A prominent imam, Shakeel Begg, has lost his libel case against the BBC after the High Court held that Sunday Politics presenter Andrew Neil was correct when he described him as an “extremist”.
Begg, the Chief Imam at Lewisham Islamic Centre, complained about Neil’s words on 3 November 2013: “The East London Mosque…it’s also the venue for a number of extremist speakers and speakers who espouse extremist positions. This year Shakeel Begg, he spoke there and hailed jihad as “the greatest of deeds”. …”.
However, the BBC relied on the defence of justification—that the words complained of were substantially true. The BBC submitted evidence of previous speeches and utterances between 2006 and 2011 in which Begg espoused extremist Islamic views and praised jihad.
Begg claimed he opposed extremism and produced evidence of inter-faith and Lewisham community work, including numerous testimonials in his support.
The court highlighted ten examples of classic extremist Islamic positions, including an extremist Manichean “us” versus “them” worldview, any interpretation of Shar’ia which requires Muslims to break the law of the land, giving “jihad” an exclusively violent meaning when it can mean a spiritual struggle, and classifying all non-Muslims as unbelievers (kuffar).
Delivering judgment in the case, Begg v BBC [2016] EWHC 2688 (QB), Mr Justice Haddon-Cave described Begg as a “Jekyll and Hyde” character who presented one face to the local and inter-faith community and another to particular Muslim and other receptive audiences.
He said that a single “one-off” speech might have given pause for thought but the number of speeches represented a consistent pattern.
