by Christopher Hart of Rageh Omaar’s second book for Penguin, ONLY HALF OF ME: Being a Muslim in Britain. The review is well worth reading, highlighting various contradictions and errors in the former BBC star reporter’s account. A sample:
Never have books explaining Islam been more needed. And you might have expected much from a Somali-born, Oxford-educated Muslim and leading BBC journalist, especially when his book is the second in a two-book deal for which Penguin paid around £600,000. Unfortunately, Rageh Omaar’s book on growing up a Muslim in Britain, interspersed with asides about his homeland, the Iraq war and the general Wickedness of the West, is a crushing disappointment: bland, platitudinous, muddled, lazy, factually unreliable and morally reprehensible.
There is only a single moment here when the disorienting experience of cultural translocation comes alive: when his family first flew out of Somalia in 1972, stopping over in Rome, and the five-year-old Rageh gazed on the city’s fountains, astonished by both the naked statuary and the prodigious waste of water. Otherwise the biographical material here is thin and puzzling. He tells us that he lived around London’s Edgware Road from “five until I was 25”, and while taking A-levels would pop into the “Husseins’ shop to buy cigarettes”. This is odd because I remember him spending much of his time as a boarder at Cheltenham College, a smiley little chap in the fourth form when I was in the sixth.
Unlike Rageh’s book, which, if his first volume is anything to go by, will be heavily discounted and remaindered within weeks, the rest of the review is well worth reading too.
Hat tip: commenter Ralph for the ST link.
Well, now, that is the thing. back in the day, many of us charged Rageh with bias over the war in Iraq. Now it turns out he really does have Islamist tendencies. Was he really the best choice to cover events like Iraq ? Hey, this isn’t about politics, it’s basic journalistic ethics. To borrow a line from a colourful former editor of the NYT ‘I don’t mind my journalists ****** the elephants, but if they do, they’re not covering the circus’.
In a similar vein, just how many Beeboids have outed themselves as moonbats after quiting ? And how many have proven to be equally far-out right-wingers ? Exactly.
Just one more thing. Yep, the BBC did try heavily to hype Omaar as much-loved and well respected reporter, but when the public finally had the choice over whether or not to pay for his insights – and despite the ‘no advertising’ BBC having him on every show except Gardener’s Question Time – his book stiffed. Out of touch, much ?
Rageh Omaar’s reporting was nothing like as accomplished as the Beeb spinners made out – his appeal seemed mainly to be that he was slimmer and better looking than John Simpson. His reports were characterised by a lack of facts and a reliance on “emoting” heavily for the camera. Now he’s with the rest of the rubbish at Al Jazeera, best place for him.
Rageh wrote a piece for the Sunday Times about 2 weeks ago on this theme.
“Am I muslim or british ?”
An interesting question in its own right. Another interesting question might be: “why do only muslims have this kind of problem – jehovah witnesses, buddhists, hindus, mormons, do not have this split personality”.
Sadly Rageh does not even answer his own question – instead he goes on a spree of blame-storming, where everything bad that ever happens to him or his family is because of their muslimity.
A relative is mugged – becoz he is a muslim, apparently. Rageh himself has to work his way up at a newspaper – they do not make him senior editor on day one. Of course this is becoz he is a muslim.
It ends with a bizarre claim that we have always been a bit muslim.
I think maybe he needs a doctor.
“Omaar has now left the BBC and works for the Arab television station, Al-Jazeera, which he feels is free from the bias and “fraud” of western coverage of the war in Iraq. He has won numerous awards for the quality and reliability of his journalism”.
I sense some heavy editing in this final passage of the Times article.
The relative who was mugged was mugged. Period. No proof that it had anything to do with his being a Muslim.
Victimology at work as usual.
Omaar doesnt like the “liberal fascism” of the West.
Well, thats easily fixed.
Hop off back to Somalia, theres a good chap, and you can see the flowering of islam first hand.
Back? He’s a British citizen