During a heated Twitter exchange between Adam Deen of the Quilliam Foundation and Professor David Miller from the University of Bath, numerous questions were posed by the academic about QF’s funding and work, which were met with a wall of silence by the so-called counter-extremism think-tank.
The Twitter exchange followed an event at the University of Bath where Adam Deen delivered a lecture on Islamophobia on Thursday 14 April 2016.
After the lecture, Deen took to Twitter to denounce David Miller, who is Professor of Sociology at the University of Bath, and the director of the watchdog site Spinwatch. Deen wrote that Miller “heckled him” and accused Quilliam Foundation of being “racist”. Deen was backed by fellow Quilliam staff on Twitter, Maajid Nawaz and Haras Rafiq.
Professor Miller rejected the claims, stating that he had put his hand up to ask a question, but had been repeatedly interrupted as Deen tried to stop him finishing his question. Later, Professor Miller intervened in the debate to point out that Deen’s statement that information on Quilliam funders was available was a “lie”.
However, the subsequent exchanges on Twitter left Quilliam Foundation unusually silent after Professor Miller posed 11 questions and statements for Mr Deen to clarify:
- Is the QF racist? Make up your own mind.
- The British government gave £2.9m funding to QF as part of the Prevent programme between 2009-2012.
- Prevent is a racist policy for racial profiling and disproportionately targeting Muslims. QF supports Prevent. https://goo.gl/WyZh7k
- QF supports spying on Muslims. https://gu.com/p/2bt4h/stw
- QF produced a blacklist and secretly sent it to government, which smeared peaceful groups as aligned with terrorist ideas. https://gu.com/p/2tzg7/stw
- QF more recently funded by conservative foundations including Bradley and Templeton.
- Bradley funds Islamophobic groups including Steve “Birmingham a no-go zone for non-Muslims” Emerson – David Cameron called him a “complete idiot”.
- QF funded by foundation headed by homophobe, warmonger, evangelical, Jack Templeton – over $1m https://goo.gl/BYxxhs
- QF funded by Islamophobe Sam Harris https://gu.com/p/3eq3n/stw
- Why won’t QF disassociate itself from the anti-Muslim racism of the Gatestone Institute? https://goo.gl/EJmucO
- My research and that of Spinwatch is declared and transparent. Why does QF hide who funds it?
Professor Miller’s 11 tweets received nearly 400 likes and were re-tweeted more than 1,100 times.
With no response to his questions and statements, Professor Miller asked Deen another six questions two days later (Saturday 16 April):
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- Who funds QF?
- What is QF’s association with the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute?
- In December 2015 at the Home Affairs Select Committee, Haras Rafiq said he’d “look into” the Gatestone Institute connection. Why the silence since?
- Why take funding from Bradley and Templeton foundations known for their anti-Muslim activities?
- If you are liberals and moderates, how does that square with your advocacy of racist policies like Prevent?
- Lastly, why won’t you (Adam Deen) or Quilliam Foundation answer these questions seriously?
Professor Miller’s six tweets received near a hundred likes and re-tweeted more than 160 times.
Why not ask these very important questions to QF yourself? You can tweet them at:
@QuilliamF, @MaajidNawaz, @HarasRafiq, @drusamahasan, @adamdeen
