Category Archives: UK

MCB demands BBC apology

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Flooded by a torrent of support e-mails and messages from Muslims and non-Muslims, Britain’s biggest Muslim group demanded the BBC Tuesday, August 23, investigate and apologize for a “dishonest” piece of journalism made by the broadcaster on the respectable Muslim organization.

“Today, we sent a formal letter to the BBC with a point-by-point response to the Panorama program, demanding an investigation into the dishonest and distorted piece of journalism and a clear apology,” Inayat Bunglawala, media officer of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), told IslamOnline.net by telephone. “It is a calm and factual letter about the distortions in Panorama,” he added. “The BBC must apologize not only to the MCB but to all British Muslims.”

The program was broadcast Sunday night, August 21, entitled “A Question Of Leadership.” It suggested the MCB is “in denial” about extremist views among its members. The BBC program quoted former MCB member Mehboob Kantharia as saying the MCB was unwilling to accept the reality of the situation and therefore unable to deal with the issue in hand. But when contacted by the MCB, Kantharia said his statements were taken out of context.

“We have spoken with Mr. Kantharia, who asserted to us that he did not mention the MCB by name but his remarks were edited by the BBC to create suspicions about the MCB,” Bunglawala told IOL.

Earlier, MCB Secretary General Sir Iqbal Sacranie said in a statement e-mailed to IOL that the program was “deeply unfair”. He said the program used “deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain and with the barely concealed goal of drawing British Muslims away from being inspired in their political beliefs and actions by the faith of Islam.”

After Sunday’s broadcast, the MCB has received a torrent of support e-mails and messages from across the UK, denouncing the program for tarnishing its image, Bunglawala said.

“It has the opposite effect to what the Panorama team and the pro-Israeli lobby intended to do,” he said. “Instead of dividing British Muslims, it brought about an unprecedented unity and even Muslim organizations that have been critical of the MCB in the past like Hizb ut-Tahrir and the Islamic Human Rights Commission have issued statements of support on their Web sites.”

Islam Online, 23 August 2005

For the MCB’s letter to the BBC, see (pdf) here.

A new era of McCarthyism

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“A campaign is being orchestrated through the media to destroy the credibility of many of the most important Muslim institutions in Britain, including the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). The impact of this campaign – in the Observer and particularly in John Ware’s Panorama documentary last night – will be a powerful boost for the increasingly widespread view that there is no such thing as a moderate Muslim: underneath, ‘they’ are all extremists who are racist, contemptuous of the west, and intent on a political agenda.

“A legitimate and much-needed debate among British Muslims about a distinctive expression of Islam in a non-Muslim country has been hijacked and poisonously distorted. Journalists need to be very careful: we are entering a new era of McCarthyism and, if we are not to be complicit, we need to be scrupulously responsible and conscientious in unravelling the complexity of Islam in its many spiritual and political interpretations in recent decades.”

A good, hard-hitting article by Madeleine Bunting in the Guardian, 22 August 2005

Mind you, Bunting is herself not entirely immune to conventional double standards. She criticises Iqbal Sacrani’s attendance on behalf of the MCB at a memorial service for Sheikh Yassin, the Hamas leader murdered by the Israeli government. Would she similarly criticise the Board of Deputies if they were to send a representative to, say, a future memorial service for Ariel Sharon? I rather doubt it. And, if she did, can you imagine the accusations of anti-semitism that would be screamed at her? Yet, in the course of the second Intifada, the state terrorist Sharon was responsible for killing 4,000 Palestinians, whereas the number of Israeli deaths resulting from the actions of Palestinian militants during the same period was a quarter of that figure.

Why multiculturalism has failed Britain (according to Gilles Kepel)

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Gilles Kepel“France, ridiculed when Bernard Stasi and his commission first recommended a ban on all religious symbols in schools, has since excited the interest of those who note that this is, nevertheless, the country with the largest number of Muslims, with a population far greater than either Germany or the UK. The social control, they also remark, exerted by the combined results of secularism, conscious integration and a preventative security policy has led – according to the inverse terms of multiculturalism – to France being spared from terror attacks for the past decade.”

Gilles Kepel in the Independent, 22 August 2005.

Note the use of “the past decade” as the period of comparison. This has presumably been chosen so as to exclude the Paris Metro and other bombings of 1995. The “combined results of secularism, conscious integration and a preventative security policy” didn’t seem to have much effect then, did they? At that time, as I recall, the London Underground was, by contrast, spared any terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists, despite Britain’s commitment to multiculturalism.

Is it stating the obvious to point out that in both cases the bombings were provoked by the foreign policy of the country under attack – in 1995 by French support for the Algerian government’s brutal suppression of the FIS (which had been about to win a democratic election) and in 2005 by Blair’s participation in the bloody invasion and occupation of Iraq?

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Complain to BBC regarding Islamophobic Panorama documentary – IHRC

Posted on by Bob Pitt

IHRC is deeply concerned at Last night’s Panorama, “A Question of Leadership”. A combination of factual errors, distortions, broad stereotypes and glaring inaccuracies shown up in the programme questions the integrity of the programme makers.

A transcript of the programme can be found at:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/4171950.stm

Whilst purporting to be an examination of the Muslim Council of Britain, the programme called into question several widely held Muslim beliefs and in particular demonised any aspiration of Muslims in whatever form if based on their religious faith. This extended from an aspiration for shariah to the wearing of jilbaab at school and integration of Muslims into mainstream society.

IHRC alert, 22 August 2005

Immoderate Islam

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“Last month’s bombings seem to have changed so many attitudes – and yet still, it would seem, some of the most mainstream Muslim leaders refuse to face up to extremism. Last night’s Panorama documentary on the leadership of the Muslim Council of Britain and the views of leading British Muslims gave some indication of the distance the Muslim establishment still has to go.”

The Evening Standard takes up John Ware’s attack on the MCB.

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Muslim leaders accuse BBC of witch hunt

Posted on by Bob Pitt

“The row between the Muslim Council of Britain and the BBC intensified last night as the corporation accused the MCB of putting pressure on interviewees on a controversial Panorama documentary to withdraw from the programme.”

Observer, 21 August 2005

For Iqbal Sacranie’s response to last week’s Observer attack on the MCB, see here.

The Observer also includes “a selection” of the responses they received to last week’s witch-hunt of the MCB. See here. Read it and ask yourself, does this selection reflect an earlier statement by Rafael Behr at the Observer blog that “the overwhelming balance of correspondence we have received has been towards defence of the MCB and anger at the tone and content of our story”? See here.

Muslim leaders ‘in denial’ claim

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Britain’s most powerful Islamic body is “in denial” about the prevalence of extreme views among its members, one of its founders has told the BBC. The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) pledged to tackle extremism “head on” after the 7 July attacks in London. But in a BBC Panorama special, Mehbood [sic] Kantharia and other prominent British Muslims question the MCB’s commitment to meeting this challenge.

The MCB has branded the programme “deeply unfair” and a “witch-hunt”. Secretary general Sir Iqbal Sacranie said Panorama had used “deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the Muslim Council of Britain”. He said it had “the barely concealed goal of drawing British Muslims away from being inspired in their political beliefs and actions by the faith of Islam”.

“It is unfortunate that just when Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims are beginning to make progress in terms of their political participation in the mainstream, there are those who are purposefully trying to sabotage that process,” he added.

BBC News, 21 August 2005

Scotland on Sunday and Jihad Watch applaud Moderator’s stand

Posted on by Bob Pitt

Moderator“At last, a Christian leader breaks the deafening silence that, for too long, has muzzled those whose duty it was to speak out on behalf of the values of western society. The courageous comments of the Rev David Lacy, Moderator of the Church of Scotland, condemning the Islamist ‘hypocrites’ who treat their hosts as ‘enemies’ while leeching off the National Health Service, will find an echo among many of those people who fill his church’s pews – just as they will no doubt be deplored by voices within the liberal Kirk establishment. We say ‘courageous’ because, in recent decades, a climate has been generated, across all the Christian denominations, enforcing a liberal orthodoxy on church leaders from which they deviate at their peril.”

Editorial in Scotland on Sunday, 21 August 2005

Over at Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer applauds this as a welcome example of “anti-dhimmitude”.

Dhimmi Watch, 21 August 2005