Last weekend the Sunday Telegraph (“‘Asbos’ to silence 25 hate clerics”) and the Daily Mail (“Dozens of hate clerics face being silenced by new anti-terror Asbos”) reported that “security officials” had drawn up a list of 25 Muslim preachers on whom it was intended to serve the “Terror and Extremist Behaviour Orders” (Tebos) proposed by the government as a result of the recent report by its Extremism Taskforce, which was set up in the aftermath of the murder of Lee Rigby.

As the Mail explained, the Tebos would “bar people from preaching messages of terror and hate, associating with named individuals thought vulnerable to radicalisation, and from entering specific venues, such as mosques or community halls – in a similar manner to the orders used to ban yobs from certain areas”. The Mail quoted David Cameron as justifying such repressive measures on the grounds that “there are just too many people who have been radicalised at Islamic centres, who have been in contact with extremist preachers” – although of course neither Cameron nor his taskforce provided any evidence at all that preachers at Islamic centres played any role in motivating Lee Rigby’s killers.

Both newspaper reports named Haitham al-Haddad of the Muslim Research and Development Foundation as one of the “extremist preachers” who faces a ban, with the Telegraph bizarrely suggesting that Dr al-Haddad is even more of a threat than Anjem Choudary (though Choudary, interestingly, is not on the list of individuals who are to receive Tebos). The paper claimed that Dr al-Haddad had been “banned from speaking at the London School of Economics after the university’s Jewish society requested that his event be cancelled because of his allegedly hostile view towards Jews”, while the Mail assured its readers that Dr al-Haddad had “heaped praise on Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, after his death”.

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Response to the Telegraph Article

It is with regret that the Telegraph, namely its editors Sam Marsden and Tom Whitehead published an article with a large photo of the Centre featuring prominently in its article on 19 December 2013 entitled “Lee Rigby killers had links to Lewisham mosque that ‘attracts radicals’”. The article is seeking to mislead and implicate the Centre to the unlawful killing of Lee Rigby which is wholly baseless and without foundation. As was set out in our press release on 19 December 2013, at no point has the Centre formed part of the criminal investigations into the killing of Mr Rigby and it has been made unequivocally clear that the murderers of Lee Rigby were in no way, shape or form associated with our Centre. It is clear from our website that the Centre is a well-regarded institution within the London Borough of Lewisham as is noted by the various testimonials on our website.

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