UPDATE - the petition has been sent to the publishers and the editorial board on Monday 18/9.  Anyone signing after that date will send the message below individually. The offending article has brought widespread condemnation from scholars around the globe. The article lacks empirical evidence, contains historical inaccuracies, and includes spiteful fallacies. There is also an utter lack of rigor or engaging with existing scholarship on the issue. The peer review process exists to ensure rigor in published research. We understand that this piece was rejected after review, and that decision should have been respected and this sub-par scholarship should never have been published. Editor or editors at Third World Quarterly allowing this piece utterly lacking in academic merit to be published should be replaced from the Editorial Board.We do not call for the curtailing of the writer's freedom of speech. We instead hold ourselves and our colleagues in academia to higher standards than this. We expect academic journals to do the same. Our goal is to raise academic publishing standards and integrity. We call on the editorial team to retract the article and also to issue a full apology.