LONDON (Diya TV) — A British court has dismissed a defamation lawsuit brought by Muslim YouTuber Mohammed Hijab against author and Telegraph contributor Douglas Murray. The judge ruled that Hijab, whose real name is Mohammed Hegab, had lied repeatedly during the trial and provided unreliable evidence.
The High Court judgment marks a major legal win for Murray and The Spectator magazine, where the article in question was published.
The case centered on a September 2022 article written by Murray in The Spectator. The article reported that Hegab traveled to Leicester during violent clashes between Muslim and Hindu groups. In the article, Murray quoted Hegab as mocking Hindu beliefs during a speech to a crowd of masked Muslim men.
Hegab allegedly 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.”
Hegab claimed in court that his comments targeted only followers of Hindutva, the Hindu nationalist ideology, not Hindus as a whole. He sued Murray and The Spectator, saying the article damaged his reputation and caused financial losses.
In a detailed ruling, Mr. Justice Johnson rejected Hegab’s explanation. He found it “substantially true” that the comments were aimed at Hindus in general. “It was them that he was ridiculing,” the judge wrote.
He went further, stating Hegab’s evidence was “worthless” and that he had “lied on significant issues.” Justice Johnson also criticized Hegab’s conduct in court, describing him as “combative and constantly argumentative.”
Hegab said the article led to lost income, including a £3,500-a-month ambassador role with One Ummah, a £1,500-a-month advertising contract with Nature’s Blends, and a £30,000 Ramadan fundraising campaign with the charity Salam.
The judge rejected these claims. He said the messages used to support the alleged losses appeared “contrived for these proceedings.” These messages, supposedly from friends and business partners, were overly formal and conveniently timed, arriving just after a legal claim had been initiated, not when the article was published.
Justice Johnson added that one of Hegab’s supporting witnesses had a criminal record for staging fraudulent car crashes to gain compensation.
The judge also noted that Hegab’s public content may have harmed his reputation more than Murray’s article. “The videos he publishes on YouTube are at least as reputationally damaging to him as the article,” the ruling stated.
Hegab has more than 1.3 million subscribers and is known for controversial videos and speeches. The court heard that he gave a speech in Golders Green near a van displaying images of the Holocaust, though he denied remembering the incident. He also described Jewish people he met there as “Zionists” without a clear basis.
Justice Johnson found Hegab’s denial of promoting vigilantism in Leicester to be “untenable.”
Following the ruling, The Spectator’s editor, Michael Gove, praised the court’s decision. “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,” Gove said.
Freddie Sayers, the publisher of The Spectator, called Hegab a “vexatious” litigant. He described the decision as “an important victory for free speech.”
Justice Johnson supported Murray’s depiction of Hegab as “a street agitator who has whipped up a mob on London’s streets.” He concluded that Hegab’s lawsuit had no merit and failed to prove defamation.
To win a defamation case in the U.K., a claimant must show that the statements were false and seriously harmed their reputation. The judge found that Murray’s article was accurate and unlikely to damage Hegab more than his actions already had.
This case sets a strong precedent in favor of journalistic freedom and highlights the risks of filing baseless defamation lawsuits.
