hindus) getting brave. How come today it is like pin-drop silence?” the British Egyptian ‘scholar’ was heard as saying.
Muslim fundamentalist Mohammed Hijab who previously had led violence against Jews in London, is now in #Leicester with a mob of masked men and planning similar assault on local Hindu community.
— World Hindu Council (@WldHinduCouncil) September 20, 2022
We demand arrest of Mohammed Hijab immediately.@leicspolice pic.twitter.com/Nl8kmupY5b
He claimed that no Hindus were in sight after realising that Muslim mobs were coming at them in hordes. “Cause they (Hindus) fear us when they are near us”, responded an Islamist from the crowd.
Pumped by the support of the like-minded people in the crowd, Hijab said, “Deep down, they know we got the truth. If you want respect, then, learn to respect.”
“If they (Hindus) believe in reincarnation, what a humiliation of them to be reincarnated into some pathetic, weak, cowardly people like that,” the Islamist went on an anti-Hindu tirade.
“Hindutva (Hindus), you are trying to act like gangsters…Don’t ever come out like that again (referring to the protests by Hindus in Leicester). Do you understand? Are they going to come out again?” he continued his threats.
Amidst the war cry of Allah hu Akbar, Mohammed Hijab cautioned that he and his supporters would be there if Hindus ‘dared’ to protest against the violence, committed by his co-religionists.
In an Instagram post, Hijab was seen leading a frenzied mob of Islamists, with their faces covered in masks. “Muslim patrol in Leicester,” he wrote in his post.
He has since then given clean chit to Muslim grooming gangs in UK and appealed to Indian Muslims to betray their country and side with Ummah.
Majid Freeman was at the forefront of instigating violence against Hindus in Leicester
Throughout the Leicester violence, Islamist Majid Freeman (referred to as CVB in court document) was at the forefront of spreading fake news that instigated violence against Hindus.
It was on 28 August 2022 that a scuffle broke out after India defeated Pakistan in a T20 match after the Indian flag was desecrated. After the scuffle, Hindus had even calmed the situation down and tended to the individual who had snatched and desecrated the Indian flag. Majid Freeman, however, had a different story to tell.
On the 30th of August, after the Leicester police got influenced by the Muslim organisations and lied about “death to Muslims” being chanted by Hindus (they later clarified their investigation found no such chants were heard), Majid took to Twitter to rabble-rouse against Hindus.
In September 2022, the rabid Islamist alleged that 3 men had tried to abduct a teenage Muslim girl. “CONFIRMED: An incident took place this morning not far from a college in Leicester,” he tweeted.
“A Muslim teenager was approached by 3 men but she ran away into the school. The college & police are aware of it and the family have been given an incident number by Leicester Police,” he claimed.
The conspiracy theorist even claimed to have met the family of the girl, who was traumatised by the alleged kidnapping attempt. “The girl is very shaken but she is ok alhamdulillah. They’ve reported the incident to the police. Hopefully, we’ll get to the bottom of this and the people behind it are caught,” he said.
The fake news was then amplified by other Islamists, who alleged the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in the alleged abduction attempt. The Hindu man, falsely accused of kidnapping the Muslim girl, was doxxed on Facebook and his residential address was leaked on social media.
Later, the Leicester police debunked the disinformation through a press release. It said, “Yesterday we issued an appeal following a report that a teenage girl had been approached by three men in the area of Richmond Way, Leicester, on Monday morning.”
“A full investigation has been carried out. Following extensive enquiries, we have established that the incident did not take place and no offence was committed,” the cops confirmed.
Islamists also tried to use the trope of provocation to justify their attacks on the Hindu community. They claimed that Hindus raised anti-Islamic slogans whereas they only chanted ‘Jai Shri Ram’ and ‘Vande Mataram.’
Majid Freeman was yet again at the helm of this fake news. Interestingly, Majid Freeman was also interviewed by the BBC to set the narrative in favour of the perpetrators.
The deliberate attempt by Majid Freeman to stoke hysteria in the Muslim community and lay the foundation of violence against the Leicester Hindus did not stop the then-city Mayor from arranging a meeting with him.
He was arrested on suspicion of counter-terrorism offences, including encouraging acts of terrorism in July 2024.
