Press regulator's decision will have a chilling effect on free speech

Yahoo

30-04-2025

Journalism, George Orwell reminded us, is publishing something that someone does not want printed. Everything else is PR.
And one thing the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) very definitely does not want to see printed is the fact that I said in Parliament that it is the British affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood. Which is why it is so important that The Telegraph did publish my words. And why it is so reprehensible that they have been asked to issue a correction by the independent press regulator IPSO.
When the Telegraph reported on the MAB's affiliation with the Brotherhood it did so quoting my words in the House of Commons last year, as I explained why it was necessary to take steps to deal with extremist organisations opposed to our values.
Whether or not you agreed with my proposals (many good people didn't) the Telegraph was reporting in good faith utilising the fact that words spoken in the Commons are protected by parliamentary privilege and may be freely repeated outside. To censure a publication for straightforwardly reporting Commons proceedings can only have a chilling effect on free speech.
Which is precisely what the Muslim Association of Britain wants. They don't want scrutiny. Groups suspected of extremism rarely do. They seek to present themselves as a peaceable association of co-religionists who simply want to get along and do good works.
But the Muslim Brotherhood is very far from a sort of Islamic Mothers' Union. It was founded in Egypt in 1928 by Hassan al-Banna with the explicit aim of re-creating a unified state for all Muslims – the Caliphate – governed by sharia law. Its Palestinian branch – Hamas – is an outright terrorist organisation (BBC please note – militant won't cut it as a description of these guys).
In most other nations where the MB exists it isn't involved in or agitating for violence – but it does push for the replacement of existing systems of government and the adoption of Islam as a total way of life governing law and politics.
This ideological attachment to sharia for all – Islamism – is not unique to the Muslim Brotherhood. But they're the oldest and perhaps most influential group arguing for it worldwide.
That's why David Cameron asked two of our most distinguished public servants to investigate it – Sir John Jenkins, former ambassador to Saudi Arabia and the now sadly deceased Charles Farr of MI5. Their full report is confidential. But a shortened version was published in 2015 by the House of Commons which makes it clear that the MAB was dominated by the Brotherhood and clearly linked to other Brotherhood-associated groups such as the Cordoba Foundation and the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe
A former director of the MAB, Mohamed Abdul Malek, told the House of Commons in April 2016 that he had joined the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) in the UK in 1983 and was a member of the Libyan Muslim Brotherhood (LMB) Shura council and the LMB official spokesperson and European representative. One of its founders was a former Hamas chief.
Other jurisdictions – especially in the Arab world – are alive to the subversive nature of Brotherhood activities. Which is why countries from the UAE to Jordan to Bahrain and Egypt are taking action against them and their affiliates. But not here.
Islamists in the UK have long exploited libel and other laws to silence critics and evade scrutiny. When, as a Government minister, I argued we must name and expose extremist organisations there were multiple excuses offered to stymie me but the most consistent was always the risk of losing libel actions against these groups, allowing them to secure damages from the taxpayer and thus fund even more extremist activity. I found the idea that we couldn't tell the truth about extremists in our midst because we couldn't trust government lawyers to make a decent case lamentable then and it remains tragic now.
But bad as that situation was, I never thought that an organisation named in Parliament as giving rise to concern for their Islamist orientation and views would be able to persuade our press regulator – whose job is to uphold free speech – to demand an apology from a newspaper for accurate reporting. I should have known better.
As editor of The Spectator I had to publish an apology because one of our writers called a trans activist a man claiming to be a woman. Thanks to the Supreme Court we are now allowed to assert that fact once more without some lawyer trying to silence us. But while one extremist ideology – trans fundamentalism – has been countered at last, another – Islamism – appears to be benefiting from our failure as a society to uphold the truth and defend free speech.
It should not be the job of regulators to police speech in this way. Procedures which were designed to help innocent individuals who may have been inadvertent victims of human error in reporting have been hijacked and turned into tools to intimidate, silence and evade proper scrutiny.
This Government has indicated it will take on the lawyers and regulators who impede economic growth. I applaud that. Now they should face down the lawyers and regulators who are standing in the way of something even more important – free speech.
Michael Gove is editor of The Spectator
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