An article by Richard Kim in the US magazine The Nation offers a lengthy but interesting analysis of Outrage’s light-minded attitude to factual evidence when it comes to pursuing their Islamophobic agenda. Kim shows that Outrage’s press release claiming that two Iranian youth had been executed for being simply being gay (see here) was based on a dubious account by the Mujahedeen-e-Khalq cult and dismissed other reports that the two had in fact been convicted of gang-raping a 13-year-old boy at knife-point.
Richard Kim outlines how “Outrage!’s press release came to inspire an escalating series of demands and actions … appeals to the greatest democracy in the world to defend freedom against Islamic extremism, calls for the gay movement (and even individual would-be gay soldiers) to join the fight against ‘Islamo-fascism’ and pleas to European governments to sever ties with Iran and impose sanctions – at a time when the EU was engaged in delicate negotiations with Iran over its nuclear capacity. The story of ‘two gay teenagers executed in Iran’ was a compelling narrative that … offered up an unambiguous conflict between ‘Islamo-fascism’ and Western democracy”.