A Muslim news outlet has been identified as an Islamist extremist group by a Home Office counter-terrorism unit, leaked documents reveal.
5Pillars, which describes itself as an independent Muslim news organisation, was listed by officials as one of “the higher-profile IE [Islamist Extremist] groups operating mainly on X” and placed in a category labelled “of Islamist Extremist Concern”.
The leaked Home Office documents also identify the accounts of its editor, Roshan Muhammed Salih, and journalist Robert Carter in assessments of Islamist extremist online activity.
The outlet interviewed Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney in June and senior Green Party politicians during February’s Gorton and Denton by-election campaign, while its journalists have appeared on the BBC.
In a memo examining the aftermath of the Golders Green arson attack in March, when four ambulances belonging to a Jewish volunteer emergency service were set alight outside a synagogue, the Home Office’s Research, Information and Communications Unit (RICU) scrutinised 5Pillars’ coverage of the incident.
RICU accused 5Pillars of downplaying the seriousness of the attack, stating that the outlet and its associated journalists had “minimised its importance, emphasising the lack of fatalities and implying Islamophobic bias in HMG [Government] and media reactions”.
Counter-extremism officials cited a post by Salih in which he acknowledged the seriousness of arson but argued that “the media coverage of this is way over the top compared to the actual incident which resulted in zero casualties”.
A spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism said: “These findings are hardly surprising when the past rhetoric of senior figures within 5Pillars includes denying sexual violence in the 7th October Hamas attacks, describing Hamas terrorists as ‘the Palestinian resistance’, and calling Zionism a ‘satanic cult’ when 80% of British Jews identify as Zionist and only 6% do not.”
“Clearly the political echelon should have nothing to do with this extremist outfit.”
The RICU memo continued: “Throughout March and April, IE [Islamist Extremist] influencers, particularly 5 Pillars, the most productive, focused heavily on Islamophobic hate crime targeting mosques”.
Officials said Islamist extremist influencers had used the reaction to the Golders Green attack, alongside other incidents, to “stoke grievance narratives”.
