The police investigated House of Lords member and former Labour MP Ian Austin under hate speech laws for calling Hamas “Islamists”, it has emerged. Austin writes about what happened in the Telegraph.
It isn’t just journalists like Allison Pearson who have been investigated by the police for comments on social media.
I also fell foul of the thought police for tweeting about the Middle East, just as Pearson suspects she did as she was told it dates back to a year ago, when she was tweeting about the Hamas atrocities on October 7th.
Back in February I ridiculed UNRWA’s claim that it had not known about the Hamas operations centre underneath their offices in Gaza, saying: “Everyone, better safe than sorry: before you go to bed, nip down and check you haven’t inadvertently got a death cult of Islamist murderers and rapists running their operations downstairs. It’s easily done.”
Political opponents and extremists deliberately misinterpreted my joke, claimed my use of the word Islamists was Islamophobic or racist and caused a torrent of abuse and threats.
I suppose that was to be expected, but I was shocked and appalled when the police became involved.
Late one evening a few days later I received a call from West Midlands police asking about my whereabouts and safety. I assumed this was because of the threats.
How naïve that was. It was actually because they had received complaints about my tweet, had carried out an investigation but decided not to take action. They would, I was told by a senior police officer, have recorded it as a “non-crime hate incident” had the rules not been changed to raise the threshold.
They said it was because I had used the word “Islamist” and asked whether I had seen what people had said on LinkedIn.
I explained that Islamist is used 17 times on the Government’s list of proscribed organisations. It was coined to distinguish between decent law-abiding Muslims and extremists and is used by governments, academics, expert think-tanks, and the world’s leading media organisations.
It’s no coincidence that Pearson has “in all likelihood been targeted for speaking up for Israel, just as I was”, Austin adds. “Our laws and police force have been weaponised in the campaign to silence critics of Islamism. What begins with a few tweets won’t end there.”
Worth reading in full.
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