Adjudication No. 1382 (adjudicated January 2008) [2008] APC 3

Adjudication No. 1382 (adjudicated January 2008)

The Australian Press Council has upheld one complaint and dismissed two other complaints brought by the Muslim Community Reference Group against The Australian in respect of four articles, published in separate editions of the newspaper in August 2007.

The Council has upheld the complaint related to the presentation of a 6 August article headlined India grapples with hydra of terror. It has dismissed complaints related to an article, Islam's poison cells, published on 14 August, and to a 21 August article, Warning to West on "evil of Islam", and a 22 August comment, Breakout begins from Islam's mental prison, both of which referred to Wafa Sultan as a Muslim.

The complainant says that the 6 August article wrongly portrayed Tablighi Jamaat, a religious movement with members in 80 countries, as an Islamic terror group, when it was in fact a "mainstream moderate Muslim organisation". The feature article, sourced to the paper's South Asian correspondent, was a detailed look at some of the evidence emerging of links between members of Tablighi Jamaat and terrorism, including a number of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, some of the London bombers from 7 July 2005 and other named individuals. While the article itself does not explicitly name Tablighi Jamaat as a terrorist organisation, and carefully examines the current situation in India with regard to a number of groups linked with terrorism, or suspected of terrorist links, a table published with the article, "Islamic terror groups in India", names Tablighi Jamaat at the top of the list.

A main thrust of the complaint is that the paper "lists Tablighi Jamaat as an Islamic terror group". To the extent that the table attached to the article makes this claim, which goes further than the material reported in the article would suggest, the complaint is upheld.

The 14 August article, Islam's poison cells, was originally published in the UK Sunday Times under the heading, How I escaped Islamism. The author is a former member of Hizb ut-Tahrir, described as an Islamist terrorist group. The complainant says that the headline used in The Australian is an attack on Islam, and a breach of the Council's guideline on the use of religious terms in headlines. It said the cited group has not been declared a terror group in either Australia or the UK. Given that Hizb ut-Tahrir has been proscribed in a number of countries, it is a reasonable descriptor for the paper to use.

On the question of the headline the Council does not consider that the headline misrepresents the contents of the article in the way the complainant outlined. The article deals with the reasons for the author's leaving an organisation he sees as inimical to the health of Islam as a whole.

The third complaint arises from a report of, and commentary on, Wafa Sultan, a critic of Islam. She says that she no longer believes in Islam, "but I am a Muslim". The complainant does not believe that a person who has renounced Islam should be called a "Muslim". As both articles make clear that Wafa Sultan has renounced Islam, no reader would be misled by the description of her as either a "Muslim thinker" or a "Muslim woman".

The newspaper, while maintaining its view that there was no substance to the complaints, offered to publish a letter from the complainant. In the context of complaints such as these, the Council believes that the publication of a contrary viewpoint is the best way for complainants to air their concerns. Following mediation by the Council, the complainant submitted a strongly-worded letter that was over 1000 words in length. The complainant would not comply with a request from the newspaper to reduce the letter to 250 words, nor would the newspaper publish a response at such length or of such an intemperate tone. It is to be regretted that the parties could not agree on a publishable letter but, in the Council's view, the newspaper was not unreasonable in refusing to publish a letter at the length submitted.