Islamist radicals claimed girls were being kidnapped by Hindus to stoke tensions in Leicester, report finds

From the Telegraph

Islamist radicals claimed girls were being kidnapped and harassed by Hindus to inflame community tensions in Leicester and other English cities, a report has claimed. Influencers used social media platforms with thousands of followers to spread false rumours about the activities of Hindu nationalists, it stated.

The Henry Jackson Society think-tank claims that disinformation about attacks on Muslims prompted a backlash against the Hindu community.

The HJS’s report, Hindu-Muslim Civil Unrest in Leicester, accuses social media users of spreading a number of false claims, including accusations that extremist “Hindutva” and RSS Hindu nationalists had attacked a mosque, that a man tried to kidnap a schoolgirl and that three men had harassed a 14-year-old girl.

All three claims were swiftly rebutted by Leicester police, who said the reports had been investigated and found to be “not true”.

Influencers named in the report include Shakeel Afsar, who was banned by the High Court in 2019 from organising protests against LGBT lessons in Birmingham, and Majid Freeman, who has 20,400 followers on Twitter and 17,200 on Instagram.

The HJS also examined the role of Mr Afsar, a Birmingham property developer and landlord, who was filmed on the news channel 5 Pillars on the evening of September 20 addressing a crowd of Muslim men outside Smethwick’s Durga Bhawan Temple and Cultural Centre – where a speech by a Hindu nationalist had been cancelled weeks earlier.

Speaking shortly before dozens of masked men tried to storm the building, Mr Afsar told the crowd: “We are not here to cause any harm, but we will defend our people and use reasonable and necessary force. Our people are being targeted for no other reason than being a Muslim. We will not allow BJP activists.”

The HSJ report also examines the role of Mohammed Hijab, who posted a video on TikTok and YouTube on September 19 in which he urged a crowd of young men in Leicester, several of them masked, to confront “Hindutva gangsters”.

Mr Hijab repeatedly asks the crowd: “Are they going to come out like that again?” Because if they do come out, are we going to be here, yes or no?” The crowd responds: “Yes” before chanting “Allahu Akbar”.

The previous day Mr Hijab, who has nearly 600,000 You Tube subscribers – on top of 148,000 followers on Instagram and 81,000 on Twitter – had posted on Instagram a photograph of himself leading a group of masked men along a street, with the caption: “Muslim patrol in Leicester”.

Three days later Leicestershire Police tweeted: “We’ve seen reports on social media that a mosque is being attacked. Officers on the ground have confirmed this is not true.”

When we put the allegations to Mr Hijab he said there is a “clear agenda against me… and the Muslim community at large.” He added that the claims against him were unsubstantiated.

Mr Freeman denied the claims, stating: “This is an agenda driven piece of propaganda. The aim here is clear, to further demonise Muslims, while providing a bill of health to the Hindutva ideology that has driven the violence in Leicester.”

As the top comment says “Jews are being targeted in North London, Hindus in Leicester, white girls in poor northern towns. When do we say NO to Islamic migration. They are not coming here to integrate.” We all know this now, so I fear the authorities have an agenda of their own.