- AFTER FEATURING IN PLAID CYMRU’S ELECTION VIDEO, SAHAR AL-FAIFI RECEIVED HUNDREDS OF ABUSIVE & ISLAMOPHOBIC COMMENTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA.
- THE ANTI-RACISM CAMPAIGNER WAS THEN SUSPENDED BY PLAID CYMRU AFTER THE PARTY WERE MADE AWARE OF DELETED TWEETS FROM 2013.
- AL-FAIFI APOLOGISED FOR THE TWEETS AT THE TIME – WHICH SHE DESCRIBED IN A STATEMENT AS “A HANDFUL OF SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS THAT I REGRET DEEPLY AS THEY CROSS THE BOUNDARY OF CRITICISM OF ISRAEL INTO ANTISEMITISM.” – AND REFERRED HERSELF FOR ANTISEMITISM TRAINING.
- NOW, IN A NEWLY RELEASED INTERVIEW, AL-FAIFI DESCRIBED HOW, WHEN SHE WAS A COMMUNITY ORGANISER IN LONDON, THE JEWISH AND MUSLIM COMMUNITIES HAD COME TOGETHER FOLLOWING A FAR RIGHT ATTACK ON A MOSQUE IN LONDON.
By SC Cook
One of Wales’ most prominent campaigners against racism, Sahar Al-Faifi, was suspended by Plaid Cymru on Sunday for alleged Antisemitism less than 24 hours after she featured heavily in the launch of their 2019 election campaign.
A picture of Al-Faifi was used by the party when they trailed their 2019 election broadcast on Twitter, which also featured the activist relaying the campaign slogan, “Wales, it’s us.” The now-deleted Tweet did not feature any of the other participants, only Al-Faifi wearing a full face veil. The post quickly attracted a torrent of abusive and Islamophobic comments directed at Sahar Al-Faifi, so much so that the party had to submit a subsequent message condemning many of the responses. An analysis of the responses under former leader Leanne Wood’s Twitter feed showed there had been some 105 hostile or abusive comments directed towards Sahar in less than 72 hours. The figure is likely to have been higher under Plaid Cymru’s official feed, but voice.wales was unable to assess this as the Tweet has now been deleted.
The comments attacking Al-Faifi included people posting pictures of letterboxes, or mocked up images of Sahar with the words Tal-Y-Ban underneath. One user claimed that 80% of Muslim women were lazy, while another compared Al-Faifi to the sex trafficker and paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. The right wing website Guido Fawkes described her as “Plaid’s Taffy Jihadi.”
When voice.wales interviewed Sahar in March, she described facing constant abuse as “mentally and emotionally exhausting to just take in all the time,” adding that “the very thing they want to achieve is to silence [me].”
But following the broadcast that featured Ms Al-Faifi- a Plaid Cymru member – the party suspended her after some Twitter users highlighted posts Sahar had made in 2013, one of which referred to ‘Rothschild Jews’ in Israel.
When voice.wales spoke to the Plaid Cymru press office, we were told that that they had not been aware of the Tweets prior to the weekend. This is despite the fact that they had been in the public domain for some time and Sahar herself had acknowledged them, apologised and referred herself for Antisemitism training some years ago. In a brief statement, the party said that “Plaid Cymru will not tolerate Antisemitism, racism or intolerance in any form. That includes the appalling abuse the individual has been subject to. It is not a part of the Wales we want to build.”
In a statement released on Sunday, Sahar Al-Faifi said the ‘handful of tweets’ had crossed “the boundary of criticism of Israel into anti-Semitism.”
It went on to say: “I have also undertaken Antisemitism training, both formally through the Board of Deputies and informally with Jewish colleagues in order to ensure I never repeat the same mistakes.
“I am committed to working for a Wales safe and open to all, and free from any kind of discrimination or abuse.”
“As someone who has faced much abuse verbal and even physical, I know the importance of language and that the current political climate is one in which many minority groups – including Muslim women – face an impossible tidal wave of abuse, suspicion, and guilt, by simply being active in public life, all of which is most vitriolic online.”
In a twitter thread released on Sunday, an academic at Cardiff University with knowledge of the original incident,, Abdul-Azim, wrote that “By and large, the issue was dealt with between the parties involved (Jewish friends and colleagues of Sahar, Jewish representative boards, and Sahar herself). It was, until today, largely concluded.”
The continued prevalence of the Tweets themselves is partly down to the Henry Jackson Society, a right wing libertarian organisation that produced a dossier on Sahar Al-Faifi and other Muslim activists in 2017.
HJS was recently barred from attending a Bristol university ‘free speech’ event following outcry from students who said their Islamophobic propaganda was an insult to the victims of the Christchurch terror attack, where a fascist gunman killed 50 Muslim worshippers.
When Sahar spoke to us earlier in the year, she described how the organisation had harassed her: “At the beginning when these reports were being published and I received letters to respond, and sometimes they don’t even bother to contact me for clarification, I was shocked.”
But voice.wales also asked Sahar about Antisemitism at the time, before she was suspended. These were not published originally, but we are doing so now in light of what has happened.
“Antisemitism, sadly, still exists,” she told us. “And it has to be fought, and has to be rejected and challenged, you know, within our own community, as a Muslim community. All forms of racism, including Antisemitism need to be challenged, and we have to be clear in that.”
Asked if she thought that the groups which attacked her were trying to drive a wedge between Muslim and Jewish communities, Sahar responded by saying “That’s true.”
“And that’s why we’ve got to be careful and avoid this divisive language. You know, I truly believe that we are all in it. The Muslim community and the Jewish community and as the Muslim community, we’ve got a lot to learn from the Jewish community who have faced horrendous persecutions… And, you know, and we’ve got to learn from them.”
Pressed to give an example of different groups working together, she then went on to talk about a time when she was introduced to community organising in London. “I can tell you a beautiful story.” She said:
“Okay. So I’m a community organiser, which means I organised different faiths and then faith group behind social justice campaigns like living wage and social care, things like that.
I met this Jewish community organiser and she told me that there was a mosque in London that was burnt down to the ground by a white supremacist and it was just before Ramadan, which is the fasting month for Muslims and it’s like the spiritual re-boost time for Muslims where they spend a lot of time in the Mosque. So it was such a bad time for Muslims to have their own Mosques being burnt. And that Mosque belonged to a community called Bravanese community which has its own identity and language. They originated somewhere by Somalia. So it’s very also small community within the Muslim community.”
Sahar went to describe how the Jewish community had rushed to support the Mosque:
“And what happened when the Jewish community knew about it, they actually opened their synagogue for Muslims to pray during Ramadan. They fundraised for the Mosques to be rebuilt and not only that… you may be aware of some of the Jewish traditions that for them to take any kind of transport or rides on Saturday is prohibited so they have to walk, this is part of their tradition. So the Rabbi on Saturday he had to walk for hours to reach the Mosque to show solidarity and for me this is what the world should be… that we respect everyone’s views and faith and we support one another and it was such a good example of solidarity against racism and white supremacy so yeah we there’s there’s great examples of work between the Jewish community and the Muslim community but again you don’t see it in the media do you.”
Voice.wales contacted the Synagogue in Muswell Hill who confirmed Sahar’s account of the story but were not available for any further comment on the story.
Ms Al-Faifi was also contacted for an interview but declined until after the disciplinary process has concluded.
You can read the extensive interview with Sahar and others on Islamophobia here: An audio clip of the above interview is also available here:
