Coffee House Shots: what Douglas Murray’s court win means for press freedom
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The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
The Spectator and Douglas Murray have comprehensively won a defamation case brought by Mohammed Hegab.
Hegab, a YouTuber who posts under the name Mohammed Hijab, claimed that an article about the Leicester riots, written by Douglas Murray and published by The Spectatorin September 2022, caused serious harm to his reputation and led to a loss of earnings. However, the judge found that the article did not cause serious harm to Hijab, that what was published was substantially true, and that Hijab had ‘lied on significant issues’ in court and had given evidence that ‘overall, is worthless’. What does this case mean for the future of press freedom?
On today’s podcast, Michael Simmons discusses the case with Alex Wilson, The Spectator’s lawyer, and Max Jeffery, who attended court on behalf of the magazine.
Produced by Oscar Edmondson and Megan McElroy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Two Titans of Silicon Valley, one prize, dominance in the world of artificial intelligence. |
| 0:07.0 | Supremacy is the real story behind the struggle to own our digital future and potentially the very nature of human experience. |
| 0:16.0 | Supremacy by Parmy Olson, described as a riveting tale by the new scientist, winner of the Financial |
| 0:22.6 | Times Business Book of the Year, and now the Waterstone's non-fiction book of the month. |
| 0:27.5 | Listen to the audiobook of Supremacy Now. |
| 0:36.2 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Michael Simmons and today I'm joined by the |
| 0:43.3 | spectators Max Jeffrey and Alex Wilson who is a partner at the legal firm RPC and the |
| 0:51.0 | spectator's main lawyer. Now yesterday a judgment was handed down in the high court |
| 0:58.1 | that ruled that the spectator and our columnist Douglas Murray had won a defamation case that |
| 1:03.1 | had been brought by the YouTuber Mohammed Hijab. Max, you've been following this for the spectator |
| 1:08.8 | since this began three years ago. |
| 1:11.6 | Why were we taken to court? |
| 1:13.5 | So this was about an article that Douglas Murray wrote for The Spectator in the issue of the 24th of September 2022. |
| 1:21.3 | This is a long time ago, so viewers might not remember, but this was around the time that there was some unrest going on in Leicester, largely between |
| 1:27.8 | Hindus and Muslims. And Dognos had written about this unrest in his weekly colony, he does for |
| 1:33.6 | the spectator, and then it had referenced Mohammed Hijab, the YouTuber, going to Lester, and speaking |
| 1:39.8 | to a crowd of mostly masked Muslim men. And I can read what Mohammed Hijab said in that speech. |
| 1:47.2 | So he said, let me tell you something to this gathered crowd. All due respect. |
| 1:50.9 | All due respect. Actually, no due respect, yeah. If they believe in reincarnation, |
| 1:56.7 | what a humiliation and pathetic thing for them to be reincarnated into some pathetic, weak, cowardly people like that. |
| 2:04.6 | I've got to be an animal. |
| 2:05.8 | I've got to be reincarnated as a grasshopper, brother. |
... |
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