Islam versus Europe: Johann Hari Update

Guy Walters has blogged on the New Statesman about the fabricated Malalai Joya interview and posted the text of it with the 'borrowed' elements shown in bold. These duplicates were 'discovered' by his friend Jeremy Duns, basically by recreating what I had done and being more inclusive. I deliberately left out some similarities I thought were short or more marginal; but the Jeremy Duns version does include some I missed completely. I see now that Hari slyly made slight alterations to the phrases here and there that were enough to defeat a simple Copy & Paste search. Just to be ultra-fair to Hari, they've also bolded a few extracts where I think the context does not suggest Joya was speaking the words to him.

Walters doesn't credit me with the initial find in his blog post but does in a comment below the line. Well, this is wonderful for all you MSM journalists cowering in your offices. As far as I know, neither Guy Walters nor his friend Jeremy Duns think that Islam is anything other than a vibrancy-increasing, life-affirming, freedom-enhancing, prosperity-inducing Religion of Peace, so you should feel free to talk about Johann Hari's fraud now, the one you've known and kept quiet about for the last two days. If you hurry, you could even knock a quick piece out before heading down to the pub at 5.

It's important to remember that the few interviews on which Hari has now been nobbled were picked for more careful scrutiny partly at random. In my case, it was just because I happened to have an electronic copy of the book to hand. The obvious inference must be that similarly thorough researches of Hari's other interviews, and perhaps his non-interview-based articles, too, are likely to produce further interesting revelations.

I would also suggest that some intrepid journalist might like to get in contact with Malalai Joya and ask her whether she ever did, in fact, meet the great Johann Hari.

UPDATE:

Wow. Wonders will never cease. The Guardian is actually linking to this blog and referencing it by name. Who would have thought we would ever see the Guardian promoting a Counterjihad blog, eh? Maybe the Left will find itself again.

The similarities, identified by the author of the Islam Versus Europe blog, join a growing list of examples exposed by bloggers where the Orwell prize-winning writer appeared to have inserted quotes into interviews that looked to have come from elsewhere.

The Islam Versus Europe blogger cites 15 examples of duplications in phraseology from the book which Joya published the same year in which Hari subsequently printed the interview.

The irony is that I actually posted a link to the original Johann Hari post as a comment to a Guardian article a couple of days ago. When I looked back 15 minutes later, it had been removed by one of the moderators.

Some amusing below-the-line comments:

"Do we really have to give publicity to a nasty, poisonous outpouring like 'Islam vs Europe'"

"Islam versus Europe

quite a nasty distasteful islamophobic blog .

bnp website next maybe ?"

7 comments:

Jeremy Duns said...: Jeremy Duns here. I'm not entirely sure what your point is. In your post on this, you wrote about visiting Brian Whelan's page and seeing how he had suggested crowd-checking Hari's articles. Whelan had already spotted something in the Joya interview - he thought the blurb, but in fact it's in the book. You went through the book and found more. I saw your post, and linked to it and discussed it on Twitter. I then bought the ebook and went through and found around 30 more examples of plagiarism on top of the 15 or so you spotted. Guy didn't claim he discovered this - he commented on what it meant. He credited me, and forgot to then go back a step and credit you, but rectified it the second he realized, which was about a minute after the article went up. Technically speaking, he could also have gone back a step further and credited Brian Whelan who inspired you to look at her book who inspired me to look at it, etc. He could have mentioned everyone who has looked at the developing story and found instances of plagiarism in, by my count, seven of Hari's 'interviews'.

You say we also 'bolded a few extracts where I think the context does not suggest Joya was speaking the words to him'. All the bold parts are plagiarized from the book, and although Hari mentions the book in the article a couple of times, he doesn't once mention in the parts in bold that the words in quotes are from her memoir or even imply it. The idea that readers should somehow guess that he is chopping and changing in an 'exclusive interview' between real quotes said to him and ones he took from her book but hasn't attributed would be silly even if he hadn't plagiarized the lot. As he has, the bold parts are what he copied and pasted withpout attribution, ie plagiarized, from her memoir, written with a Canadian journalist. So there is really no need to give him any benefit of the doubt at all. Everything in bold is plagiarized directly from her book.

I've no idea what my views on Islam, or Guy's, have to do with it. And I worked closely with Guy on this, but we didn't just bang it up and go to the pub. I spent several hours going through the book thoroughly - more thoroughly than you did. I also tracked down the co-writer of the book, who confirmed to me via email that the article contained unattributed material from the book he wrote with Joya.

I'm not cowering in any MSM office anywhere. But if you hurry, you might be able to knock out another tenuous rant about Islam blaming people for things they haven't done before 5.; 1 July 2011 17:56
Cheradenine Zakalwe said...: That's amusing. I'm not sure what you think I'm blaming you for or where you detect any expression of bitterness against you or Guy Walters in this post. There isn't any there. I simply neutrally described what had happened. "Walters doesn't credit me with the initial find in his blog post but does in a comment below the line" and made no further comment about it since I don't much care about it one way or the other. You obviously feel some sense of guilt, however, otherwise you wouldn't have projected that feeling onto a neutral description.

I am glad Walters posted about this and that you helped him. Indeed, I tried to post a comment to that effect on his blog post on the New Statesman but either they have IP-blocked me or the system ate the comment. In fact, I tried several times to post the comment then gave up.

I have been trying to get someone in the mainstream to take up the story for the last two days and I made it clear I wasn't worried about getting credit for it. I've no idea who you are but I certainly wasn't thinking of you when I spoke of journalists cowering in offices. I was thinking of the journalists I have contacted by email over the last two days, telling them about this evidence, yet who declined to reply to me or take up the story despite its obvious newsworthiness. Obviously the political incorrectness of my views on Islam deterred them from wanting to have any association with me. Since you, presumably, don't have such views, they will feel no such reluctance about referencing your post. That is what your views on Islam have to do with it. And, finally, we can assume, Hari will get the come-uppance he deserves. For which we can all feel glad.

As for the quotes, you've included some I chose to leave out where, in my view, the context does not suggest that Joya is speaking. For example:

An extremely old woman was brought to her in a rickety wheelbarrow, and she explained she had lost two sons - one to the Soviets, one to the fundamentalists. She told Joya: "I am almost 100 years old, and I am dying. When I heard about you and what you said, I knew that I had to meet you. God must protect you, my dear."

She handed over her gold ring, her only valuable possession, and said: "You must take it! I have suffered so much in my life, and my last wish is that you accept this gift from me."

In any case, now that this Hari foolishness is heading towards its conclusion, I will now indeed get back to ranting about more serious subjects.; 1 July 2011 18:38
Jeremy Duns said...: Apologies - I see what you were saying now. Not guilty at all, but perhaps overly sensitive because a Guardian journalist on Twitter briefly tried to claim that Guy crediting and linking to this site in the comment below within a minute was somehow hypocritical (I don't think it was).

Agreed on all your other points. For what it's worth, the NS site appears to have some sort of a problem for comments, becaude I also tried to post there and it told me I had had my posting rights disallowed, even though I've never previously posted there or tried to. So I don't think that's just you.

The quote you mention is almost verbatim from the memoir. It is not attributed to the memoir. Copy-pasted text from other sources that is not attributed to those sources is textbook plagiarism. That's why that's bold, and the same applies to all the other text in bold. In two cases his plagiarism is better disguised, in most cases it's near verbatim, in some cases it is verbatim. The parts not in bold are also mostly paraphrased from the book. But we agree on all that.

Jeremy; 1 July 2011 19:54
Cheradenine Zakalwe said...: "Apologies - I see what you were saying now. Not guilty at all, but perhaps overly sensitive because a Guardian journalist on Twitter briefly tried to claim that Guy crediting and linking to this site in the comment below within a minute was somehow hypocritical (I don't think it was)."

I am completely cool with it, and I said that in the comment that didn't make it through. Because the Guardian is now linking to the original post (!), I even added an update to it commending you and Guy Walters, linking to your post on the New Statesman site and urging readers to go there to see the even more examples of borrowing that you had uncovered. The truth is now out there, which is all I ever wanted. Well done to all concerned.; 1 July 2011 20:03
Jeremy Duns said...: Thank you, and sorry to be snippy. Well done to you as well for following it up and spotting it. Having typed out and wrestled with the Kindle locations myself, I know it's no easy task!; 1 July 2011 20:13
Ralph Lynn said...: Hey Cheza! Damian Thompson is giving credit where it's due! It's filed under NEWS!; 2 July 2011 06:16
Cheradenine Zakalwe said...: Yeah, I saw it. Thanks!; 2 July 2011 09:25

Islam versus Europe

Where Islam spreads, freedom dies

Johann Hari Update

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