In his column, Murray accused Hijab of “cropping up in Leicester to whip up his followers” during the 2022 riots between religious groups in the city.
Hijab travelled to Leicester during the unrest and posted on Instagram a photograph of himself leading a group of masked men along a street, with the caption: “Muslim patrol in Leicester”.[Missing Credit]
Referring to a speech that Hijab made to a mostly masked crowd in Leicester and shared on his social media, Murray wrote in his September 2022 article: “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.”
He also accused the influencer of “whipping up a mob on the streets of London”, in reference to a protest in Golders Green in 2021, when Hijab asked Jewish passers-by about their views on dead Palestinian children while standing next to a van with images of the Holocaust interspersed with photographs of Palestinians.
Hijab’s lawyers argued that Murray’s comments in the article were defamatory, and Hijab was referring specifically to Hindutva – a right-wing political ideology of Hindu nationalism – and not all Hindus. They also alleged that Hijab lost income as a direct result of the article.
Murray and The Spectator now accept that Hijab used the term “Hindutva” and not “Hindu” in his speech in Leicester during the 2022 riots.
But representing The Spectator, Greg Callus argued that while Hijab used the term Hindutva, he meant British Hindus.
Callus said Hijab was part of a “misinformation campaign” around the Leicester riots that suggested Muslims were “under threat from Hindutva”.
Callus went on to state that the 300 people marching through the streets of Leicester were Hindus – “everybody is agreed they were Hindus” – and they were not all Hindutva.
Callus noted that Hijab, who earns money from social media advertisements, has an “income [that] goes up when clicks go up.” He said that a higher profile allows Hijab “to pick bigger fights” and gives him “narrative power”.
“It is no wonder that he sees in Leicester… a day for proactive media attention,” Callus told the court.
He alleged that Hijab had “spent months trying to pick a fight with Murray.”
Referring to Hijab’s protests in May 2021 at Golders Green and near the Israeli embassy, Callus said Leicester was “not the first time” that he had whipped up a mob.
Callus argued that the legal sting – the key defamatory meaning – was that Hijab had been accused of “whipping up a mob” and that it had been evidenced in Leicester and elsewhere.
But Hijab’s barrister, Mark Henderson, argued that the sting was the use of the word Hindu and not Hindutva. Henderson told the court: “At the heart of this case is a lie. A lie that my client spoke the words attributed to him about Hindus.”
Henderson said it was “inflaming” to suggest that the people marching through Leicester while chanting a Hindutva-linked phrase were “ordinary British Hindus.” Henderson urged the judge to reject this, which he said was a “slur to British Hindus.”
Hijab’s barrister criticised the defence, which he said had argued “in essence that the Muslim population are all gullible fools” who get their news from social media.
Henderson said his client did the “opposite” of riling up a crowd in Leicester. Instead, he said, Hijab assisted the police and tried to calm tensions down “by making Hindutva the butt of his joke to belittle them and reassure the crown that they had already got the better of the Hindutva without having to engage in non-peaceful protest”.
During the four-day trial, the court heard about two further protests involving Hijab.
Hijab attended a counter-protest near the Israeli embassy in May 2021, and on Monday the court was played a clip of Hijab speaking to a police officer about the pet dog of a pro-Israel protester.
He told the officer: “If those dogs come close to us again, we will see it as an act of aggression and we will kill those dogs, we’ll put them down.”
Bennett, quoting Hijab’s comments in his closing remarks, said this was an example of him “inciting violence” and “riling up a crowd.”
Henderson claimed that his client was scared of the dog, which was identified as a Labrador.
In another clip of the counter-protest, Hijab told a crowd: “We are with the brothers and sisters of Palestine… We will get our vengeance, and believe you me we believe in a god that is just and we will get our justice either in this world or in the hereafter.”
Hijab also said in his speech: “We don’t care about death, we love death.”
Earlier in the trial, Hijab tried to explain this to the court by exploring its “eschatological and theological implications”.
Quoting this in his closing remarks, Bennett said: “We don’t see him delivering a theology lecture to the crowd or discussing the semantics of his outright encouragement of violence. We see him threatening to kill dogs.”
Henderson, though, claimed Hijab was telling the crowd “that they can engage in peaceful activism.”
During the trial in central London, the court heard from Hijab and witnesses for him, including the operations manager at a charity where he claimed he lost a contract because of the article.
