‘Tis the season of goodwill

Seasonal goodwill is seeping through almost everywhere in Greater Manchester, it seems, except the upmarket Tameside commuter village of Mossley, home to a notorious conspiracy theorist, Raja Miah.

49 years old, unemployed and, many would argue, unemployable, Miah has followed what can charitably be described as a spectacularly failed business career by running a portfolio of frequently banned social media channels under the style of ‘Recusant Nine’.

Miah uses Facebook, YouTube and Twitter (with the handle “Recusant Raja’) to relentlessly smear those who seek to expose him as a money-leeching fraud.

His core allegation over the past three and half years, and still extant today, is that Labour politicians in Oldham, aided by Greater Manchester Police, their safeguarding partners and senior paid council officers, covered up child sexual exploitation (CSE) in the famous old East Lancashire town, over many years, in return for Asian block votes at local and general elections.

Grotesque though that accusation is, it has never been supported by any evidence whatsoever by its propagator; he claims to have ‘a dossier’ but it still remains a secret known only to him. On one day he will claim he has handed his ‘evidence’ to police, on another day he will say that he refuses to co-operate with them.

What is known for sure is that he neither passed the ‘dossier’ to specialist investigators, who specifically examined his claims at the behest of the Greater Manchester Mayor, or agree to have the allegations tested in informal interview with them. A similar story to his refusal to debate them publicly with a local Muslim community champion in Oldham (read more here).

Instead, Bradford-born Miah relies on lurid, violent fantasies that involve ‘Asian cartels’, mobsters, goons, tyranny, fake car-jackings and purported threats to murder him and/or his family to maintain interest in his ‘CSE cover-up’ narrative and keep the money flowing in from his small but highly vocal support group whom, appositely, self-style as The Rabble’ (read more here).

In so doing, the ‘Malicious Beggar’, as he is now widely known, has alienated large tracts of the Muslim community in Oldham by way of his oft-repeated claim that Pakistani men, in particular, are either child sex abusers or, collectively as a community, know who the perpetrators are and say nothing.

Not content with offending one significant religious group in the borough, Miah has turned his attention to those of Christian faith; in a short Recusant Nine Facebook post on Christmas Eve, he compares himself to Jesus and The Rabble to the Prophets:

“A very Merry Christmas to all of my Christian family and friends. It will come as no surprise to those of you familiar with the teachings of the Testaments old and new that Jesus and the prophets all before him were Recusants. Here is just one of many passages that should resonate with all of us who fight tyranny.

“He who justifies the wicked and he who condemns the righteous are both alike an abomination to the Lord – Proverbs 17:15″

To those familiar with the outpourings of The Beggar, this level of narcissism, egocentricity and sociopathy will come as no surprise at all as he seeks to maintain relevance amongst The Rabble’s minuscule presence and the 237,410 (99.2%) residents in the Oldham Metropolitan Borough who are either not oblivious to his rantings or oppose them.

Very many will fervently hope that this particular season of goodwill is the last in which exiled Yorkshireman, Raja Miah, and Recusant Nine feature. Perhaps the criminal trial he faces in the early part of 2023 (read more here) or the latest defamation claim brought against him (read more here) will prove to be watersheds for Oldham?

In both cases he provides running commentary on social media and, within which, he robustly denies wrongdoing.

Page last updated Sunday 25th December, 2022 at 0820hrs

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