“An imam has retracted statements about evolution and the right of Muslim women not to cover their hair after death threats were made against him”, says the BBC.
Compare the BBC’s treatment of the story about the fatwas and death threats Usama Hasan was subjected to with the article over at Harry’s Place, where there’s a cross post from The Spittoon. From the choice of illustration used in the BBC’s article I almost sense mild amusement. Others take the subject very seriously.
The threats emanate from what they call ‘A Pair of White Muslim Extremists.’
A quote from a comment concerns the BBC.
“I remember listening to a white convert to Islam on the BBC Asian Network […..]And he was saying that all the Hindu and Sikh listeners would end up in hell with horrendous tortures if they did not convert to Islam.[…..]even when the National Front were at their peak, a white man could not get away with such blind hatred for Asians on the BBC like that. But in the name of religion, you can spout a lot of vicious hate, especially if you are a white convert who will scream ‘Islamophobia’ if you so much as call them out for their bigotry.”
Thanks for bring this up, I was going to wait for a new board but I see that somebody else noticed how the bBC covers this story of a man in the UK receiving death threats from a couple of white islamic converts in the Uk because he (As a born muslim) doesn’t subscribe to the tenents of Islam as these new racist bigots do. To recap a coloured man in the Uk receives death threats from 2 white men and the bBC headline read:
Imam on defensive over evolution
I do hope Justin Webb will find time to sneer at the imam’s religious belief which “denies science”, like he did with Sarah Palin.
INBBC: forever Islam’s friend, censors this:
“Democracy Akbar! Coptic Church of St Mina and St George is torched by ‘thousands of Muslims’”
[Extract]:
“Apparently, the clergy in this church are still unaccounted for. There isn’t a mention of this barbarism on the BBC, or, for that matter, in any of the ‘mainstream’ media. As far as they are concerned, it hasn’t happened.”
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2011/03/democracy-akbar-coptic-church-of-st.html
Excellent article by Cranmer. Thanks for sharing, I don’t always remember to read his blog.
I see there’s been a tiny alteration to the BBC article on this story. They’ve altered the name of the university he lectures at – from Westminster to Middlesex. They’ve also deleted ‘trained in physics and engineering.’ Apart from that the article is the same as it was.
However, the Quilliam foundation seems to be taking the matter very seriously.
“During the 1990s Usama Hasan was formerly a prominent British-based extremist who openly supported international jihadist causes and translated a number of key Wahhabi texts from Arabic into English. In recent years however he has publicly renounced his former views, challenging extremism through his mosque, through community networks and through the mainstream and Islamic media. This has made him a prominent target for Islamists extremists.”
“The issuing and the distribution of the fatwas against Hasan was meanwhile co-ordinated by Saleem Begg (aka ‘Abu Zubair’) a prominent Wahhabi preacher partly based at Lewisham mosque in South London. Begg (who also helps run the radical islamicawakening.com web-forum) was helped by a network of Wahhabi extremists based in a number of mosques through east London, including the increasingly hardline Masjid-al-Ansar mosque in Goodmayes and Redbridge Mosque. Saleem Begg also produced a youtube video in which he directly and openly argued that the killing of Usama Hasan was permissible.”
So all this extremism, known about and openly being preached in the heart of our capital city is not very newsworthy.
“His reason for not also resigning from the mosque, as his opponents have also demanded, however, is that he believes that without his moderating presence, the mosque will become an overt centre of jihadist activity, as happened to Finsbury Park Mosque under Abu Hamza. Hasan has currently received no support at all from the government or from any of the many Muslim religious institutions funded through the Prevent programme” “
Even if all that was of little interest to the BBC, I would have thought their ears would at least have pricked up at the bit I’ve highlighted.