Hamed Chapman
The Director for Media Monitoring at the Muslim Council of Britain has welcomed a High Court defamation verdict against author and commentator Ed Husain, who founded the controversial and now-defunct Quilliam Foundation.
“For too long, there are some who have smeared with impunity ordinary Muslims; this judgment puts an important stake in the ground,” Miqdaad Versi said after his barrister called it a “notable” victory.
Husain, also known as Mohammed Mahbub Husain and a previous adviser to former Prime Minister Tony Blair, posted a tweet in 2000 that addressed the senior MCB spokesman: “Pipe down, you pro-Hamas, pro-Iran, pro-gender discrimination, pro-blasphemy laws, pro-sectarian, anti-Western ‘Representative’ of an Islamist outfit”.
“Such lines of attack against ordinary Muslims should not be deployed. I hope Ed Husain learns his lesson and that media outlets, who treat him as an expert and reasonable interlocutor on issues related to Muslims, acknowledge what this shows about Ed Husain’s judgment,” Versi said.
Mark Henderson, from Doughty Street Chambers, who represented Versi, described the judgment as “notable for its rejection of an ambitious case by Mr Husain on Twitter context.”
“The case also involved the extent to which general knowledge contributed to the defamatory meaning, and it addressed the distinction between the range of views protected by freedom of expression in a diverse society and the behaviours or views that are contrary to the common, shared values of society,” Henderson said.
The defamatory tweet included a screenshot of a tweet posted by Versi, who criticized Conservative journalist Fraser Nelson over the way his magazine, the Spectator, covered Muslims and Islam.
At the High Court in London this month, His Honour Judge Lewis ruled in a preliminary trial that he was “satisfied that the natural and ordinary meaning conveyed by the tweet was defamatory by the standards of the common law.”
“Attributing such views to the claimant would lower a person in the estimation of ‘right-thinking people generally’. The imputation is one that would tend to have a substantially adverse effect on the way that people would treat the claimant and their attitude towards him,” Lewis said.
In a statement, Versi’s lawyer, Zillur Rahman of Rahman Lowe Solicitors, also said the verdict was a “very important finding” after tracking Hussain down as living now in the US and did not want to be submitted to the jurisdiction of the English courts.
“We worked extremely hard in tracing Mr Husain to ensure that he did not escape from justice. Words have consequences, and Mr Husain must now face accountability for this,” Rahman said.
(Photo Courtesy Miqdaad Versi)
