05-08-2025
Douglas Murray wins defamation claim brought by Muslim activist who criticised Hindus
A Muslim YouTuber has lost a defamation claim he brought against Douglas Murray, the author and Telegraph contributor.
Mohammed Hegab, who calls himself Mohammed Hijab on the social media channel, accused Mr Murray of defaming him in an article for The Spectator magazine published in September 2022. A High Court judge has now ruled that he 'lied on significant issues' in court.
Mr Murray reported that Mr Hegab, who has more than 1.3 million YouTube subscribers, had travelled to Leicester that month when rioting broke out between Muslims and Hindus.
The article said he gave a speech to a group of Muslim men, mostly wearing balaclavas, hoods, masks or caps, in which he ridiculed Hindus and their belief in reincarnation.
He was reported to have said: 'If they believe in reincarnation, yeah … what a humiliation and pathetic thing for them to be reincarnated into some pathetic, weak, cowardly people like that.'
Mr Hegab then took legal action against Mr Murray and The Spectator, arguing that he had been referring only to followers of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology.
After a four-day trial a judge ruled it was 'substantially true' that he had been referring to Hindus as a whole, adding: 'It was them that he was ridiculing.'
Mr Justice Johnson ruled that Mr Hegab had given evidence that 'overall, is worthless'.
Mr Hegab had claimed the article led to him losing a £3,500 per month deal to be a brand ambassador for the charity One Ummah, a £1,500 per month advertising contract with the supplements company Nature's Blends and £30,000 for a Ramadan fundraising campaign with the charity Salam.
In a judgment handed down on Tuesday, the judge said messages relied on by Mr Hegab for his claim 'have the appearance of being contrived for the purpose of these proceedings'.
It said the messages had addressed Mr Hegab formally despite coming from people who knew him well; they blamed the article for his alleged financial losses.
Referring to the messages, the judgment also said: '[They] provided material that would be necessary to support a claim for financial losses … when one might not generally expect such detail.'
The judge added that they arrived at 'roughly the same time, which was several weeks after the article, but very shortly after a letter of claim was sent'.
Claims 'not credible'
The judge noted that when he was giving evidence, Mr Hegab was: 'Combative and constantly argumentative … arguing his case rather than giving straightforward responses.'
Mr Justice Johnson also said Mr Hegab had made an 'untenable … denial of vigilantism' over his actions in Leicester and made claims that were 'not credible' when he said he was unaware of having given a speech in Golders Green in front of a van displaying images of the Holocaust.
Mr Hegab also 'described the Jewish people he encountered in Golders Green as 'Zionists' without any objective basis'.
To be successful in any defamation claim, a litigant must show that not only were statements made about them untrue, but also that they could be harmful to their reputation.
On the second of those points, the judge ruled that the article was unlikely to cause him serious reputational harm because the videos he publishes on YouTube are 'at least as reputationally damaging to him as the article'.
A 'vexatious' litigant
Michael Gove, the editor of The Spectator, said: 'The Spectator stands for free speech and fearless truth-telling. Douglas Murray exemplifies those virtues, and I am delighted he has been vindicated in the courts.'
Freddie Sayers, the publisher of The Spectator, described Mr Hegab as a 'vexatious' litigant and said the court's decision was 'an important victory for free speech'.
In his ruling, Mr Justice Johnson said of Mr Hegab: 'I am satisfied that he lied on significant issues, with the consequence that his evidence, overall, is worthless.'
He said that Mr Hegab's claim that he was only referring to followers of Hindutva was 'nonsensical'.
The court also heard that one of the witnesses who backed up Mr Hegab's claims of financial losses had previously been jailed for staging road accidents to fraudulently claim compensation.
Mr Justice Johnson found that Mr Murray's description of Mr Hegab as ' a street agitator who has whipped up a mob on London's streets' was accurate.
