Dawah Man, the baby, and the money - Update

Isn't it amazing? For a year I and others have been requesting information about the health of the baby Imran raised money for and there has been no response. I gathered the evidence from his Facebook pages etc and put it into a blog and within hours he has posted an update.

The first thing I want to say is that I am very pleased to see the baby is okay, his foot operation has gone well and it seems he is now fit enough to travel for surgery. This is excellent news!

I do feel, however, that I should address the facebook post Imran made when he released the new video footage. Evidently he is annoyed that I have been so persistent in requesting information for an update. I don't think there is anything wrong with asking for a status update on a baby who "is going to die" and for whom "time is running out", especially when time was running out over a year ago and money has been raised to save his life. It seems though that Dawah Man is pissed off about having to tell people what he has done with their £32,000 and made a bit of a hissy fit attack against my character, which I now intend to address.

Who is the atheist who made this accusation against me?

First thought, can't I just be a person? There is obviously some kind of mental link here...man do bad thing, man is atheist, atheists bad. My lack of belief in the supernatural is irrelevant, if I had been a Christian or a Muslim, and if Imran had been an atheist I would still have repeatedly asked him for updates on the dying baby.

My second thought: What accusation? No, seriously, what have I accused anyone of? All my post did was to collect posts by Imran (Dawah Man) and lay them out in chronological order. You see, here is the problem, Imran seems to think that someone asking someone who raised £32,000 for charity for an update report is an accusation of theft.

The individual who made this accusation against me is an Islamaphobic person who has dedicated his life in trying to bring down Islam. His whole life has been dedicated to this cause.

I'm sorry for laughing, but really, that was very funny. Firstly I note I am again referred to as "the individual", I am starting to feel a bit like Lord Voldemort, he who should not be named. What's this about me Islamaphobic [sic]. A simple attempt at making me look like an unreasonable and illogical person who acts on emotion (hate probably), when that is nothing like me at all. I create videos about Islam and write the odd blog because once (when I was an agnostic theist) I looked into the subject with the hope of discovering it was true. I found there was a lot of bias & disinformation out there about Islam (from both the Muslim and Christian side) and so I thought others might find the views of a religiously neutral party interesting. I didn't even read the Quran until I was in my mid 30's, so to claim I have been trying to bring down Islam my whole life is laughable.

I am anti-Islam, but only as much as a Muslim is anti-pagan or anti-atheist....in fact, from my experiences I would say to a much lesser degree than that. I care about the truth, circumstances led me to learn about Islam, it took a long time because I had to fight my way through the misinformation, and by the end I just felt that amount of time spent would be a waste if I didn't put forward my own conclusions.

Not only that, but he is known for attacking brothers in the da'wah and trying to put things on them that they are free from. A few months ago he put out an article about a brother who does da'wah saying that he was found on some website where men and women go to cheat on their spouses. Later it was found out that the brother in question was free from this accusation and had been a victim of identity fraud which looked like it was done for the purpose of trying to character assassinate him.

Now, this was the part that made me want to write this response. Imran here is talking about Hamza Andreas Tzortzis and the Ashley Madison incident. I did indeed discover Andreas's information in the hacked database release, but what did I do about it? Did I make a video, write a blog, accuse him of adultery? No! I emailed him my mobile phone number to tell him this information is out in the open. He phoned me and we discussed it privately.

I had just started a 4 day holiday when Andreas got back in touch with me and asked me to check something for him in the DB. One thing led to another and about 2 or 3 days later we had finished going through the database to try to build up a complete picture so that Andreas could establish exactly what was and was not in there. The point is, not only did I not do any kind of character assassination on Andreas, I spent the best part of a short family holiday doing what I would consider work (I work in IT) free of charge. Andreas wrote to thank me for all the help I had given him.

Andreas made a statement on Facebook letting people know his details were in the hack, and then the press picked up on it. I remained silent. At some point the "anti-Hamza" group had started to make false claims about what the data did or did not suggest. One newspaper (I don't recall which) made claims that I knew were untrue having looked at the data myself, but they refused to correct the article. So, with Andreas's blessing I wrote an article myself. I told him in advance (many times in private) that I thought the evidence made a more compelling case for guilt than innocence, but he was happy for me to write the blog because I was setting the facts straight. As a consequence the on-line story with the misinformation in it was altered and the fictitious "smoking gun" was removed.

I hope you, like myself, are struggling to see how these actions were some kind of malicious episode of trying to set up Andreas and sully his reputation? If not, here is a statement Andreas has just sent to me via email with permission for me to include it in this blog:

"Islam teaches us fairness. In no way can the Rationaliser be accused for anything concerning my ID fraud, he actually helped me a lot with access to the data and by interpreting it."

I hope this puts to rest Imran's attempted character assassination?

He has now released this article about myself, when I had already been in touch with him and told him that I will put the information online as I have more updates.

Yes he did, as you saw in the article I posted, but nothing for months, and after 15 months I think it is reasonable for me to decide to stop nagging him for an update on the baby and instead detail the event in a blog and leave it. I didn't want to keep asking him, but I also didn't just want the question to remain unanswered. My blog was intended to give out the information simply as a list of facts so that others can ask him for updates instead, I'd had enough.

It is also worth mentioning that he got in touch with the fraud department at the Metropolitan Police, asking them to investigate this matter further. They got back to him telling him that I am in the clear, yet he is still insisting on pushing this narrative.

I can forgive Imran for this error as I doubt he is in possession of the full facts. I actually contacted Action Fraud, which is a national office run by the police. These people do not have any investigative powers at all, they simply look at the facts and then they decide if the issue looks suspicious enough to be passed on. I provided Action Fraud with the same information I wrote in my blog about Imran, and it was they who decided it looked suspicious and should be passed on to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, and so they did.

Now, the NFIB have some kind of investigative powers, what they do exactly I do not know, but it is the NFIB who are responsible for deciding whether or not the police should be involved, and this is the email I received from them.

As you can see, nobody got back to me to tell me Imran was "in the clear" - but I wouldn't expect Imran to know that. Not only did I not know if Imran was "in the clear" or not, but I wasn't even told if any investigation had been done, and I still don't know if they even went out and interviewed him. For all I know he is only aware of me reporting him because I told him about it on Twitter.

So, to be clear

1. I reported it to an agency that decides if it should be reported to the police's fraud department.
2. Based on the information I provided it was they who decided it should be looked at.
3. They passed it on to the FNIB.
4. FNIB told me they were not going to pass it on to the police for investigation.

Does that mean I wrote this blog knowing he had been "given the all clear"? Clearly not!

Don't you think that if someone REALLY scammed people for £32,000… online!!! When he is a PUBLIC FIGURE like myself… don't you think this person would already have been behind bars?

First thought: Public figure :)

Second thought: £32,000 is nothing compared to scams that religious people have pulled off in the past, and continue to pull off today. Nobody should ever be beyond suspicion. You were given the benefit of the doubt for 10 months before your constant refusal to comment on the matter made me feel like I had no choice other than to let an independent party investigate.

Remember, Imran, when you collect £32,000 of people's money for charity you have a duty to keep these people updated. Saying you've recorded a video, it's in editing, and will be out next week and then neither releasing it or commenting on the situation for months is not good practice, and it certainly isn't the kind of behaviour donors expect from someone who raises money on a regular basis.

It is not only myself and other atheists who have said so either. I have seen Muslims making comments such as "I am sure he hasn't stolen the money, but he really should have told us by now what is going on". I have even spoken to a Muslim who claims to have asked you about it only to be told you'd be bringing out a video ("Next week" I think he said). Another video that didn't materialise.

Keep in mind that during this whole year I have not once said that I think you have stolen the money, when people have asserted that I have merely replied that I do not know what you have done with it and that I am interested in receiving an update about the dying baby. That is what I repeated in my blog of yesterday too. Please don't present yourself as some kind of victim in all of this just to try to hide the fact that you neglected your donors and/or was incompetent with handling the whole thing. The correspondence email from the US hospital that you showed in your Facebook post was received by you on September 11th, 2015, which means you went a whole six months before bothering to tell us.

Obviously I won't ask you to make a video apologising for your illegitimate attempt at assassinating my character, I don't think I have the patience to wait until "next week" for it to be edited and uploaded. I would like to finish by saying that despite the US putting up the price of the operation to $500,000 due to the baby having a more serious condition than they thought, I was pleased to hear in your update video that you were able to find a hospital in Europe that was willing to do the more complicated treatment at a cost matching exactly how much you've already raised.