The Daily Mail has apologised to Dr Khalid Fikry after Katie Hopkins’ wrongly accused him of advocating the murder and rape of Sunnis.
On 26 November 2015, Hopkins wrote an article in the Daily Mail after she was due to give a presentation at Brunel University, where the lecturers and students carried out a staged walk out.
In the article, she made reference to the university allowing Muslim “hate preachers”, including Dr Khalid Fikry to speak on campus.
She went onto state that Dr Fikry had previously stated that “Killing the Sunni is to raise your rank in paradise, raping a Sunni woman is a matter that pleases Allah”.
It appears that Hopkins sourced this quote directly from the Islamophobic blog site Harry’s Place without verifying or listening to the audio of the entire lecture from which the allegation was taken from.
Dr Fikry who is Sunni Muslim himself, made the comments in the context of the war in Syria, where he believes for the sectarian elements of the Assad regime, “Killing the Sunni is to raise your rank in paradise, raping a Sunni woman is a matter that pleases Allah”.
Additionally, Hopkins also tweeted these claims on Twitter, which resulted in Dr Fikry issuing legal proceedings against the Daily Mail and Hopkins.
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It seems that a clarification statement was issued as part of a financial settlement.
Hopkins also appears to have deleted the tweets she had written.
This is not the first time the Daily Mail has had to issue a clarification statement and financial compensation for Hopkins’ defamatory comments.
Last December, the right-wing newspaper were forced to publish an apology to the Mahmood family after demonising them when they were prevented from going to Disneyland in the US.
In the absence of any evidence, Hopkins wrote that some of the family members were linked to Al-Qaeda.
