Consistent Stream of Inaccurate Stories about Muslims in British Newspapers
Miqdaad Versi, assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, has been seeking corrections for inaccurate reporting since last November.
So far he has secured almost 20 corrections and retractions and a further 20 complaints are being examined by the press regulator Ipso.
Versi said he has flagged up five inaccurate reports by The Sun, three by the Express and three by the Mail Online.
Inaccurate reporting has caused a "rising hostility towards Muslims" in Britain, he said.
"This has real-life consequences as far-right extremists share such false stories, leading to rising hostility towards Muslims," he told The Independent.
There have been a number of corrections made in recent months as a result of complaints made by Versi and others.
Among them was a December report in the The Sunday Times which stated that "enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim". The story was also picked up by The Sun, the Daily Express and the Mail on Sunday.
It was based on a report by government integration tsar Dame Louise Casey, which claimed thousands of Muslims in the UK were so cut off from mainstream society that they estimated the country's Muslim population to be 10 times larger than it was.
However, it later transpired the survey cited was based on respondents in one school, and that they were asked about Asians, not Muslims.
The headline in The Sunday Times was subsequently changed to "Britain is 50-90% Asian, say schoolchildren".
The full correction read: "We reported in ‘Enclaves of Islam see UK as 75% Muslim’ that the Casey review of integration would say that some segregated Muslims believe Britain is 75% Islamic."
