7 News published a ‘news’ story yesterday about the apparent ‘feud’ gripping the Muslim community around the role and efficacy of independent Muslim engagement in the upcoming federal elections.

7 News interviewed Dr Jamal Rifi, a long-time establishment figure, who has recently written a series of love letters to the community confessing his undying commitment to establishment politics. Like all great tales, it was built on nothing but lies and fantasy. This did not stop 7 News from reporting his comments as facts, even when they are factually incorrect and potentially slanderous. But such is the mainstay of tabloid journalism in this country.

Hizb ut Tahrir / Australia would like to comment the following regarding this story:

1. The charge of ‘misinformation and disinformation’ against the community could not be more ironic coming from 7 News.

2. This story is nothing more than ‘mudslinging’, a key tenet of democratic politics, where desperate parties throw anything at their opposition, irrespective of its truth, in the hope some of it sticks.

3. The racist narrative underpinning this story comes immediately to the fore. Muslim agency, when exercised independently, must necessarily be a threat. 7 News could not even be subtle about it.

4. For good measure, 7 News chose to casually throw around the ‘terrorist’ label, this time against Hizb ut Tahrir. After twenty years of the ‘war on terror’, the word has long been rendered meaningless, invoked only as a charge against those who oppose the West’s state terrorism, even if by mere word.

5. The efforts to respond to Muslim anger over the genocide in Gaza, by resorting to such belittling reporting, demonstrates not just the contempt of news organisations, but by the establishment itself, who are never far from such reporting. This should only enrage the community further.

6. If the subject of the reporting was not so serious, this latest example of trash reporting would never have deserved a response. But the people of Gaza deserve our defence, so too the communities around the world rising to defend them. Irrespective of one’s views on the efficacy of democratic engagement, we can all agree on the need to stand with Palestine and condemn the genocide enablers.