Denis M. MacEoin (b. Belfast, Northern Ireland, 1949) has been editor of Middle East Quarterly since June 2009.[1] A former lecturer in Islamic studies, his academic specialisations are Shi‘ism, Shaykhism, Bábism, and the Bahá'í Faith, on all of which he has written extensively. MacEoin is also a novelist, writing under the pen names Daniel Easterman and Jonathan Aycliffe.[2] He and his wife live in Newcastle upon Tyne in the United Kingdom.
Contents |
MacEoin studied English Language and Literature at the University of Dublin (Trinity College) and Persian, Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Edinburgh. He carried out research for his PhD degree at King's College, Cambridge. His PhD dissertation dealt with two heterodox movements in 19th-century Iranian Shi‘ism: Shaykhism and Bábism.
From 1979-80, he taught English, Islamic Civilization, and Arabic-English translation at Mohammed V University in Fez, Morocco, before taking up a post as lecturer in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University.[2] In 1986, he was made Honorary Fellow in the Centre for Islamic and Middle East Studies at Durham University. He was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Newcastle University from 2005-2008.[3]
He has been married to homoeopath and health writer Beth MacEoin since 1975. She is the author of around 20 books on natural health, including the Natural Medicines Society book, Natural Medicine: A practical guide to family Health, which was published by Bloomsbury at the end of 1999, and Homeopathy: Medicine for the 21st Century (Kyle Cathie, 2006).
An advocate of alternative medicine since the 1960s (he was chairman of the UK Natural Medicines Society during the 1980s and 1990s), he has in more recent years taken a serious interest in the sociology and politics of medicine, and in the relations between CAM and conventional therapy. He has lectured to medical students on these topics. For many years, until its demise in 2003, he was chairman, then president of the Natural Medicines Society, a UK charity for the general public.
He continues to work on Islamic issues, particularly the development of radical Islam. He has written three reports for British think tanks, dealing with Islamic issues. The first was The Hijacking of British Islam, written for Policy Exchange. It purported to be a study of 'hate literature' supposedly found in British mosques and other institutions, however as a lead author of the study, MacEoin was later embroiled in controversy concerning allegations of blatant forgery, made following an investigation by the BBC programme Newsnight, and other acts considered both dishonest and unethical.
MacEoin later wrote a report on British Muslim schools, published online by Civitas, entitled Music, Chess and other Sins. In 2009, Civitas also published in hard copy Shari'a Law or One Law for All.
A dominant interest over the past ten years has been advocacy for the state of Israel, a topic on which he writes a blog and about which he has written widely.
On 12 December 2007, two months after the publication of The Hijacking of British Islam, BBC's Newsnight presented material which the programme suggested showed that some of the receipts purporting to prove the sale of extremist material had been forged, and that some of the literature had come from bookshops purportedly unconnected to the mosques named in the report.[4] Newsnight’s claims were as follows:
It might be supposed that the above 6 instances constitute all the evidence against MacEoin and Policy Exchange, however the Guardian Newspaper's Seamus Milne found other examples when he investigated further. Milne concluded "all nine receipts [out of a total of 20] so far investigated [were] either fabricated or inaccurate."[6]
The Guardian Newspaper reported that: "examination of receipts provided by the researchers to verify their purchases showed some had been written by the same person - even though they purported to come from different mosques. . . Several receipts also misspelled the names or addresses of the mosques where the books were supposedly sold."
When comment was sought from the researchers, Policy Exchange claimed that "The researchers were unavailable for comment because they were all on a religious retreat in Mauritania, " [7]
Policy Exchange responded to the individual cases cited by the BBC, arguing that there was still evidence to link each of the institutions to extremist literature. They have said 'The receipts are not ... mentioned in the report and the report’s findings do not rely upon their existence'. The BBC have suggested this is a tacit admission that some of the receipts were forged, and that it draws into question the whole testimony in the report.[8]
As a result of the BBC Newsnight investigation of the The Hijacking of British Islam report, both Policy Exchange and Denis MacEoin were later sued for defamation by the Board of Trustees of the North London Central Mosque Trust (NLCM) concerning the allegations made in MacEoin's report against the Finsbury Park Mosque.
A statement released by the NLCM Board of Trustees on 3rd of November 2010 said "In 2007, a claim by NLCM was issued against the Policy Exchange, and the author of the Report, Denis MacEoin, for defamation."
The case was initially dismissed on a legal technicality. The NLCM subsequently appealed that ruling. In April 2010 the Court of Appeal gave the NLCM permission to appeal against the initial decision striking out their claim of defamation against Policy Exchange and Denis MacEoin. The appeal was listed for October 2010, but before the appeal could be heard the NLCM accepted the defendants offer to settle out-of-Court.[9]
Policy Exchange subsequently removed MacEoin's now discredited The Hijacking of British Islam report from it's website.
He has published extensively on Islamic topics, contributing to the Encyclopaedia of Islam, the Oxford Encyclopaedia of Islam in the Modern World, the Encyclopædia Iranica, the Penguin Handbook of Religions, journals, festschrifts, and books, and has himself written a number of academic books.[2]
He was a member of the Bahá'í Faith from 1965–1980, but left the movement over differences with the administration, disagreements about Baha'i scholarship, and a basic loss of religious faith. For several years he published books and articles critical of Bahá'í practices, and their level of scholarship.
Since 1986 he has pursued his principal career as a novelist, having so far written twenty-three novels, several of them best-sellers. He uses the pen-names Daniel Easterman [10] (international thrillers) and Jonathan Aycliffe [10] (classic ghost stories in the tradition of M.R. James). Among the best-known Easterman titles are: The Seventh Sanctuary, The Ninth Buddha, The Judas Testament, Incarnation, Brotherhood of the Tomb, K, The Final Judgement, Midnight Comes at Noon, Night of the Seventh Darkness, Maroc.
Some Aycliffe titles include Naomi's Room, Whispers in the Dark, The Matrix, The Lost and A Garden Lost in Time. The Matrix is centred around an indestructible occult tome, the Matrix Aeternitatas (which, rather like the cursed talisman in M.R. James' "Casting the Runes") is unable to be given back once one has taken possession of it. The novel also features strong themes of black magic and necromancy.
A collection of his journalism was published under the Easterman name by HarperCollins in 1992 under the title New Jerusalems: Islam, the Rushdie Affair, and Religious Fundamentalism.