Ummah.com is a large and popular online muslim community, with many of its members living in the UK. For the regulars of this online community, yesterday was turning out to be just like any other day, until a newly joined member suddenly made an alarming first post:
Concerned and slightly suspicious of this worrying post, one forum moderator decided to take a closer look at this new member… and that’s when he noticed their IP address:
More up-to-date checks of the ISP address by other members of the forum showed the comment was posted by someone working at the Daily Mail Group (the Evening Standard used to be part of the Daily Mail Group):
While the thread seems to have been taken down now, you can still view it on Google’s webcache here.
So it seems the Daily Mail or someone working there (allegedly) tried to pose as an extremist on a Muslim forum to try to elicit comments they could use for an anti-Muslim story. Fortunately they were busted. (h/t: Pride’s Purge)
This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. In January 2009 another British tabloid ‘The Sun’ published an article claiming Ummah.com contained a ‘hit list’ of British Jews. It later emerged that the journalist responsible for the article, Glen Jenvey, had fabricated the claim by posting the ‘hit list’ to Ummah.com himself. The issue was investigated by the Press Complaints Commission and The Sun newspaper was ordered to publish an apology.