Tired of trying to co-opt moderate, liberal, and progressive Muslims, some rightwingers are now resorting to identity theft.

Richard Bartholomew writes that Gina Khan, a Muslim activist against extremism in the UK, is listed as an officer on the Facebook page of the group that calls itself the ‘The Cheerleaders’, a bunch of self-described anti-Islamist vigilantes, who have excelled at threatening mostly moderate and progressive Muslim bloggers, and especially liberal critics of conservative politicians in the UK, like blogger Tim Ireland. (Again, I see this theme of ‘Eurocon’ extremists using an anti-Muslim platform to attack a bigger ideological target, European liberalism – which has been done before).

After I published a mocking post about them last year, the Cheerleaders – or the individual who pretends to be the group – threatened several Talk Islam contributors and published their home addresses online. They (or he) also sent mail to at least one TI contributor’s house.

The affiliation with ‘The Cheerleaders’ would certainly be damaging to Khan’s reputation. Bartholomew reports that blogger Tim Ireland queried Khan about the group, and says she “declined to respond.” He also says that Dominic Wightman, a mendacious bit player in the UK’s extreme anti-Muslim right-wing who aspires to be a counter-terrorism consultant, also alleged that Khan has a relationship with the only known public figure of the Cheerleaders, Charlie Flowers.

Bartholomew writes:

I’m sure that Khan disapproves of threats, harassment, and identity theft, whosoever is the victim. I’m also sure that she has a busy schedule which means that she cannot pay full attention to all the messages she receives, or follow closely all the activities of the groups and bodies with which she is associatied. But being linked with the “Cheerleaders” is inconsistent with the values she makes so such effort to defend in her public activism.

Khan herself may be a victim of identity theft. She should not be held to be involved with the Cheerleaders until someone can get her to absolutely confirm or deny it, since the Cheerleaders have a history of misrepresenting themselves as affiliated with self-identified moderate, reform or progressive Muslims (even as the Cheerleaders spend so much time threatening them).

I should know: On the Cheerleaders Facebook page, my personal blog (progressiveislam.info) is represented as the group’s official blog, and of course I have no affiliation with the group and have actually received repeated threats from the individual or group that represents himself as ‘The Cheerleaders,’ both in online comments and in my blog email.