Dispatches and the demonisation of Muslims

This week, Channel 4 broadcast a very controversial documentary, Dispatches: Undercover Mosque, which appeared to have a clear agenda to demonise Muslims and incite fear of and hatred against them. Preachers’ statements were taken completely out of context … that a mainstream figure like Lord Nazir Ahmad was even castigated as having extremist tendencies indicated the immense bias which ran throughout the documentary.

Moreover, by singling out Muslims for demonisation for holding beliefs shared by many other religious communities, the programme’s inherent Islamophobia was all too clear to see. Certain Muslim beliefs which were negatively portrayed as the doctrine of extremists are actually shared by Judaism and Christianity.”

Fahad Ansari at Open Minds, 19 January 2007

Muslims can never be British say fascists, citing Dispatches programme

BNP Islam Out of Britain“Gordon Brown today signalled that his first task as Prime Minister would be to get Muslims to rally around a ‘Churchillian’ pride in Britain. Admitting that he expected to take over from Tony Blair this year, the Chancellor said that he wanted to promote a ‘modern patriotism’ as an alternative to Islamic extremism. Mr. Brown said: ‘I believe we can do more to separate some Muslims from the dark forces that they can be susceptible to.’

“His apparent lack of understanding of the word ‘patriotism’ is a characteristic symbol of the vapid thinking of desperate liberal-leftists clinging onto power. Patriotism is loyalty to one’s own country and one’s own nation. Muslims can never be part of the British family of nations – they will always be outsiders because that is the basis of their faith, thus any attempt, which Brown doesn’t detail, to force Muslims to be patriotic to Britain is futile from the outset.

“Clearly Gordo didn’t get to see the C4 Dispatches documentary broadcast on Monday evening. The voice of ‘moderate’ Muslims in that programme confirmed what many have known for a long time. One is either a Muslim or one isn’t. There are no moderate or extremist Muslims, all Muslims believe in the writings of the Prophet laid down in the Koran and accept the struggle to achieve total domination of the world’s free people under the embrace of Islam.”

BNP news article, 19 January 2007

Like ‘a cheap Fox News report’ – Press Gazette on Undercover Mosque

Zoe Smith reviews the Channel 4 Dispatches “documentary” Undercover Mosque:

The reporter attended talks at mosques run by key organisations claiming to be ‘mainstream’and found preachers condemning integration, democracy and homosexuality. The hour limped on with little new or revealing information. So some Muslims hate non-Muslims. Some Christians hate gays and some Jews hate Arabs, but broadcasters don’t feel the need to make hour-long programmes insinuating that entire religions are to be mistrusted.

The irritating background music, which cranked into gear whenever a preacher used the word kaffir or kuffr, gave the feel of a cheap Fox News report. Patronising in the extreme, the decision to make dramatic cuts to footage of women in hijabs and burkhas whenever ignorant mullahs spouted off about male supremacy, was bewildering. Does Dispatches think the majority of viewers equate the hijab with the subjugation of women? I expected a huge pay-off. ‘Our programme has uncovered bigotry and intolerance,’ it concluded. What else would one expect from an hour-long programme about religion?

Press Gazette, 18 January 2007

Anti-Muslim incidents on the rise at Ontario college

McMaster University’s director of human rights and equity services is worried that racism and Islamophobia are growing on campus. Mark Walma said it is often subtle but it is affecting the environment for the school’s minorities, which include 1,500 students who are Muslim. He organized a seminar on campus yesterday to address the problem. It was attended by about 100 students. “We’ve been tracking an alarming number of racist incidents ranging from derogatory comments and opinions expressed by students and faculty to physical violence against Arab and Muslim students and it’s not a healthy climate for studying or working,” says Walma.

Hamilton Spectator, 19 January 2007

31% back MCB over ‘Genocide Day’

Remember how Islamophobic commentators attacked the Muslim Council of Britain because it argued that Holocaust Memorial Day was too narrow and instead advocated commemorating a wider “Genocide Day”? Melanie Phillips claimed that this was proof of “the open anti-Jewish hatred of supposedly mainstream Muslims“, while Peter Tatchell declared that the MCB’s stance “reeks of prejudice and hypocrisy“.

Well, a YouGov poll (pdf) commissioned by the Jewish Chronicle has found that 35% of respondents agreed that “the main focus of Holocaust Memorial Day should be to commemorate the victims of Nazi persecution”, while 31% said that “the day should be renamed ‘Genocide Day’, and be used to commemorate the victims of all persecution throughout the world”.

So, there’s evidently an awful lot of anti-semites reeking of prejudice and hypocrisy out there.

Postcript:  I should perhaps add that personally I think the MCB (who reportedly are currently discussing their position on this issue) are mistaken in boycotting Holocaust Memorial Day. My point here is that their motivation is not anti-semitic.

24 under fire from Muslim groups

TV drama 24 is under fire from Muslim groups in the US, which say the show’s latest storyline fuels intolerance. The current series begins with Islamic terrorists waging an 11-day campaign of suicide bombings across America. The Council on American-Islam Relations said: “Repeated association of acts of terrorism with Islam will only serve to increase anti-Muslim prejudice”.

BBC News, 19 January 2007

Dutch top diplomat says Muslims lack tolerance ‘gene’

Bernard BotDutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot says Muslims lack a tolerance “gene”, in an interview with the Brazilian daily Correio Braziliense.

“We always have been a tolerant country, and we still are. You have to look at the facts: 10 percent of our population comes from Muslim countries. They have gone on to become Dutch citizens, but they have different genes from ours. They are less tolerant,” Bot said in the interview published Wednesday.

Middle East Online, 19 January 2007

A far-right Christian warns against Islam

Should one offer unlimited love on all occasions to the neighbour who seeks your destruction? Surely not! This is not the Biblical message as far as I am concerned. Yet this is precisely what the Church is doing by embracing Islam. It is holding to its naked bosom the viper that has reaffirmed its dedication, down the centuries, to the total destruction of our Christian Church. Its mission of oblivion for our Church, first formulated on the sands of Arabia and reaffirmed a million times since – even up until the present day – has not been moderated or even modified, far less rescinded at any time since!

The fact that the viper hasn’t bitten on the first occasion, or the second or, indeed, the hundredth is no guarantee of reciprocated brotherly love, anymore than it is a safeguard against that fatal bite – which will inevitably be struck – if that religion is to be true unto itself. For the Church to embrace Islam, even in its “moderate” form – which is, after all, merely the reverse of the same coin struck bearing its founding image of fundamentalism and intolerance – is to embrace its own destruction and constitutes folly, may I say, of biblical proportions.

The devil takes shapes in many ways to deceive those who believe in God.

A BNP-sympathising Christian reacts to Channel 4’s Dispatches programme.

BNP news report, 17 January 2007

MP presses for forced-marriage law change

Ann CryerA Bradford MP has vowed to ignore any allegations of racism and Islamophobia as she takes her campaign to put an end to “evil” forced marriages to Home Secretary John Reid. Keighley MP Ann Cryer tabled an early day motion demanding the Government take action to end the “rape and false imprisonment” of women and girls, and make forced marriage a criminal offence.

This is Bradford, 18 January 2007

Cryer, of course, has never been constrained by the thought that she might be inciting racism or Islamophobia (see, for example, here and here).

For the Muslim Council of Britain’s views on forced marriage, see (pdf) here.