Yesterday, as the mainstream media chose to focus the claim that “Islamophobic” attacks were up 70 per cent in London – whilst largely ignoring that anti-Semitic attacks had increased by more than 93 per cent. Both the Independent and Daily Mail chose to “demonstrate” the phenomenon by republishing an “example” of such Islamophobia which occurred in Newham, London.
“Teenager wearing hijab knocked unconscious demonstrates rise in hate crime in London,” was the headline in the Independent. The Mail lead with “Shocking moment hijab-wearing girl is attacked from behind and knocked to the floor unconscious as police reveal huge rise in hate crimes against Muslims,” before telling us the “assault is an example of the Islamophobic attacks.”
Except the shocking and brutal attack cited happened three years before the release of the recent figures, in 2012, and had nothing to do with race, religion, or “Islamophobia,” as the Mail itself reported at length.
The attack – perpetrated by a Nigerian male on an Asian female – was found by a court to be “motiveless.” Passing sentence at Inner London Crown Court, Judge Roger Chapple said the Michael Ayoade, of Plaistow, had launched “vicious, unprovoked attacks on young, lone females”.
The prosecution said that the girl had, “made (him) feel like a pauper with her facial gestures” and had “looked at him in a rude way,” such that he could not go through the day having taken “an insult from a little person like that.”
Racial and/or religious hatred was never mentioned. The Mail certainly knew this, as they had reported on the court case, and the Indy would need to have been exceptionally negligent or lazy not to have at least googled the case.
So why would the Mail and Independent need to drag up an old story and misrepresent it to “demonstrate” to the British people how bigoted we all are?
Its just a guess, but it’s quite likely that both publications were struggling to actually find a documented and sufficiently sensationalist “example,” because they are in fact so rare in this tolerant and welcoming nation.
As Breitbart London’s Editor-in-Chief pointed out yesterday; “the increase in anti-Semitic attacks is steeper than the increase in Islamophobia. Both, however, are a minute percentage of the total 13,007 hate crimes reported in the last year.”
Furthermore, the deceitful Daily Mail article quotes one Fiyaz Mughal, the founder of Tell MAMA, an organisation which encourages the reporting of perceived hate crime and “records and measures anti-Muslim incidents.”
Mr. Mughal’s charity was stripped of state funding last year after it was found to have “exaggerated” what Mughal described as an “unprecedented” “wave of attacks,” “Islamophobic incidents” and “cycle of violence,” following the murder of Lee Rigby – 57 per cent of the “attacks,” however, were merely comments left online.
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