Robi Chowdhury and the Muslim Youth Helpline
Last
night, someone called Robi Chowdhury posted a blog
purporting to "expose" me for calling him a
"spineless, shameless twat" on Twitter, and associating him with the criminals
who hacked and harassed my wife, Akeela Ahmed, out of her job as CEO of
MYH.
Chowdhury
is a close associate of the criminals - former staff members of MYH (all of whom
have been expunged from the charity) - who launched a sustained campaign of bullying
and harassment against Akeela last year, due to a variety of reasons, among
them, her role in protecting the charity's values of diversity (such as in the
hiring of a non-Muslim). Chowdhury himself has also been expelled from the charity.
MYH, a
charity that aims to provide emotional support to vulnerable young Muslims, was
subjected to a series of criminal attacks last year, including multiple
hackings of several senior staff, as well as public releases of the charity's
emails and confidential information in April and May. Also included in that
harassment campaign were obscene and threatening texts and phone calls to my
wife, and to several other volunteers who worked at the charity.
In between
those hackings, Chowdhury - as he confesses proudly on his blog -was party and
signatory to a fake "petition" attributed falsely to MYH members.
This illegal document contained a series of defamatory allegations against my
wife, and made a number of illegal demands, among them her immediate sacking. The
document was also a form of blackmail, threatening to remove the Trustees if they
didn't sack Akeela. And it was sent out on a public email list including a
variety of Muslim community organisations, with deliberate intent to slander
and defame, causing Akeela, myself and our family a great deal of anxiety and distress.
Apart
from that, Chowdhury went onto harass both me and Akeela by tweeting,
facebooking and blogging the same defamatory allegations. This included
promoting the so-called "myh whistleblowers blog", which published our
home address, our personal mobile phone numbers, our personal email addresses,
as well as the personal email addresses of my father in law and his legal
adviser.
At this
point, it is clearly in the public interest to refer to an official MYH
document concerning the realities of what went on - we have not previously disclosed
this information in the public domain. Below are relevant quotations
from the MYH Annual General Meeting minutes, 14th October 2012, which Chowdhury
himself attended:
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Unfortunately,
when we attended an amazing event co-organised by our friends at The Leaf Network and Radical Middle Way, featuring Riz
Ahmed and Wajahat Ali at Rich Mix on 13th January, Chowdhury was present,
accompanied by a number of other people linked to MYH who to varying degrees
had harassed and targeted Akeela. According to Chowdhury, Akeela
"exploded" and set out to "nuke" them. Simultaneously, he
claims "I can’t remember a whole lot about what she was saying." He
then claims that after Akeela "caused a scene", they left the venue as
they were "distressed."
As the
organisers of the event will confirm, there was no "scene". The
reality is that unlike those who harassed us from a distance, Akeela went up to
them, said "Salams", then challenged them in a civilised manner about their
continued friendship with and protection of the hackers, and about their advocacy
of violence toward Akeela.
Specifically,
she told Chowdhury, "You had my number, you had my email, you were on my
facebook, you could have contacted me with any concerns at any time. Instead, you
were happy to partake in the harassment campaign conducted by your friends
against me, slandering and defaming me on twitter and your blog. I'm coming and
speaking to you face to face. This is completely the opposite of what you
did."
Chowdhury's
response was "Please, Akeela."
Akeela
said, "Please, what? You've publicly slandered me behind my back, are
friends with the hackers, and you continue to protect them. That's complicity.
And when I come and say salams to you to address my concerns directly with you,
you have nothing to say to me?"
On his
blog Chowdhury also regurgitates the long ago discredited claim that I dobbed innocent young Muslims into SO15. I have already refuted this false allegation in
my
full statement on this issue, and have publicly and wholeheartedly
acknowledged, and apologised for, whatever mistakes we did make.
The sad
truth of the matter is that a small group of very cowardly people bullied
and harassed a charity, its female CEO, some of its senior female staff members,
and some of its young volunteers, with impunity last year, to the extent of
spying on my wife's and my personal correspondence.
Chowdhury was and is
friends with those people, and participated in the campaign against my wife by his own inadvertent admission of being party to a fake petition "led by the hackers" according to the charity's own investigation. So when
he surfaced on my twitter, I tweeted that he's a spineless, shameless twat. Sure,
I can acknowledge that it was probably an error of judgement to call him a
twat. It's not the best language - but how would you react if people were harassing your wife, and then one of them decided to twitter-stalk you?