An old video of Islamist Mohammed Hijab who provoked Muslims during the 2022 anti-Hindu violence in Leicester, has been doing rounds on the internet. In the viral video, he could be heard giving threats of violence and death to free-speech absolutists, journalists, thinkers, and intellectuals while specifically naming author and columnist Douglas Murray, a critic of Muslim extremism.
In the 54-second clip, Hijab threatens that “Muslim gangsters” would deal with anyone who ‘criticises’ or speaks against Islam as Columbian cartels deal with people ‘speaking against them’.
The Islamist said, “You don’t think we have gangsters, We have Muslim gangsters as well. When you go ahead and attack the sacred symbols of Islam, ‘although our approach is not to do so’, we can’t stop Muslim gangsters from dealing with you or anyone else. Just like you go to Columbia and speak about any cartel in a specific manner.”
According to Mohammed Hijab, a person can be a ‘free speech absolutist’ only if the individual ‘denies the Holocaust’ and talks in a ‘racially insensitive way’ to people from the Black community. Using that argument, he justifies the call for violence against anyone who speaks “against” Islam, with all rights reserved to decide what is ‘against’ Islam.
It is important to note that the original long-length video was uploaded on 19th August 2022, by the Islamist Mohammed Hijab himself on his YouTube channel following the attack on Salman Rushdie. In the 9-minute 16-second video, Hijab justifies the attack on Salman Rushdie by an Islamist who acted in line with the infamous Fatwa issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
Hijab describes Rushdie as an individual who is an open advocate against or detractor of Islam and the Islamic Prophet and further in the video he threatens that anyone who speaks against Islam would be dealt with by Muslim gangsters. Rushdie became the emblematic figure for the cause of freedom of expression and speech in neoconservative or right-wing quadrons after Iran issued a Fatwa against him, Mohammed Hijab further said in the video.
Hijab argues that Freedom of Speech is juxtaposed with Islamic blasphemy laws or Muslims in general or indeed Muslim reactions to the desecration of sacred symbols of Islam. He then goes on to ask is that “appropriate”?
According to Hijab, there are no legislations pertaining to blasphemy laws in Western nations so free speech absolutists who have a problem with penalising blasphemy should also lobby to repeal legislation that penalises Holocaust denial.
He then goes on to present the Muslim community as a victim of “selective use” of free speech which according to him “inhibit, derail and diminish the rights of Muslim people who happen to be minorities in western lands.” People who speak against Muslim extremism and defend free speech have an ulterior agenda, Hijab claims.
Further in the video Mohammed Hijab added, “If you try and desecrate the sacred symbols of any community, gangsters from the community will deal with you.” Muslims are 1.8 billion people in the world and one in every four people in the world is a Muslim. They also have Muslim gangsters to deal with it, Hijab threatens adding, “Don’t you dare speak about Islam or the Muslims.”
Hijab rants that people should not specialise in Islam in this discussion on Free Speech and Blasphemy. In false equivalences and needlessly dragging Hindutva in a pejoratively extremist way, he claimed that if the sacred symbols of other people from other faiths are desecrated they deal with it, adding that we’have seen this with the Hindutva in India and the example of Ataturk in Turkey.
Portraying Muslims as victims, Hijab claims that Western countries need Muslims who could be scapegoated and blamed for every mistake that happens in their lives.
Douglas Murray’s remarks after which Mohammed Hijab made the threatening video
In his video, Mohammed Hijab highlighted one interaction between Douglas Murray and Abdullah Al Andalusi on ‘Free Speech’ and its limit. Notably, the interaction took place in the backdrop of the attack on Salman Rushdie.
In that Televised interaction, Douglas Murray had slammed the lame excuse and justification of killings in the name of Blasphemy, which was also ironically the whole premise used by Islamist Hijab to threaten people not to “speak” about Islam other than what they intended to hear.
Murray said, “We are still at this elementary playground level of discussion, this is a long-answered question (is there a limit to free speech). Our societies have perfectly good incitement laws in place. We are not going to make ourselves more sensitive to people who famously burn books that they can’t even read. Ayatollah Khomeini had never ever read the satanic verses when he asked Muslims around the world to kill Salman Rushdie. We had the same discussions when cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo were murdered.”
Murray explains that Iran’s Fatwa against Rushdie had a chilling effect on Free Speech as what was done at that time was not the appropriate response and it bolstered the Islamists.
He added, “Such threats are given because they have seen that it works. The success of Ayatollah’s fatwa showed a lot of disgruntled people what they could do if they only had the disgustingness to think that they could exercise violence as an opposition to the pen. What happened is that the Muslim extremists across the UK and the world showed they could intimidate people.”
Murray further stated that in 1989, Britain allowed Muslims in Bradford to burn Satanic verses on the streets of Britain. He continued, “We allowed figures like Stevens to excuse the murder of Salman Rushdie on television, we allowed Iranian officials who called for the murder of Rushdie to live in London, like how stupid are we.”
In that debate, another Islamist apologist and sympatiser of extremism, Abdullah Al Andalusi despite being asked repeatedly to condemn Iran’s remark that Rushdie himself is to be blamed for the attack on him, refrained from condemning it. Andalusi argued that only the assailant was to be blamed. According to him, only the killer should be blamed not the one who radicalised him.
Andalusi accused Douglas Murray of advocating for restrictions on Muslim speakers at the University level, asking to ban the burqa in public buildings and a kind of social ban, making it harder for Muslim migrants in Europe.
However, Mohammed Hijab made the video in which he made the aforementioned threatening remarks presenting that Andalusi and people like him have scored the home run.
Meanwhile, the clips of the video are going viral and have been doing rounds from time to time, as people have been linking separate interviews of Islamist Mohammed Hijab and Douglas Murray who is critical of Islam, given on Piers Morgan and elsewhere on different occasions. As they involve the same individuals in question and debate around “Limits of Free Speech” and threats to Free speech from violence by Islamist extremists.
