MCB demand apology
We’ve taken our eye off the Muslim Council of Britain for a while here at MWW, so we missed the BBC Panorama programme, A Question of Leadership, which focused on them and whether or not they were in denial about extremism in Britain.
Now the MCB has demanded an apology from the BBC. A spokesman said:
Last night’s programme was a complete travesty, which deliberately used selective quotes. The central theme of the programme, that the Muslim Council of Britain was in a state of denial about extremism, was presented in a deeply dishonest manner.
[…]
It was dishonestly presented and mischievously edited to present a pre-conceived view. We are absolutely disgusted with the clearly Islamophobic agenda of this programme.
The BBC has defended its programme:
The BBC has every confidence that the programme was fair and impartial and a timely contribution to the present debate taking place within the Muslim community. We were reporting on the debate, which continue.
Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the general secretary of the MCB, had tried to prevent the screening. During the show, he was asked if the government should have put pressure on the publishers of The Satanic Verses to withdraw it. He replied:
We respect the freedom of expression but we expect freedom of expression to be exercised with responsibility
Which, as Ophelia Benson points out, actually means “we feel obliged to say we respect the freedom of expression but in reality we’re dead against it.”
The best resource for information, links, and analysis of the whole affair is Bartholomew’s Notes. Go there to learn more.
I still can’t understand why the government holds up Iqbal Sacranie as a “moderate Muslim”.
Ask Salman Rushdie if the man who supported his death sentence and said that “death would be too easy” for him is moderate.
Since all the Panaorama people are Kufar, anyway, why should the little muslim facists bother?
The whole thing is disgusting – but you cant expect anything better of any religion….
Moderate muslim? No such thing – qu’ran doesn’t allow for it. What gets on my tit’s is that Blair knights the b’stard! Christ, Ran Fienes had to walk miles in the freezing cold and lost some toes to get his. At least he is an inspiration for human endeavor; knighting Sacranie is an insult and it just cheapens the award for those that really deserve it.
At the time of the Satanic Verses uproar Iqbal Saccraine said that insulting the Prophet Mohameed is the “most serious crime under Islamic law”.
15 years later and nobody has pointed out to him that we do not live under Islamic law. We are a secular country that lives under no relegious law.
So looking back to 1990 he may want to ask himself why a secular nation should exercice Islamic law in order to deny someone freedom of expression.
Sacranie *wants* the UK (the world, in fact) I believe to be under an Islamic theocracy. He should piss off back to an Islamic state and preach from there.
I’m fed up witrh Muslims and other religious bigots trying to dictate what I should be allowed to watch/hear/read in the privacy of my own home, and them expecting me to “respect” their religion. It is perfectly clear that they have absolutely no intention whatsoever of respecting my rights and freedoms, though I believe I am far more rational than they are.
Hey – If we really have to have censorship, let’s start with the Bible, and the Q’oran shall we ? We can take it from there, and see what happens.