Whose calendar?
“Violence sweeps Iraq on Ramadan”
Two problems, maybe three, or more, with this headline and splash across BBConline frontpage tonight.
1)The violence alluded to appears no worse than on many other days in Iraq over the last couple of years. Loathe as I am to follow the body count rule of headlines, this doesn’t seem to qualify for the big splash effect.
2)The violence alluded to has occurred at two or three discrete locations, particularly one site in Baghdad where a disgusting car bomb killed many. Terrible, but not ‘sweeping’ Iraq.
3)What’s all this business about Ramadan? To 90 percent (plus) of the BBC’s telly taxpayers it has zero significance. If it’s the justification for the headlines then to whom is the BBC directing its coverage? I have no objection to a World News facility but not divorced from the UK ta very much.
As a sidenote, I would say that the BBC’s wrapping in this story with one about torture is a classic example of unwarranted generalism for emotional impact (so I hope no one objects that the picture is irrelevant- all complaints directed to BBConline). Notice how the headline in this case “Iraq engulfed by tide of violence”deliberately elides the distinctions between issues. Notice also that this article, from John Simpson, was posted in the “Americas” section. I wonder why?
Never one to miss an opportunity to bash the Yanks, Simpson brought a bitter smile to my face by saying “The Americans have never put enough foot patrols in the streets, and they long ago lost control of many towns and cities as a result.” Yeah right, John- love that hauteur, btw, so BBC– as if your organisation didn’t herald every US casualty as a sign that things were “spiralling out of control”, as a sign that the “cakewalk” was turning to “quagmire”.
The cravenness and opportunism of the BBC. Nice.
Meanwhile, if you waded through the quagmire treacle, or picked up on a short note towards the beginning of the BBC’s tidings of woe, you’d have found a really good piece of news which is better summarised here.
I’m right up there with you about most of this piece, but i can’t agree about the ref to Ramadan. It’s obviously significant in the Iraqi (ie Moslem) context.
Cast your mind back to the Arab-Israel war of 1973, The Yom Kippur War. It means v little to most Brits, but was highly significant to the Israelis (ie Jews), as it was their most sacred day.
I can’t imagine you’d expect even the famously anti-Israel BBC to refer to that conflict by any other name.
Cheers.
The reason it is aimed at the USA is for the same reason Lord Haw Haws radio brodcasts were aimed at Britain. It is to demoralise the enemy.
It’s rather sad to consider that the BBC thinks the US is the real enemy…
The BBC is deeply in love with the Iranian terror regime because the regime is an implacable enemy of the US and Israel.
Now that the BBC has been largely overrun by staff supportive of Islamic terrorists, it’s an absolute obscenity that it is still extorting money from British taxpayers.
The British public is being forced to fund Islamic terror propaganda.
Kulibar-
I have no problem with the reference to Ramadan per se, just with the notion that it could be the reason why violence in Iraq is news just now, as opposed to being (unfortunately) business as usual. I think genuflecting to the significant moments of the Muslim calendar is in a sense inviting an analysis based on the Islamist priorities.
Btw I hope no one thinks that I’d like to banish mention of Iraq’s problems. Far from it. Probably I’d like more of it. I’d just like to see an impartial, non-tribal, dispassionate take on things. It does sound like madness I know…
I’d also add that what I describe in the post is just one of those “typical” things- not much more, if at all, than business as usual at the Beeb; and not so very different to the rest of the media.
Ramadan is hugely significant in this context.
In years past during Ramadan, violence normally ebbed in general. Part of the reason is that because during Ramadan a strict fast is observed during daylight hours – making people less inclined to actually do anything much at all – and people are meant to be filled with a spirit of compassion and holiness. It looks like this year is going to be different, and as a result, the game has changed.
I know it’s hard for most of us in the UK to grasp the importance and significance of Ramadan, but imagine it was the start of Lent – imagine though people actually observed it – leading up to a holiday 10x more important than Christmas and Easter combined.
I’m not a Muslim, but because I actually know about the culture, I know how bad this is. The fact the violence is not ebbing, is alas, a bad sign of what is to come. It’s one thing to call the BBC biased, but when you do that out of a position of ignorance, you just make yourself look stupid and the BBC informed. Tread carefully.
Ooh- not sure how to take that “tread carefully”.
I think that Ramadan is just a period of time when Muslims fast. Not surprising, that, in religions generally, but I can’t imagine the BBC considering a story more newsworthy if it happened during Lent. I refuse to be spooked out by another cultures’ traditions; the BBC seem to think it has some eery worldwide significance.
Paul Robinson writes:
“…a holiday 10x more important than Christmas and Easter combined.”
To you, perhaps. In spite of your claim not to be a Moslem, I’m somewhat somewhat sceptical.
Or perhaps you suffer from the fashionable liberal disease of ignoring and undervaluing one’s own culture, while over-emphasising someone else’s?
I don’t, on this occasion, agree with the entirety of ed’s point, however I am very aware that the BBC is on a mission to ‘familiarise’ us with Islam.
No doubt it’s all a part of the corporation’s kneejerk philosophy of tout comprendre, c’est tour pardonner .
Despite (of course) the manifest idiocy of that principle, when confronted by a rabid dog.
Hmmmmmm, Paul Robinson says In years past during Ramadan, violence normally ebbed in general
But the author of the article under discussion, Violence sweeps Iraq on Ramadan, has this to say:
In recent years there has been a spike in violence in Iraq throughout the holy month and US officials are predicting that it will be much the same this year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5373050.stm
So who is the stupid one and who is informed here?
And what is this idiocy about Ramadan being 10x more important than Christmas and Easter combined?
Maybe it is to Paul Robinson – who assures us that he is not a Muslim. Not yet, I imagine.
I like the Tread carefully bit.
I’ve seen endless crappy excuses and justifications for the BBC’s gross bias from BBC fans and apologists on this site, but this is the first time I’ve seen something that looks like a threat.
So, ed, I suppose you can expect to come to the attention of the Thought Police. It means you must be doing something right.
Another Ed Thomas post, another rather unsavoury picture. The picture of the lady with a noose round her neck was pretty uncomfortable, as is this one of someone who’s been beaten.
Can’t special links be used instead of posting these images directly onto the page? It’s not something that I really like to witness without a conscious choice.
“Tread carefully”. This is very sinister. Can Paul Robinson tell us what he means by that?
I doubt that Paul Robinson will be back to debate anything. He’s most probably one of the hit-and-run crowd who pop in to try to sow confusion and then flit on to the next blog. They don’t have the sense of responsibility or the clarity of purpose for an actual discussion. It’s quite revealing of the kind of people the BBC attracts.
And regarding the point of Muslims being less inclined to actually do anything much at all over Ramadan, no doubt good Muslims are excused from fasting if they have heads to saw off and women and children to blow up.
Definitely true. You should check out this new blog below.
http://www.disillusionedandbored.blogspot.com
Interesting points of view.
Please don’t be too unpleasant to Paul Robinson – we need a bit of input from outsiders to keep us on track, and prevent any “group-think” from developing.
I mean – this is what has gone wrong at the BBC and it would be sad to see this B-BBC forum turning into a right-wing echo chamber, where we all just defined our views as “the opposite of the BBC”.
Its quite easy to do this – I have ended up feeling very pro-Israel, based on no real knowledge of the place, but just because the BBC is so keen to bash them.
Going back to GCooper’s post, I would agree that the BBC seems definitely to be on “a mission to familiarise us with islam”.
The most notorious example – from many – has got to be the weird episode of “Balamory” where the children visited – yes – a mosque ! They have never visited any other religious place.
In fact CBBC has some of the more extreme examples of the BBC’s biases, fetishes, and taboos. Just one example is the “turning up the colour” too much – for example “Kerrching” just before tea time seems to be “hideously brown”.
.
hmmm.. i’m not a prude. but if i want torture photos, i know where to go to get them. i’d rather the b-bbc didnt turn into another ogrish.
(and yes , i know, its your blog. but i am a regular reader. so , thought i’d put my head above the parapet so to speak).
Archduke, I’m quite squeamish myself- and I’ll be more careful in future. It’s just that this came from the BBC’s own coverage, as part of the package they offered last night. Somehow this photo was supposed to be linked to the bomb attack in Baghdad which really was news. Somehow.
“www.disillusionedandbored.blogspot.com
Anonymous | 24.09.06 – 2:46 pm |”
bookmarked! great find. thanks.
i’ll be following that one.
ed -> i take your point (that is , your are just reflecting the torture porn on the bbc site itself)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5371394.stm
its quite disturbing how they show a torture victim in a dispassionate , non empathic way – its just there to illustrate the bbc’s spin on things i.e. using someone elses suffering to further your agenda.
which is rather close to the death porn of the Hezbollah/Hamas crowd.
I will probably get things thrown at me with vigour, but I didn’t think that torture victim looked that bad. Obviously, his back hadn’t been bathed and there was a lot of dried blood making it look more gruesome.
He looked as though he’d had a bad beating. But nothing like the young boy who died on Friday as the result of a gang beating him to death on the violent streets of Britain.
So, we’re beating this fellow and others in Iraq to save our civilisation. But what’s to save?
a. we shouldnt be doing it
b. we have a lot to save. its called the last 2000 years of western civilisation.
Western civilisation did not come about by being dainty.
Yes, we should be torturing people who threaten our civilisation by trying to take it back 1200 years to primitivism – much worse than this guy who just got some lashings. Big deal. He’s fat. He was on his feet. So what? He knew he was in a war.
Western civilisation evolved through being brutal. It’s called “We want to win and we want you to lose, asshole.”
Given what we’ve got in our civilisation that the mohmaddens absolutely love – the internet, planes, TV, digital cameras, pole dancing – I’d say we’re on the right track and they are, as ever,losers. That fat guy didn’t look that bad. Even if he had, so what?
OK, let’s clear things up. Sorry this is a long one, but there’s a lot of ground to cover, and I want to give you more of an idea of where I’m coming from (and therefore waffle in places).
“Tread carefully” – what I meant was that unless you understand the nature of Ramadan and why it has a significance it is hard to relate to in the West, you risk making yourself look foolish, that’s all. Any argument you make now about the significance of this or that event in Islam is now going to be undermined to some extent because it looks like you have made no attempt to understand the nature of the most important holiday. It’s not “just a time Mulsims fast”. It’s an incredibly important time of the year for the devout. Even for the none devout, Ramadan and it’s end (Eid) is far more important than even, say, Christmas is here for most atheists (who still celebrate it anyway). Your paranoia that this was a threat is a symptom of your own insecurity. No threat intended on my part. Relax. I’m a Nice Guy.
No, I am not a Muslim. I am however fortunate enough to have a wide network of friends which includes some very peaceful, very loving and intelligent Muslims. As for the implicit allegation that I must somehow be “corrupted” by Islam, I can only assume that certain people here are trying to advance a political ideology alien to the principles of British society and who have never actually had a conversation with an average, everyday British Muslim. Do I want to become a Muslim? No. Do I believe in God? No. Do I think my friends are nice people who don’t deserve to be tarnished with a racial stereotype? Yes.
As for the spike in violence, I should clarify my point. My understanding was that at the beginning of Ramadan there has historically (how sad we’re that far in we can now talk about the historic trend of this war?) there was a lull in most insurgency attacks against allied troops. It was also my understanding what increases there were, were in terms of Shi’a and Sunni factions fighting each other, but they were isoalted pockets.
It would appear I was misinformed/misunderstood and got it wrong.
However, if the truth is that Ramadan is a period where there is increased violence, my original point in asserting that there was a point to it being mentioned in the headline stands. Ed’s point was that it was unneeded. If the point of the story is that BECAUSE it’s Ramadan the level of violence is going to change, then it makes sense that Ramadan is mentioned, no?
Next: Do I undervalue my own culture and over-value anothers? No. I love my culture. I just don’t buy into the same credit-card debt, mondeo on the drive, 2.4 kids, toxin-laden mcdonald’s for lunch, television watching[*], celebrity obsessed, money chasing bullshit culture most of the UK is signed up to.
I like the UK particularly and Europe in general, but I find some of the intolerant right-wing crap and nonsense annoying, ill-informed and lacking intellectual rigour. However I like the principle that we get debate and certain freedoms (although with 300,000 CCTV cameras, not too many of those left) so tolerate it all until it becomes really nasty and then I’ll argue back. I also grew up in the Peak District and love the countryside, I am a regular at Lancashire cricket home games and drink real ale. I’m a Northern lad. As such, I have no desire to move to a cave in Pakistan.
Do I also like other cultures? Sure. Turkey has great food and is generally a cool country, so are large chunks of the US (my Father lives in California), France is tres cool, Italy is fantastic, so is South Africa (although too much poverty), and if you ignore the 0.00001% of the population living in the Middle East who’ve lost the plot, that’s got some great culture too – modern Iranian music is not what you would imagine it to be at all. As a vegetarian, I am grateful for the region’s invention of hummus too. 🙂 See, I don’t like the snobbery British society has towards travel – if you deviate from package tours to the Med and accept other cultures have something interesting, you are declared ‘a dangerous liberal’, which is in complete contrast to what I believe British society is about. British society isn’t about morris dancing, Christianity and village life (it never has been). It’s a set of political and moral principles. That said, Orwell’s essay ‘The Lion and The Unicorn’ – written during the second World War – is full of stereotypes that I can relate to, even if I disagree that they’re really what makes us ‘British’:
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/lion/english/
Am I liberal? In the sense that I believe in individual freedoms, tolerance, respect, compassion and understanding, yes. In the sense that I believe democracy is more than majority rule – that it must also respect minority rights and individual power, yes. Do I think that all war is unjustified? No. Do I think we’re fighting this war badly (no sense of the Geneva convention in force, war crimes, Haditha, poorly-equipped troops, mission creep, lack of strategy and inappropriate tactics, etc.), and for the wrong reasons? Yes. Do I think we should pull out right now? No – it’ll only lead to full-scale war across the region, it’ll cripple the global economy and cause more hardship here than you can possible imagine. Do I think we can win this war? No, but I think we can drag it on long enough to make sure nobody on the planet goes to war again for some time (c.f. World War 2). Does that all make me a liberal? It doesn’t matter what I say, you’ve made your minds up already.
Will I be back to debate other points? Maybe. I think I can safely assure you that I’m not somebody who just leaves a point hanging unchallenged, and if you have a problem with me, I’ll come back and deal with it.
Again apologies for this being a bit of an essay, but some of the assertions here are pretty ill-founded and offensive. That’s all for now (save for the footnotes)…
[*] It might seem ironic that I make a point about the absurdity of TV culture in a forum dedicated to picking up the bias in the BBC. The truth is I dislike TV in general, I think it rots the brain. At least with the BBC you know where the bias is coming from and to what end. That said, the last time I watched one of their headline news programmes I was surprised at how far off they were from the newsnight/today crowd, and how dumbed down it all was. I expect the bias you perceive is actually just an attempt at making the news ‘accessible’ to a poorly educated audience. In general, the entire media is biased to the same end – the stuff about the Pope’s speech a few weeks ago was a case in point: if you actually read the speech, you will find it concludes with an invitation for theologians to engage with the Muslim school of thought that God is transcendtal in nature and to remove the Greek/Socratic influence prevalent currently. Strange nobody in the media bothered reading that far.
Paul Robinson, you make many good points and one in particular in the last sentence. The Pope’s speech “fury” was nothing of the sort until that particular sentence was quoted by the MSM, and, I believe, first by the BBC.
You are quite right to question why nobody bothered to read on, and I can only find one conclusion: the speech was there for everyone to see, and it is absolutely inconceivable that not one BBC journalist read the whole speech and realised the true context of it. Therefore, one can only conclude that they deliberately misconstrued the Pope’s words in order to stoke up more Muslim hatred for Christians, and the West by proxy. This was a story not started by Muslim reaction, but started by the press (and as the first to unearth it, I believe the BBC). It has already resulted in murder, not to mention large amounts of damage worldwide. Other MSM live and die by their viewing figures or readership, but the BBC, as a taxpayer-funded organisation, is different. Do we really have to pay for an organisation to behave like this? Is this being accountable to the taxpayer?
Last night was a similar case in point, when the late evening news found someone who had tried to detonate an Israeli cluster-bomb by himself and lost 4 fingers in doing so. We then had a half-sentence quote ending “…this makes us hate Israel even more.” More to the point, methinks, what was he doing fiddling with a bomb when the BBC had just reported that there were bomb disposal experts everywhere? Why was this story of individual stupidity (don’t want to sound too unsympathetic but there you go) broadcast if not to put forward an anti-Israeli agenda?
We all appreciate it is difficult to be totally unbiased, but the BBC at times follows an agenda that not only educates what you so cutely term “a poorly educated audience”, well… poorly and with many pertinent facts missing; but, far worse, seems to directly push all the “anger” buttons in the Muslim world, which, unfortunately in today’s climate, is tantamount to inciting murder.
In my opinion, and many others on this board, we are in a long, ideological war between the West and a radical Islam based in the Middle East, but which has infiltrated the West to a huge degree. The BBC, sadly, has aligned itself on the wrong side. This is not what we pay our TV licence for.
“Am I liberal? In the sense that I believe in individual freedoms, tolerance, respect, compassion and understanding,”
These days that makes you a ‘convervative’. The label ‘Liberal’ has been hijacked by socialist totalitarians.
BTW I know all about Ramadam. But since, as we’re always being told, the terrorists are not ‘real’ Moslems it shouldn’t surprise us that they have no respect for the holy days.
Paul Robinson,
Well, it seems that I have misjudged you and you are not one of the hit-and-run crowd. Sorry about that. But I’m not going to let you get away with watering your comments down now that you’ve seen that there are people around here with more than a few brain cells to rub together to make a spark:
When you first claimed that Ramadan was 10x more important than Christmas and Easter combined it was a blanket statement with no mention of atheists. To me this smacked of arrogance and assumed superiority. It also made me think of the intolerance that leads Muslims to oppress followers of other religions and, indeed, to attack and kill them.
Unfortunately I wont be taking up your offer of learning about Ramadan. I understand that study of Islam is not yet compulsory for adults, though your Muslim friends are making great strides in forcing it on children. However, my lack of knowledge will not prevent me from shining a spotlight on errors when I come across them as I did in the 12:49 pm comment.
You are also trying to water down your tread carefully comment: Your paranoia that this was a threat is a symptom of your own insecurity. Forget the pop psychology. Paranoia is concern about an imagined danger. Islam proves on a daily basis that it is very dangerous indeed. And I don’t buy your justification for your words. It rings hollow. Do you really expect anyone to believe that you said tread carefully out of concern that we would make ourselves look foolish. Come on, Mr. Robinson, you’re among adults here.
A final point that you might like to consider: I know a bit about religion and there is one guiding principle that I believe to be vital: people should enter into faith of their own free will. Coercion and religion are utterly incompatible. I wonder what your Muslim friends would make of that.
Ed,
Concerning that picture of torture, the Beeb are here even less honest that you think.
The picture appears on Jon Simpson’s article “Iraq engulfed by tide of violence”, of 22 Sept 2006, which purports to describe events of the last couple of months.
BUT THIS PICTURE IS AT LEAST 11 MONTHS OLD, as it had already appeared in an article on USAtoday on November 16, 2005,
See here (scroll down a bit):
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2005-11-16-iraq_x.htm
Nice, isn’t it, the BBC collecting material from different times to create a critical mass of outrage.
Addendum to my previous post (PIMF):
The John Simpson article with the picture in question is of course this one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5371394.stm
Anat,
Good spotting.
It’s so typcal of the BBC’s devious style to use old photos without revealing that fact. They can’t bring themselves to put File photo in front of the caption – so people know it doesn’t refer directly to the article, or use some other device to make that clear.
But why waste an opportunity to ratchet up the emotional anti-war rhetoric out of concern for journalistic ethics?
I wonder if BBC hacks even care that people can see right through them.
Anat- good point.
Bryan: I think you’re on some weird medication.
Surach 2,256 from the Qu’ran says: “There is no compulsion in religion”. The Pope mentioned this in his speech as well. Mohammed was aware of it. All Muslims are. Anybody who says there is compulsion is ignorant of Islam.
The rest of your comments are just… weird. I’m sure we’ll cross each other at future points – this thread is getting tired.
The rest of your comments are just… weird.
What profound points you make, Mr. Robinson. I’m not sure where to even start refuting that staggering observation.
So I’ll have a brief look at There is no compulsion in religion.
I don’t think the apostate who is facing death for rejecting Islam and the infidel who faces dhimmitude, exile or death if he does not convert to Islam would be comforted to know that they are not being compelled to embrace Islam.
But I’d like to remind you that this site is about BBC bias. And nothing throws that bias into sharper relief than Islam.
And I meant to add, remember the kidnapped Fox journalist and cameraman forced to convert to Islam at gunpoint recently in Gaza?
Hell, I dunno, maybe I’m stoopid but that sure seemed like compulsion to me.
No compulsion?!
Read what a Pakistani born ex-Muslim seeking refuge in Canada has to say:
http://isaacschrodinger.typepad.com/isaacschrodinger/2006/09/fear_and_loathi.html
I think his Muslim friends have managed to take over Mr. Robinson’s mind. He’s now walking around babbling repeatedly, “No compulsion in Islam.”
I just quoted the Qu’ran.
My exact point is that extremists are not Muslims because they are not familiar with the Qu’ran themselves.
You think all Muslims are violent pigs overdue for slaughter, and are convinced that if one person says he does what he does in the name of Islam, it must be something all Muslims agree with. You have no idea how ignorant you actually are – true Muslims do not believe there is any compulsion in religion, because that’s exactly what their holy text tells them.
To assume that because somebody calls themselves a Muslim that they are guided by their faith is ridiculous. I know plenty of people who call themselves Christian who don’t have a shred of compassion, tolerance or love in their entire bodies.
You think all Muslims are violent pigs overdue for slaughter
Where has anybody said such a thing on this blog?
Give us an exact quote with attribution please.
Paul Robinson, you say:
Surach 2,256 from the Qu’ran says: “There is no compulsion in religion”. The Pope mentioned this in his speech as well. Mohammed was aware of it. All Muslims are. Anybody who says there is compulsion is ignorant of Islam.
My exact point is that extremists are not Muslims because they are not familiar with the Qu’ran themselves.
You are the ignorant one, Paul. Your Muslim friends have managed to pull the wool over your eyes so thoroughly that you can’t even see the most basic things going on in the Muslim world.
You may be able to parrot this No compulsion in religion bit that they have fed you, but I’m sure you don’t know the context from which those words have been plucked. No, I don’t either, and I have far better things to do than go ploughing through the Koran.
But instead of sulking, you should investigate the issue. Do you know how many Muslim countries have a law that apostasy – that’s rejecting one’s religion, in this case obviously Islam – is punishable by death? No, I don’t either but I can name Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. And I’d be amazed if Iran does not have the same law. Do you remember the Afghani who was recently sentenced to death in his own country for converting to Christianity? So please don’t try to convince us that it’s only a handful of misguided Islamic terrorists who would coerce others into following Islam only because they themselves are not real Muslims Compulsion to follow Islam is written into law in Muslim countries.
You have allowed yourself to be deceived about Islam. I’ll give you another example of deception: Those who want to convince us that Islam is a “Religion of peace” quote the Koran as stating, “He who kills one person it is as if he has killed the whole world.” Or something like that. But they omit to mention that the context of this statement is oppression of Jews. Jews are being warned here of dire consequences if they so much as touch the hair of a Muslim head.
I came across this on a BBC World Service debate between a Muslim and an apostate who knew Islam backwards. The Muslim quoted the above quote and the apostate then challenged him by providing the above context. The Muslim had no answer. The BBC presenter hurried the programme along lest her Muslim guest be embarrassed by his inability to respond to the challenge.
What she should have done, and would have done if she were not a brainwashed BBC employee, was to have pressed her Muslim guest to respond. But that is far too much to expect from the BBC.