ASSIST News has published an article (here, and reposted here) on Glen Jenvey and the Sun’s “Islamic Terrorists Target UK Jews” story. As readers may recall, Jenvey claimed to have uncovered the plot by monitoring a Muslim discussion forum, but evidence emerged suggesting that the poster “Abuislam” (or “Abu Islam”), who provided the meat for Jenvey’s revelation, may in fact have been Jenvey himself:
In an e-mailed statement, Jenvey denied being Abu Islam, adding that some inflammatory posts formerly on the site have now been either removed or manipulated to the forum administrators’ advantage.
He said, “Over the years I have monitored both www.ummah.net and www.ummah.com and their chat rooms. I know they hate me enough to try and discredit me.”
The email was sent to Jeremy Reynalds, a British Christian living in New Mexico who also monitors Islamic extremist websites – I noted his efforts in this regard in a positive blog entry I made in 2005. Reynalds also tells us that Jenvey is a different person from “Jonathan Galt”, a name which has appeared on Jenvey’s website occasionally and which I thought was a Jenvey pseudonym.
This is the second communication from Jenvey about the controversy since the “Abu Islam” story broke; as I noted previously, an anonymous comment on the blog of “Lionheart” carries the claim that:
Glen jenvey has agreeded for his hard drive on his computer to be read by a expert from the PCC and any other Newspaper.which will show he made no postings on ummah.com.
Curiously, this was followed by other comments written in the same style and published shortly after, but supposedly by different people – when Tim Ireland (who first noted the problem with “Abu Islam”) suggested sock-puppetry, these extra comments were removed and replaced by others.
Reynalds’ report goes on to complain about other extremist postings on the Ummah site, but neither he nor Jenvey address the points raised by Tim Ireland’s investigation – points which cannot be evaded simply by suggesting that posters and moderators at Ummah might have unpalatable views. In particular, it must be stressed that Ummah did not originally claim that “Abu Islam” was Glen Jenvey – the site linked “Abu Islam” to “Richard Tims”, who was spamming on behalf of a (now defunct) website which Tim Ireland noticed was owned by Jenvey. If Jenvey wants to email statements, these are the issues he must address:
1. Who is Richard Tims, and why was he spamming Jenvey’s “Sell Your Story” website on the websites of Ummah and of Jenvey’s friend “Lionheart”?
2. Given that Richard Tims’ message gave very little away and gave no indication of being either pro and anti Muslim, how would anyone at Ummah have known that a fake link to Jenvey could be made by linking Tims to “Abu Islam”?
3. Why didn’t Ummah make the link themselves? Surely we can’t be expected to believe that the moderators faked the trail and then were just waiting around on the off-chance that an unconnected blogger might happen to pass by and work it all out by checking “Sell Your Story” at Whois?
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