What Douglas Murray’s court win means for press freedom
Coffee House Shots
The Spectator
4.4 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 6 August 2025
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
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.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots. I'm Michael Simmons and today I'm joined by the |
| 0:11.0 | Spectators Max Jeffrey and Alex Wilson who is a partner at the legal firm RPC and the Spectators |
| 0:19.4 | Main Lawyer. Now yesterday a judgment was handed down in the |
| 0:24.9 | high court that ruled that the spectator and our columnist Douglas Murray had won a defamation |
| 0:30.1 | case that had been brought by the YouTuber Mohammed Hijab. Max, you've been following this for |
| 0:35.7 | the spectator, you know, since this began three years ago. Why were we taken to court? |
| 0:41.1 | So this was about an article that Douglas Murray wrote for The Spectator in the issue of the 24th of September 2022. |
| 0:48.9 | 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 Hindus and Muslims. And Dognos had written about this unrest in |
| 0:59.8 | his weekly colony, he does for the spectator, and then it had referenced Mohammed Hijab, the |
| 1:04.5 | YouTuber, going to Leicester, and speaking to a crowd of mostly masked Muslim men. |
| 1:14.4 | And I can read what Mohammed Hijab said in that speech. |
| 1:17.6 | So he said, let me tell you something to this gathered crowd. |
| 1:18.5 | All due respect. |
| 1:21.2 | All due respect, actually no due respect, yeah. |
| 1:24.1 | If they believe in reincarnation, what a humiliation and pathetic thing for them to be reincarnated into some |
| 1:29.2 | pathetic, weak, cowardly people like that. I've got to be an animal. I'd rather be reincarnated |
| 1:34.4 | as a group glasshopper, bro. That's the truth. In his column, Douglas said that Muhammad |
| 1:40.2 | Hijab was referring to Hindu people and ridiculing them. |
| 1:48.9 | Mohammed Hijab said that he was referring to Hindutfa, which is an extremist, |
| 1:51.3 | ethno-nationalist group of Hindus, he would say. |
| 1:57.4 | And so, Mohammed Hijab sued Douglas and the Spectator for defamation, and this has taken years and years to get to court, but it finally did, and the judgment was given |
| 2:01.3 | yesterday saying that the spectator had won. And Alex, well, firstly, thank you for winning the |
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