YESTERDAY, AN EXCERPT from a Daily Mail article appearing to try to link Great British Bake Off winner Nadiya Hussain with three of the 7/11 bombers went massively viral.
The excerpt reads:
Today her hometown of Leeds is bursting with pride. It was ten years ago this July — the same year Nadiya and Abdal wed — that four bombers attacked London; three of them were raised in or near Leeds.
The screengrab was shared thousands of times on social media yesterday, with many accusing the newspaper of Islamaphobia.
And with the article coming just one week after the newspaper published a review accusing the show of being too PC, people were quick to pounce.
This morning, however, it has emerged that the quote was kind of taken out of context.
The article in question was written by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and actually praised Nadiya for her win.
Nadiya has done more to further the cause of Asian women — and men — than countless government policies, think-tanks, initiatives and councils put together have achieved in the past half-century.
And watching her, I realised that you can fight discrimination and exclusion in many ways. Sometimes by forcibly opposing it; at other times by sweetly disabling it and making people laugh.
We all owe Nadiya a debt of gratitude, not just for entertaining us with her pastries and sponges, but for teaching us what it is to be British in 2015.
So, there you have it.
Even The Daily Mail can be nice sometimes.
Written by Amy O’Connor and first published on DailyEdge.ie.
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