KB-2023-003636 - [2025] EWHC 2043 (KB)

The claimant is highly educated. He has degrees in Islamic studies, politics, history and theology. He is completing a doctorate in philosophy of religion. He has undergone 11 years of Islamic training; he has memorised the Quran. He is fluent in classical Arabic and in Egyptian Dialectical. He has published widely. He has multiple successful social media channels, most prominently YouTube on which he has hundreds of thousands of followers, and his material has been viewed tens of millions of times. He has monetised his output to secure an income. He is an accomplished public speaker and debater. He is tall and has an imposing physical presence.

As a witness he was combative and constantly argumentative. He sought, at every turn, to debate with counsel, responding to questions with (rhetorical) questions of his own, arguing his case rather than giving straightforward responses, and denigrating the character of the second defendant to whom he bears palpable personal animosity. I am satisfied that he lied on significant issues, with the consequence that his evidence, overall, is worthless. Specifically, I am satisfied that he lied in respect of the event at Golders Green, the counter-protest at the rally for Israel, the seminar on Hinduism at the Sapience Institute, his repudiation of vigilantism, his evidence as to the involvement of the Hindutva, his evidence about his choice of language in his speech, and his evidence in support of his claim for financial losses. I address each in turn.

Golders Green: The video shows that the claimant was using the van as a prop. When this was put to him, he denied it: “how could I use it? It’s not mine… it’s not my van; it’s nothing to do with me... I didn’t even know where that van came from.” Later he said (in respect of the images displayed on the van) “I don’t know anything about what is going on the van.” The denial that he was using the van as a prop, and his assertion that the van had nothing to do with him, was untrue. The claimant was indeed using the van as a prop to provoke passersby and to elicit a reaction. That is all demonstrated beyond argument from the video evidence.

The claimant also said that he was not, at the time, aware of the Holocaust image. Again, that is not credible. He was standing in front of the van for a substantial period of time both at Golders Green and at the BBC, and this was one of a relatively small number of images that were shown in a loop. Although, for most of the time, he was not looking directly at the van, he was clearly aware of it, and he was referring to the imagery that was displayed on it. At one point he is directly looking at the van when the Holocaust image is (albeit momentarily) shown. Given that (contrary to his denial) he was using the van as a prop, it is an irresistible inference that he was aware of the images that were being displayed.

A video of a subsequent interview in December 2021 shows that by that point the claimant was certainly aware of the Holocaust image and the fact that it had been displayed on the van at the Golders Green event. The claimant accepts as much. However, in his Reply, served in May 2024, the claimant pleaded: “[t]he Claimant is unaware of whether there was at any time a display of “images of the Holocaust” on the van”. This is untrue. By the time that averment was made in the Reply the claimant was, on any view, aware of the Holocaust image. The claimant strenuously maintained that the Reply was accurate because of (what he said were) the words “at the time”, showing that the averment related to his state of knowledge at the time of the Golders Green event: “You need to be able to distinguish between a hindsight perspective or a retrospective perspective and “at the time””. That is not tenable. The sentence in the Reply is unarguably making an assertion as to the claimant’s state of knowledge at the time of the Reply (not at the time of the Golders Green event). That assertion, on the claimant’s own evidence, is untrue.

Moreover, the claimant’s evidence that he attended in good faith to engage in a debate with “Zionists” is not credible. His conduct was grossly offensive and disingenuous. It was designed to cause an adverse reaction and to elicit material for his social media channels. The people who he engaged in conversation appeared (from the clothing they were wearing on what was the Sabbath) to be Jewish, but the claimant was in no position to know their political views or their attitude towards the conduct of Israel’s military activities in Gaza. He sought to portray their disinclination to speak to him discreditably. It was nothing of the sort. It was an entirely understandable reaction from individuals who were going about their daily business (in some cases with their children) and who, contrary to the apparent attitude of the claimant, were under no obligation to engage with him.

The rally for Israel: The claimant denied that he was aware of the throwing of eggs and bottles. That denial is not credible. It is plainly visible, and audible, on the video footage, and the claimant was in the immediate vicinity. In his witness statement, the claimant says a protestor brought a dog close to him so that he felt threatened. That is not consistent with what he said to the police officer about “dogs” (plural). The claimant said in his oral evidence that the dog that is shown in the video was jumping on him and that it was going to bite him. That, again, is not credible (making every allowance for the fact that the video does not show everything). The dog in the video is held between the legs of a man who is standing still. The claimant’s oral evidence on this point is inconsistent with both his witness statement and what he said to the police officer. The claimant had no basis for his inflammatory threats to kill dogs, or to suggest that dogs had been brought to the event as a provocation by Zionists. The only apparent purpose of the claimant doing so was to raise the temperature in what was a volatile confrontation where violence had already erupted. He then further raised the temperature by speaking about “vengeance” and life beginning at death. He denies that he was encouraging violence and claims that the suggestion that he was doing so amounts to “a failure to understand the English language” and that his speech “clearly has eschatological and theological implications.” Despite his protestations, the claimant was not genuinely seeking to explore matters of theology and eschatology with the group of masked men that he was addressing. The video is plain. He was deliberately acting irresponsibly, raising the temperature of a volatile and potentially dangerous situation with provocative and inflammatory language.

The defendants rely on a further short passage in the video where the claimant appears to demonstrate throwing a punch or a martial arts move. The precise context of this, and the accompanying audio, are not entirely clear. There is no discernible actual violence at the time. I do not attach any significance to this part of the video, and do not hold it against the claimant.

Sapience Institute: The claimant’s key point in this case is that his speech concerned the Hindutva, not Hindus, and that nothing he said demonstrates an intention to ridicule Hinduism or Hindus. Any evidence of the claimant ridiculing a central tenet of Hinduism would be damaging to his case. The claimant maintains that at the Sapience Institute event he was discussing Hinduism to seek to learn more about the faith as a “humble learner.” It is uncomfortable to watch parts of this video. Those engaging with the claimant appear to be doing so earnestly and openly, to assist him to understand tenets of Hinduism. For his part, there are times when the claimant barely seeks to hide his contempt for what they are saying. He openly smirks. He asks questions that might be expected of an immature schoolchild in a religious studies lesson, but which are completely inconsistent with a serious discussion in a post-graduate academic theological seminar: [on a Hindu deity] “is she the one with blue skin?”, “is she the one with 4 arms?”, “what does [an] animal have to do to get promotion?”, “what would you choose to be, a bear or a gorilla… I would rather be a bear because if a bear and a gorilla had a fight, the bear would win”. I reject the claimant’s account that these were genuine enquiries.

Vigilantism: The claimant maintains that he was not advocating anything that was remotely akin to vigilantism. He says that, under the law, anyone is entitled to use reasonable and proportionate force to defend themselves from attack. He is obviously right about that. He says that not enough people take personal responsibility for others, and that if someone sees an elderly or otherwise vulnerable person being attacked it is their moral duty to intervene. There is nothing wrong in saying that. However, these reasonable observations have nothing to do with the claimant’s activities in Leicester. Neither he, nor anyone shown in the video, was at immediate risk of attack. At one point he was leading a group through the streets which he described as a “Muslim patrol”. His peroration “are we going to be here, yes or no”, was a demand for a commitment to come out in numbers as a deterrent. He denies that this fits within the definition of vigilantism and says that he was providing a lawful outlet that was likely to avoid violence in circumstances where the police were inactive, and they could identify the culprits and bring them to the police. His denial of vigilantism is self-defeating. It is untenable.

Hindutva: The claimant’s case is that the Hindutva were responsible for the disturbances in Leicester, and that he was calling that out in his speech. Irrespective of the correct analysis of the underlying causes of the disturbances (which it is not necessary to address), there is a separate question as to the basis for the claimant’s attribution of responsibility to the Hindutva.

The claimant’s account as to his basis for attributing responsibility to the Hindutva does not withstand scrutiny. He had not been in Leicester in the days and weeks leading up to his speech. He had no first-hand knowledge of the events and was not in a position to make a direct first-hand informed assessment. He had, however, seen some material that was posted online. One online video shows a number of masked men who can be heard to chant “Jai Shree Ram.” Text that has been added to the footage says that the men were marching past a Muslim neighbourhood and that large-scale disorder had erupted. When he was shown this video in evidence, the claimant said “this was one of the most circulated videos before I went up there, which to me was decisive and the definitive interpretation for it is that this is nothing to do with… Hindu people as a whole and in fact this is violent behaviour that is linked to political ideology.” In other words, this video was an important component of the basis for the claimant’s beliefs about the involvement of the Hindutva.

A difficulty with that account is that this video was only posted online two days after the claimant’s speech. It cannot therefore have informed his knowledge of events at the time he gave his speech. When that was pointed out, the claimant said he did not know if this was the “exact video” that he had seen, but that he had seen material with the same elements. The claimant relied on the chants of “Jai Shree Ram” but he did not have any convincing reason for asserting that this was necessarily an indicator of the Hindutva as opposed to Hindus who do not subscribe to the Hindutva ideology. The claimant, in his oral evidence, said he had seen Hindutva flags when he was in Leicester. This was not in his witness statement. In any event, he did not profess any detailed knowledge of Hindu vexillology, and he was in no position reliably to attach particular significance to individual flags. When taken to a tweet by CVB posted in September 2023, the claimant did not know about the flag depicted in the tweet which CVB said was associated with the Hindutva (but which the organiser of the Krishna Janmashtami celebrations at which the flag was flown said was a flag of spiritual importance that was kept in temples and was not considered to be a political flag).

It is clear that the claimant followed CVB’s social media posts, and CVB asserted that there was Hindutva involvement. But CVB’s tweets elicited responses from the police which warned that unsourced assertions should not be taken at face value. The claimant has had sufficient academic training to know about the dangers of placing any great weight on CVB’s contested tweets. In any event, CVB also referred to groups of Hindu men (rather than simply the Hindutva). Much of the more general contemporaneous reporting also indicates that the problems arose between groups of Muslim and Hindu men.

Even the claimant, in his evidence, stopped short of contending that all of those who were on the streets in opposition to the Muslim men were the Hindutva. The fact is that the claimant was in no position to make a reliable assessment of the political or ideological views of each of the individual men who were involved in the disturbances. He may have believed (based on the incomplete and partial information he was accessing) that some of those involved in the disturbances were sympathetic to what he describes as the Hindutva ideology, but I do not accept that he genuinely believed that those involved could reasonably be described, en bloc, as “the Hindutva”. He denounced the opposing faction of Hindu men as “the Hindutva” for his own rhetorical and propaganda purposes, just as he described the Jewish people he encountered in Golders Green as “Zionists” without any objective basis, and to suit his own narrative.

Speech: In respect of his speech, the claimant laid great emphasis on his phrase “if they believe in reincarnation”. He strenuously maintained that this was a genuine use of a conditional clause which demonstrated that he was referring to the Hindutva, not Hindus. His reasoning was this. All Hindus believe in reincarnation. It would therefore be redundant to ask if a group of Hindu men believed in reincarnation. Thus, the use of the word “if” shows he was not referencing Hindus. Instead, he was talking about the Hindutva. He maintained that not all those who subscribe to the Hindutva ideology are Hindus. It therefore made sense, in that context, to use the conditional clause, because there are some Hindutva who are not Hindus and who may not believe in reincarnation. The claimant made great play of the fact that he gave this explanation in an interview before litigation was initiated, thereby proving that it was not an ex post facto rationalisation to gain a litigation advantage.

The claimant’s explanation is nonsensical. When asked to name anyone in the world who subscribed to the Hindutva ideology but who was not Hindu he was able to give only one name: Benjamin Netanyahu. Later, despite spending some considerable time thinking about it, he came up with two further (equally incongruous) names: Tommy Robinson and the second defendant. The reality is that those who subscribe to the Hindutva ideology are overwhelmingly Hindu. There were no Hindutva, or at least no significant numbers of Hindutva, in Leicester who were not Hindus. The phrase “if they believe in reincarnation” was not a genuine conditional clause that sought to distinguish Hindu Hindutva from non-Hindu Hindutva. It was a rhetorical device intended to inflame sectarian tensions by inviting ridicule of a central tenet of Hinduism.

Even on its own terms, the claimant’s rationalisation does not work. That is because, on his analysis, he did not choose to ridicule the Hindutva generally as a group. He chose only to ridicule those Hindutva who were Hindus. So he was, thereby, ridiculing Hindus as opposed to non-Hindus.

The claimant’s evidence was that when he said “we got the truth” he meant that justice was on the side of those he was talking to, as opposed to the Hindutva. I do not accept this explanation. The words “we got the truth”, followed immediately by the ridiculing of a central tenet of Hinduism, convey (and I am satisfied were intended to convey) that Islam was superior to Hinduism. It was a further aspect of the claimant’s inflammatory rhetoric that intentionally aggravated the febrile atmosphere.

Financial losses: The messages which the claimant relied on to show the withdrawal of funding arrangements have the appearance of being contrived for the purpose of these proceedings. In two instances, they are addressed as “Dear Mr Hegab”, when the correspondents were well known to the claimant and addressed him, in other contemporaneous contexts, in altogether more natural and less formal terms. They each attribute their decision to disassociate from him to the article. They each provided the material that would be necessary to support a claim for financial losses occasioned by publication of the article (when one might not generally expect such detail to be provided in a communication that withdraws from nascent discussions). They arrived from the three separate organisations at roughly the same time, which was several weeks after the article, but very shortly before a letter of claim was sent. The claimant recognised the implausibility that this was all a coincidence. His explanation (which, in isolation, may have been plausible) was that the decision makers for the three organisations knew one another and were likely to have consulted with each other, and that is why the decisions were made at about the same time.

The supporting evidence was unsatisfactory. There was no disclosure of contracts, receipts, accounts or payments. Statements from Mr Wasway (of Nature’s Blends) and Mr Rehman (of One Ummah) and Mr Hussain (of SALAM) were served. Each statement apparently supported the claim of disassociation from the claimant as a result of the article. Up until the pre-trial review it was anticipated that these witnesses would give evidence. At the pre-trial review it was said that the court’s permission would be sought for Mr Wasway to give his evidence remotely, and from outside the court’s jurisdiction. Some days later, it was suggested that the court’s permission would be sought for Mr Rehman to give his evidence remotely, and from outside the court’s jurisdiction. The first defendant then served further disclosure which related to Mr Wasway’s evidence. The following day, the claimant served a hearsay notice in respect of Mr Wasway’s evidence, under section 2 of the Civil Evidence Act 1995 and rule 33.2 of the Civil Procedure Rules. It was said that he would not be called as a witness because of a pre-existing mental health condition. No medical evidence was provided. I acceded to a contested application made by the first defendant for a witness summons, so that it could call Mr Wasway to be cross-examined on his statement pursuant to CPR 33.4.

In cross-examination, Mr Wasway accepted that he has been convicted, on his plea, of offences of dishonesty (causing staged road traffic accidents to secure compensation on a false basis), albeit he maintains his innocence. He was sentenced to 27 weeks’ imprisonment. An ex-colleague from Nature’s Blends was also convicted. Mr Wasway (who did not apparently appreciate the significance of the point), made it clear that Nature’s Blends decided to disassociate from the claimant of its own accord, without consulting any other organisation. He thereby flatly contradicted the claimant’s explanation for what the claimant recognised was, otherwise, an implausible coincidence.

I also acceded to an application from the claimant for Mr Rehman to give evidence by video link from outside the jurisdiction. Mr Rehman was served with a witness summons, and it was intimated that he would attend court in person and would be the first witness to be called. In the event, in apparent breach of the witness summons, he did not attend court. It was said that this was due to a medical emergency. No evidence was provided to support that assertion. It was also said that he had been in the jurisdiction for the first day of the trial, but was now outside the jurisdiction, in Egypt. A hearsay notice was served in respect of Mr Rehman’s evidence. I do not consider any sufficient explanation has been given for his failure to attend court in response to the witness summons. Further, it is difficult to credit Mr Rehman’s evidence that the article caused One Ummah to disassociate from the claimant. There are messages between Mr Rehman and the claimant, well after the publication of the article, in which they are obviously on good terms, and Mr Rehman praises the claimant and discusses a contract. Further, there is evidence that the claimant did assist One Ummah with fundraising promotional videos in March – June 2024 and January – June 2025. It was shortly after the disclosure of these videos that it was said that Mr Rehman would no longer give evidence in person. For these reasons, I do not place any weight on his evidence. It is not necessary to address numerous further points raised by the first defendant as to Mr Rehman’s credit as a witness.

As to SALAM, no evidence was called from Amir Ahmed (who wrote the email of 24 November 2022), or from “brother Amir and other guys in the shura” (who apparently made the underlying decision). Nor was evidence given by Mr Dawah who was a close associate of the claimant, and who appears to have been involved with SALAM throughout, and who was identified as a witness on quantum/losses in the claimant’s directions questionnaire. Instead, evidence was given by Zeshan Hussain who is SALAM’s operations manager. He started working for SALAM in January 2025. He was not, therefore, in post at the time of the decision to disassociate from the claimant and is not able to give direct evidence about that. Although he purported to give evidence about it, he did not provide any underlying documents to support what he said, and he did not identify the sources of his information.

Mr Hussain said that his view of the claimant was damaged “somewhat” as a result of reading the article. I do not accept that evidence. He had known the claimant for a long period of time, and they had studied together. As soon as he started working at SALAM he suggested that the claimant be awarded a contract. He says that this fell through, and SALAM disassociated itself from the claimant, because of concerns about the claimant arising from the article. The claimant has not disclosed the letter disassociating SALAM from the claimant. Moreover, there is no clear reason why this should have arisen more than 2 years after the article was published. There was other reporting about the claimant which is more likely to have been the source of any concern, if, indeed, there was any concern. In any event, this is no part of the claimant’s pleaded case, and his supplementary written closing submissions confirmed that he does not advance a case of serious harm based on a failure to secure a contract in 2025.

“Exculpatory” evidence: I recognise that the parts of the videos of the claimant in central London and Golders Green and Leicester that are the focus of this trial are a tiny fraction of the claimant’s overall social media output, and even that, in turn, no doubt fails fully to represent the claimant as a person. I have also taken into account what might be regarded as a form of exculpatory evidence. There are many instances where the claimant refers to his Jewish or Hindu friends. There are instances where he directly advocates against violence or criminality. There are instances where, on one view, he is assisting the police. He advances an argument, from an Islamic perspective, in favour of the possibility of reincarnation. I have taken all of this type of material into account when assessing the claimant’s conduct in London and Leicester. The defendants do not invite conclusions that the claimant is an antisemite or that he is otherwise racist. What matters is his actual conduct in London and Leicester in May 2021 and September 2022. Conclusions about that conduct are inevitable, based primarily on the video evidence, irrespective of the more general exculpatory material.