ConservativeHome has published the following apology:

Sir Iqbal Sacranie

In a Diary post by Paul Goodman (“Pickles and Warsi wrestle for control of Government strategy on anti-Muslim hatred”, 19 November) we repeated in good faith a statement wrongly reported elsewhere that Sir Iqbal Sacranie is a trustee of Union of Good, an organisation which has been listed by the US Treasury as a Special Designated Global Terrorist group. We also suggested (wrongly) that it was possible that, as a result of this association, the UK government had rejected Sir Iqbal as a possible candidate for membership of the Muslim Leadership Council (MLC).

We now understand that in fact Sir Iqbal is not, and never has been, a trustee of Union of Good.  We also accept Sir Iqbal’s assurance that while he was approached with a view to participating in the MLC initiative, he declined to do so. He was not on the list of individuals that was put forward and was not rejected by the government as we had suggested.

We are sorry for any embarrassment caused to Sir Iqbal by our Diary post.

To be fair to Paul Goodman, he probably didn’t set out intentionally to libel Sir Iqbal. It’s just that when it comes to the Muslim community Goodman doesn’t know what he’s talking about and uncritically recycles second-hand right-wing smears.

Via Inayat’s Corner