Is the BBC biased? draws this to our attention:
The British public has such “poor religious literacy” that a modern audience would be baffled by the Monty Python film The Life of Brian – because it would not understand the Biblical references, a senior BBC figure has claimed.
Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC’s head of religion and ethics, told The Independent that failings in religious education over two generations were undermining public understanding of contemporary national and international issues.
This is probably his scariest comment:
“You had generations that missed out. We have poor religious literacy in this country and we have to do something about it,” he said.
Scary because you just know exactly what he intends….though we are told:
“I’m not saying for one second that everybody has to understand religion and therefore become religious,”
Yeah…right.
This is probably his most laugh out loud absolute hogwash of a statement…because we all know the real reason few people make jokes about Muhammed:
Ahmed also claimed that a key reason that Islam is not the subject of more humorous discussion is that the life of the Prophet Muhammad is poorly understood by large sections of the British public. “How can anybody tell a joke about Muhammad when they don’t even know how to spell his name, let alone anything about his life? The day we have people standing up and telling detailed jokes about Muhammad and have the audience understanding that humour, then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.
Let’s give that a go…..here’s a satirical cartoon based upon most people’s understanding of Muhammed and his legacy….most people know what the Koran says about killing the infidel, the House of Islam and the House of war, and they know what is done in the name of Islam by some, many, Muslims, hence they think this cartoon represents a true picture of what Islam means to them:
That is their understanding of Islam and Muhammed…..I imagine that is not what Ahmed requires them to think….and he’d want to censor that….for the likes of Ahmed there is only one way to ‘understand’ Islam…..and it’s not the medieval warlord using religion to excuse the plundering and killing of the non-believer….as historian Tom Holland tells us happened.
Ahmed is right in way of course….not as he intends….because it is the fact that some people, the BBC for instance, refuse to accept that image of Islam, that definition of Islam, because they refuse to accept such an ‘understanding,’ they see no problem with the Islamic ideology and therefore cannot see the need for a ‘cure’, for reform, as Tommy Robinson and Tariq Ramadan both urge, no need to think hard about the effects a growing Islamic influence is having on society and politics….but they are all too ready to blame the ‘West’ instead…its foreign policy or alleged discrimination at home ‘alienating’ and radicalising Muslims.
Until our leaders admit the true nature of Islamic extremism, we will never defeat it
If politicians refuse to acknowledge the true nature of this extremism, they will never counter it effectively.
They see only good in the Koran and refuse to accept that it can lead to a great deal of harm….because to accept that would mean they would have to do something about it…and that is the last thing they want to do.
On Christianity the BBC are a lot harsher….on Thursday Melvyn Bragg had a reverential look at the Book of Common Prayer….but reverential though he was he still managed to openly admit that it was a book that ‘split the nation’, that it was ‘poisonous’ in its effect….and that was a book that didn’t insist you kill anyone if they didn’t believe the same as you. (and Bragg tells us that the English Civil War cost more lives per capita than the First World War…something to chew on)
Ex-nun, Karen Armstrong, has called the Bible a ‘toxic arsenal that fuels hatred and sterile polemic’…..about time we had some honest debate about what’s in the Koran as well.
When the likes of the BBC admit that the Koran is not a ‘good’ read then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.
Boris Johnson of course already understands:
To any non-Muslim reader of the Koran, Islamophobia – fear of Islam – seems a natural reaction, and, indeed, exactly what that text is intended to provoke. Judged purely on its scripture – to say nothing of what is preached in the mosques – it is the most viciously sectarian of all religions in its heartlessness towards unbelievers. As the killer of Theo Van Gogh told his victim’s mother this week in a Dutch courtroom, he could not care for her, could not sympathise, because she was not a Muslim.
The trouble with this disgusting arrogance and condescension is that it is widely supported in Koranic texts, and we look in vain for the enlightened Islamic teachers and preachers who will begin the process of reform. What is going on in these mosques and madrasas? When is someone going to get 18th century on Islam’s medieval ass?
I simply can’t wait for the Islam jokes on the next edition of ‘Have I Got News For You’ ………..
Well, they’re not as bad as most of TV, but still cough and look embarrassed and try to wriggle out of it
Jimmy Carr, the comedian, said he was saving all his Muslim jokes until the end of his career because he wants to go out with a bang – literally.
The BBC’s Head of Religious broadcasting must be a total, disingenuous twit if he thinks the reason people don’t make jokes about Islam is because they don’t know enough either about it or its unpleasant founder, Mohammed. The reason people don’t make jokes about this disruptive death cult is because they are only too aware of the consequences to both them and their loved ones. Instead, we must cower, tread on eggshells and basically keep our mouths shut.
As the great, modern conservative philosopher Roger Scruton has said, “In the presence of Islam, we all feel, you have to tread carefully, as though humouring a dangerous animal. “
We should have gone secular decades ago.
We did, and look where it got us.
I disagree, we should have kept our Christian values especially in our schools.
What an surprise. A muslim head of BBC’s “religion” department of bias.
“The Ottomans” told us just how biased BBC has sunk to.
A muslim (Raggy-Ars* Omar) trying to pass off muslims forcing christian families to give up their children as SLAVES as a “good thing”
2 years ago an arrogant middle class “wimmin” spokesthing sneered about them employing 68% NON-British, NON-White, NON-Christians as “redressing the “balnce” of British public
Odd though they won’t redress the disproportional amount of gays and lesbians at the BBC to national levels isn’t it ?
Usual double stndards from these pompous creeps
The pure arrogance of these muslim so called “commentators” never fails to amaze me, more galling still their apologists, and non is worse or more sycophantic than Karen (the coherence of her
incoherence) Armstrong.
The retarded and dangerous ideology they protect
and consistently lie for, at all costs, will be the death of them … and all of us if it gets its way.
I ll set the scene not unlike the prison from “midnight express” wandering around and around, droning.
” a snippet of formal prayers at Mecca, Islam’s holiest city. As Muslims circumambulated around the Ka’ba, the following supplications were blasted on a megaphone, chanted to by Islam’s devotees:
O Allah vanquish the unjust Christians and the criminal Jews, the unjust traitors; strike them with your wrath; make their lives hostage to misery; drape them with endless despair, unrelenting pain and unremitting ailment; fill their lives with sorrow and pain and end their lives in humiliation and oppression; inflict all your tortures and punishments upon the unjust Christians and criminal Jews.
This is our supplication, Allah; grant us our request!”
yep! … feel the love!
just like Teddy Bear … this from the open thread
Aquil Ahmed eh! … from the man who can t get enough of lying about his own retarded ideology, to further its aims – doctoring multiple absurd documentaries, about it at our expense,
and attempting at every insidious opportunity to create that perceived “illiteracy”,
“According to the Independent, Mr Ahmed claimed that comedians don’t make more jokes about Islam because the religion is so poorly understand by large sections of the British public”
Correction it is understood only too well – don t the few times the viewers, (remember them) have actually been given the chance to let you know, in viewer votes Mr Ahmed? … jog your memory?
Doesn t that tell you anything eh! ?
Mumbai – Madrid … hilarious,
7/7 – 9/11 … be still my aching ribs,
Westgate – Kenya … tee hee
Murdering sleeping school children or
people coming out of church …. ha ha ha
FGM – Honour Killing hee hee
gang-raping children oh somebody stop me
etc etc etc etc.
The penchant for lying, cheating, genocidal fascism to achieve world domination directly from the “holy”? texts.
proclaiming a lying antisemitic mass murdering child rapist with a mental illness as an ultimate role model?.
I mean … laugh … I thought i d never start
mind you … that said
The BBC consistently trying to sanitize all of the above … there is something very funny about that
Oh and this from the man, who has turned one of the few faith based programmes left on Sunday TV, into an Islamic laughing stock … there s a joke in there somewhere
And you have smile at “Ottomans Europe Islamic Emperors”
irony obviously not one of his strong points “
I well remember teaching a class some comparative religion.
We had done storyboards on the lives of Jesus and Buddha-four pictures describing four key events in their lives.
We had now to do Muhammad and Islam by way of balance-but not allowed to draw his
a) gold digging of an old lady
b) marrying a 9 year old
c) beheading Meccas Jews
or d) flying up to heaven on a winged horse.
So we did his birth, marriage, camel trading and death.
Try doing THAT when all you draw is a big black rectangle…as if he`d left all the coathangers in his burqa!
I laughed-the kids laughed…but sure as hell, the school didn`t.
Nor would they ever-zees eez NOT a joke…this is Eezlam!
Get your facts right. He married a 6 year old, she was nine when he raped her.
I stand corrected Dave!
See trolls?…easy to get it wrong and then retract!
I have now moved on…did muhammad raise loads of money for charity, wear seedy sunglasses and advertise the age of the camel train…Mecca, Medina non-stop except to butcher any Jews that crop up along the way.
Am now trying Allah Akhbar in a Savile voice….very similar in fact, gyzn` gals…or “beardies and beaten” as it translates into classical Arabic!
Will try and get Jon Culshaw to try in for the Now Show…how much do they pay?…thirty pieces or more?
Did anyone catch the Ottoman programme? It was shocking propaganda, blamed Britain for all the worlds woes. Rageh Omaar came across as an Armenian genocide denier.
No james-you might need a ritual washing after watching that though.
I`m guessing that the BBC feel obliged to undo the good that they did with Schamas series on the Jews…and Omar and the Ottoman would probably hack it.
Saw his stuff on Islam a while back…one long Eid sweet sucked up on a weeekly basis.
If only we`d have been nicer to them in Armenia, Poitiers or Vienna eh?…I imagine they`ll be selling this revisionist crap to Al Jazeera or Memri soon enough-to encourage yet more JIMs(jihad,islam, muslim) to cram on those leaky boats of theirs.
When are we going to learn?…not with Raggy and Eid Miliband around.
In the final Part 3 of ‘The Ottomans’, Muslim Omaar played down the 20th century Muslim massacres of Armenians and Greeks, and played up his propaganda for getting Islamising Turkey into the E.U.
George, dont ever forget that Dopey David Cameron also thinks Turkey’s accession to the EU is a fantastic idea!
I trust the series on the Ottomans will include coverage of their contribution to the slave trade.
Though I posted most of this originally in the Open thread, it seems now more relevant here.
I don’t know how much BBC output in recent years has been dedicated to educating their audience to understand religions, but judging by the BBC attitude towards Christianity, or in fact, any religion except the deference to appease Muslims, I would venture to say ‘not very much’.
Certainly having a Muslim head the department in a predominantly Christian society indicates the priorities that the BBC are more interested in fulfilling. One must wonder just why a Muslim who is supposed to understand our society would accept such a position. Surely he would question the motive of the BBC for putting him in such a position.
But they did, and he accepted it, and judging by the lack of news to do with any religious programmes that put their head above the horizon, presumably this suited the BBC perfectly.
Now with an upcoming mini-series about pilgrimages, Aaqil Ahmed, the BBC ‘chosen one’, has given an interview with the Independent about it.
Without realising it, some statements he’s made have exposed his ‘alien’ mentality, even though he probably thought it would make him fit right in.
He’s first made the observation that younger generations wouldn’t understand the humour in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, since they lack the understanding of content and context surrounding it. This is probably true, but after several years holding the position in what must be the most powerful medium to address that ignorance, just what does he believe he has done about it?
Mr Ahmed said that a basic grasp of religious issues is necessary for the public to understand wider contemporary issues.
He said that religious understanding would help us understand things from why women chose to wear face coverings to what is happening in Syria.
But he added that he is not trying to impose religious knowledge on BBC audiences.
Except first there is no religious reason for women to wear face coverings, but we all know to which religion he’s referring. The same one that has to do with Syria – which is largely Islamic extremists trying to gain power over the more secular Assad.
Is he trying to justify the actions of militant Islam, because usually the ‘moderate Muslims’ constantly repeat the mantra that actions of these extremists are based on a misunderstanding of Islam – the religion of peace? 🙄
So what should we understand?
The ‘piece de resistance’ is this:
Ahmed also claimed that a key reason that Islam is not the subject of more humorous discussion is that the life of the Prophet Muhammad is poorly understood by large sections of the British public. “How can anybody tell a joke about Muhammad when they don’t even know how to spell his name, let alone anything about his life? The day we have people standing up and telling detailed jokes about Muhammad and have the audience understanding that humour, then we will have come a long way in society and we will have a lot more religious literacy about a major world figure.”
So notice we are not talking about Life of Brian any more but onto Muhammed, and how it should be spelt.
Wikipedia tells us:
The name is transliterated as Mohammad (primarily in Iran and Afghanistan), Muhammad (in Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Malaysia), Muhammed (Arab World, primarily in North Africa), Mohamed, Mohammed and Mohamad (Arab World), Muhammad (Arab World), Muhammed, Muhamed (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Muhammed, Muhamed, Muhammet, or Muhamet (Turkey and Albania).
In Latin, it is Mahometus (hence Italian Maometto) and Μωάμεθ (Moameth) in Greek. In Catalan and in Spanish, it is Mahoma, in Portuguese, it is Maomé, and in Galician it is Mamede. In Polish it is Mahomet. In Russia, it is Мухаммад (Mukhammad), another common spelling is Магомед (Magomed). In Somali, it is Maxamed. In Senegal and in other West African nations, the variant is Mamadou. In Kazakh, the name is Мұхаммед (Mukhammed). In Chinese, it is written as 穆罕默德 (Mùhǎnmòdé).
I can’t see how it’s possible to misspell that name.
As for humour, I just can’t think of anything that could be seen as humorous about a religious leader that marries a 9 year old, or a religion that tells us that Christians and Jews are descendent of pigs and apes, especially when that religion is from the same descendent – Abraham 🙄
But let’s assume some bright comedian could come up with something witty, does anybody remember what happened to the creator of the Mohammed (or is it Mukhammed) cartoons?
What a disingenuous moron this man is, but given the position the BBC have given him, could he be anything else?
Yes, the BBC has indeed become Islam Not BBC (INBBC).
It is the willingly dhimmified organisation propagandising for Islam through Muslim and pro-Islamic broadcasters.
And it is self-satisfied with its own cultural and political subservience.
lefties, what do you think of this joke, would something like this be acceptable to your sensibilities if told on al beeb, say on HIGNFY?
Mohammed spent a lot of time up mountains, slaying goats and raping children,
Jesus spent a lot of time around the docks and managed to feed the 5000 on fish.
And that, people, is the difference between gross prophet and net prophet!
Clever. I like it. Nice one David
stephen nolan has had 2 nights in the row in what i would call bash the christian phone ins, it makes me sick the way they always question and mock the christian faith on radio 5 live,not once have i heard 5 live and co ever question or scrutinise islam or muslims,are problem is as christians is we turn the other cheek to much and should be a bit more militant towards those who are trying to destroy are christian cultural heritage in this country called england.
Tariq Ramadan is the grandson of rabid islamist/jihadist Hassan al-Banna and is about the worst person to refer to as far as moderation of islam is concerned. He is real wolf in sheep’s clothing being caught out at several instances in practicing taqiyya
Supplementary information on Tariq Ramadan for INBBC:-
http://www.newenglishreview.org/blog_direct_link.cfm/blog_id/50583
The thing is while the British Public know nothing about Christianity, thanks to the bBC they know everything about ‘Islam’ especially that it is a religion of …….Peace
As does Dopey David Cameron who said about the murder of Lee Rigby:
‘ there is nothing in Islam that justifies this dreadful act’
How the fuck does that arsehole know that?
“we have to do something about it,” he said.”
—-
Always catches the eye when a member of Beebworld uses that ‘we’. It’s seldom good things in good ways. Or too clear who falls under that ‘we’, and who isn’t invited.
That’s what I call the “Pronouns of Collective Guilt”:
“We” oppressed them…
It’s “Our” fault…….
It’s up to “Us” to do something…
Surely only this blog could cite a ‘reverential’ programme about the Book of Common prayer as evidence of the BBC’s hatred for Christianity.
“Surely only this blog…”
Surely, just a disparate collection of individuals, of which you, if you can get your head around the dilemma, are clearly part?
The whole left hand, left hand thing can be vexing, one appreciates.
Ludicrous comment-you`re a walking advert for BBC groupthink aren`t you pal?
I heard this programme too-didn`t catch what our friend says was said..but funnily enough he heard what he needed to hear, and I got my message too.
They were different-because we are…and this site allows for that.
The BBC does not-neither do you with your lazy catch-all comment.
I saw no conspiracy-nor does anybody else, apart from agreeing that the BBC are up to something 24/7…cultural massage maybe?
Start the Week is one of the best things on the sadly -reduced BBC…and the BCP one was up to standard.
So buzz off and pick an aimless controversy with the BBC, not us. Tell them they`re not Islamic enough-sure you`ll get some result that`ll get the attention you`re needing.
YOU`RE the one calling yourself a conspiracy-and your comment suggests you`d rather like that.
Can you imagine Monty Python doing a ‘Life of Sadiq’ – me neither – they would want to keep their heads.
Working on the script
“He’s not the prophet – he’s just a naughty boy”
“Christiani Ite Domun
Hindi Ite Domun
Sikhi Ite Domun
Buddhi Ite Domun”
Popular front for liberation of England
The Front for the popular liberation of England
The English Liberation Popular Front
Will have to be ‘X-rated’ – all the blood, guts and under age sex.
Don’t want to come over all holier than thou but it’s
Now you listen here,he’s not the Messiah, he’s a very naughty boy. 🙂
Aaqil Ahmed didn’t mention another possible reason for the absence of Islamic humour. This is a quote from Ayatollah Khomeini “There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humour in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious. Islam does not allow swimming in the sea and is opposed to radio and television serials. Islam, however, allows marksmanship, horseback riding and competition ..” So maybe showjumping and shooting as long as you don’t enjoy it.
He said it was one key reason, not the only one, and it would seem patently obvious that UK viewers are much more familiar with the life of Jesus.
He actually calls.for more.jokes about Mo yet you still have him down as an extremist.