Regular New Matilda readers might recall that earlier this year, Channel 7 threatened to sue us for calling their journalism on Adelaide Today Tonight ‘trashy’. Because bullies.
The story that caused the fuss – written by the irrepressible, indefatigable Michael Brull – was this one, about the work of the One Path Network to expose, among others Sheikh Mohammad Tawhidi, a self-styled ‘Imam of Peace’ who lives in Adelaide and spends an awful lot of his time and energy dumping all over Muslims and Islam.
This week, Tawhidi launched a fundraiser to build his own ‘media centre’, replete with an unfortunate photo of him doing a ‘thumbs up’ which makes him look strikingly like Borat.
“In recent years, we have been cooperating with government departments, intelligence services and police in several countries to tackle the growth of Islamic extremism. Imam Tawhidi has travelled to the Middle East, Asia, USA, Canada, UK and around Australia to raise awareness regarding radical elements which pose a potential national security threat to the nations and its citizens.
“Since 2017, Imam Tawhidi has been forced into hiding two times, and has been physically assaulted over three times by Islamic extremists. The death threats Imam Tawhidi receives have prevented him from participating in events and making regular public appearances.
“The majority of TV channels that invite Imam Tawhidi end up censoring his words, or completely cancelling the interview out of fear.”
Which is of course ridiculous… it’s true Tawhidi is finding it harder to get publicity as more and more media exposes about his work come out. But he’s had no trouble getting time on Channel 7, and the trashier elements of Australian media. And when we say trashier, beyond Channel 7 we’re obviously also referring to the Daily Mail, which writes so many stories promoting Tawhidi’s assaults on Muslims that we worried we would break their search engine checking.
The tally since May this year stands at a whopping 82 stories… or one every every two and a half days… nonsense being the staple diet of an outlet that brought you this whopper about Pauline Hanson surging in the polls, and this one about refugees fleeing the carnage in Syria ruining the holidays of Brits on the Greek island holiday destination of Kos. Or this one about Cyclone Pam which knocked over a couple of palm tress on Cate Blanchett’s Vanuatu holiday home (and, you know, killed 16 people and displaced thousands, but whose counting).
Anyhoo, we digress… in setting up his own media service, Tawhidi apparently believes that he should try and replicate the success of New Matilda (we’re broke, in case you missed that).
Here’s a recent tweet sent out by Tawhidi promoting it.
‘I have a lot of enemies, I could use a few friends’. Ring any bells New Matilda readers?
We’ve been using that little chestnut for about two years now… developed for us by the marketing gurus at Melhuish & Co.
Anyway, if you’d like to contribute to Tawhidi’s fundraiser, you can bugger off, because we’re not linking to it. You should, however, watch this space… more to come on the ‘Imam of Peace’ next year.
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