Miliband and Islamophobia - Are the Daily Express Liars?

This post is in response to an article written by Leo McKinstry for the Express titled: "Dare to Speak Out and Ed Will Send in the Thought Police". This article was spotted on my Twitter feed (my initial response is shown below). I was kindly informed that this story was published in other places, and I was sent the link to "The Muslim News" website. I initially tried to explain the fundamental differences in the way that the news papers represented the same story in a single tweet, but decided that this would make excellent blog material as a starter for my upcoming piece called "Mass Media Manipulation and Critical Thinking".

Story in The Express: goo.gl/yy20nC

Story in The Muslim News: goo.gl/qRM6Sa

The Express's story is based on Ed Miliband's interview with an Editor of The Muslim News, a newspaper for British Muslims. As expected, the Express sensationalised the story to fit their own, warped, hate-filled agenda of creating a divide in society, and demonising innocent Muslims.

The Express use emotional images of the London Terror attacks, this automatically arouses feelings of fear, hate and anger - and essentially sets the tone for the rest of the article.The Express gives the impression that reacting to acts of terror, or “being scared of terrorism” is classed as “Islamophobia”. When in actual fact, the Islamophobia that Ed is referring to, is the discrimination and violence that Muslims face on a daily basis because of the actions of a small few.

The Express only uses a tiny section of what Ed Miliband said. They take his words out of context, and then interpret it to suit their agenda. The only quote that The Express use is:

“marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime.”

Which obviously makes no sense when taken out of context. So for the Express to assert that:

“It is outrageous that the Labour Party, while blathering about the fight against discrimination, effectively wants to shut down any debate about a theocratic doctrine that has provoked such a worldwide, blood-soaked catalogue of tyranny, oppression, terrorism, misogyny, anti-Semitism and homophobia”

is quite frankly absurd, and is not based on anything Ed said, it’s just a case of them sensationalising the story. There was no mention of “shutting down the debate” in the actual interview, which is reported in the Muslim News. When we look at Ed’s full quotes, we can see that he asserts the following:

“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across the country,”

“We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,”  “zero-tolerance approach to hate crime” regarding the growth of Islamophobia as well as anti-Semitism. “We will challenge prejudice before it grows, whether in schools, universities or on social media. And we will strengthen the law on disability, homophobic, and transphobic hate crime,”

“Our Government will be absolutely committed to equality not just in law but in fact too. We are committed to race equality strategy. That is why we are committed to breaking down barriers of discrimination,”

Which is quite clearly different from what The Express is suggesting. The Express assert that Ed Miliband is encouraging “Islamification” of the UK by "making it impossible to criticise any aspect of Islamic culture, whether it be the spread of the burka or the establishment of Sharia courts or the construction of colossal new mosques" (ALL LIES BY THE WAY), whereas his ACTUAL quotes suggest that he wants to tackle hate crime against innocent people.

Bearing in mind that he is talking to a MUSLIM paper, and is trying to win the MUSLIM vote, of course his interview was going to be heavily based on tackling the issues and fears that the Muslim population have, he's trying to win their vote. Whether or not his method is the right way of tackling discrimination is another issue. The purpose of this post is just to highlight the way that The Express misrepresented this interview.

Be critical. Stay smart.

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[Originally posted on 28th April 2015]