The BBC’s Very Own Trojan Horse Religious Programming

 

Aaqil Ahmed has claimed that sending Songs of Praise to Calais is entirely non-political…well, that’s obviously not true.

We looked at it in the last post but Ahmed has said a lot more in other places that suggest he uses religious programmes as political vehicles to carry a message, and indeed even  uses programmes officially classed as non-religious to spread that message.

Broadcast magazine tells us that ‘the topic of religious broadcasting – and its growing importance for any understanding of foreign affairs – has come back into the mainstream, after years when the TV world, politicians and regulators preferred not to think about it.’

Clearly then on that basis a programme from a highly controversial place such as Calais is not intended to increase knowledge of religion but to add pressure onto the government by saying that it is the ‘Christian’ thing to do to be welcoming to migrants….a different take altogether on a religious educational programme, using it to push a political message.

A paradox that the BBC, so antagonistic towards Christianity, should now co-opt it, under the guidance of a Muslim head of religion of all people, to further its own political agenda.

Ed Stourton told us that knowledge of religion and religious issues was important for understanding current affairs…however that should not be taken as endorsement for religion itself…

‘I do think that there is a problem with British culture… in the way that we treat religion as a sort of curious ‘ghetto’-like thing,” he told Press Gazette.

“And I don’t say that from the point of view of arguing that religion is a good thing – because very often it’s not.

“But it does damage our understanding and our ability to perceive stories accurately.”

Having worked in broadcast journalism for 35 years, Stourton suggested the British media’s indifference to religion is “deeply engrained”.

He added: “But it’s been perhaps made more apparent than ever by events since 9/11, because a whole area of quite complex religion has become very essential to the understanding of mainstream news,” he said.

The problem is that Aaqil Ahmed is not just informing us about religion but selling it to us as well, to him it is a ‘good thing’.

He tells us that although ‘Rev’ was not officially classed as religious programming he himself classed it as that, the same with ‘Citizen Khan’….he believes these programmes ‘help the population understand about religion and diversity in our community’.  I wonder how he classes ‘Father Ted’?

As for Citizen Khan I doubt that had the intended effect….watching it rather confirmed the notions you might have had about what Muslims think of non-Muslims and of Islam….as David Goodhart said, the more people understand about Islam the more ‘alien’ they realise it is…and the more we should speak up for our liberal, secular, democratic society.

Ahmed also tells us that the BBC’s ‘The Ottoman’s: Europe’s Muslim Emperor’s’ was a programme commissioned by his religion and ethics department and did not come from mainstream programming.  Clearly from the title Ahmed was intending to make a powerful political statement, one that tried to tie in Islam to Europe in order to spin us a narrative that Muslims belong in Europe and to tell a further tale of just how wonderful Islam was..is.  This wasn’t just history but a heavily politicised narrative with a message.

However the title is deliberately misleading…The Ottoman’s were Turkish and Turkey is not European, the Ottoman’s certainly ruled some parts of Europe in the Balkans but were not ‘European Emperors’ as Ahmed’s programme provocatively proclaims.

What is interesting, and controversial for the BBC’s narrative about the Islamic State, is the blurb for this programme which states:

Few realise the importance of Ottoman history in today’s Middle East. And why you have to know the Ottoman story to understand the roots of many of today’s trouble spots from Palestine, Iraq and Israel to Libya, Syria, Egypt, Bosnia and Kosovo.

If you understand the Muslim empire of the Ottomans you will undertand events in the modern day Middle East….the ‘roots of many of today’s trouble spots’.  You may think that would undermine the standard BBC line that all the problems in the Middle East can be traced back only to the Sykes Picot agreement and then to the 2003 Iraq War.  All history before then, and indeed much of it in that period itself that is unhelpful to that BBC discourse, is wiped from the narrative by BBC journalists ‘explaining’ issues such as the rise of the Islamic state….explaining them as the fault of the West.  However it was not long into the first episode until we got to the usual suspsects, and it wasn’t the Ottomans.  The British were set up as the guilty culprits, the cause of all the tension and conflict in the Middle East today.

This BBC description of the Ottoman Empire is somewhat more truthful than the template BBC statements on Islam and the Middle East we so often hear now and indeed than the BBC’s own programme on the Ottoman empire…

The Ottoman Empire was the one of the largest and longest lasting Empires in history.

It was an empire inspired and sustained by Islam, and Islamic institutions.

Why was it so successful?

Why was the Empire successful?

The recipe for success

There were many reasons why the Ottoman Empire was so successful:

• Highly centralised

• Power was always transferred to a single person, and not split between rival princes

  • The Ottoman Empire was successfully ruled by a single family for 7 centuries.

• State-run education system

• Religion was incorporated in the state structure, and the Sultan was regarded as “the protector of Islam”.

• State-run judicial system

• Ruthless in dealing with local leaders

• Promotion to positions of power largely depended on merit

• Created alliances across political and racial groups

• United by Islamic ideology

• United by Islamic warrior code with ideal of increasing Muslim territory through Jihad

• United by Islamic organisational and administrative structures

• Highly pragmatic, taking the best ideas from other cultures and making them their own

• Encouraged loyalty from other faith groups

• Private power and wealth were controlled

• Very strong military

  • Strong slave-based army

  • Expert in developing gunpowder as a military tool

  • Military ethos pervaded whole administration

 

Did you spot these statements that never normally make it past the BBC censors?…

• An empire inspired and sustained by Islam

• United by Islamic ideology

• United by Islamic warrior code with ideal of increasing Muslim territory through Jihad

 

 

So the religion of peace expanded its empire by utilising the ‘Islamic warrior code‘ and engaging in Holy, religiously inspired, war….Jihad!

Who’d have thought?!

I was also interested in this anodyne claim…’Encouraged loyalty from other faith groups‘….really?  Just how did they ‘encourage loyalty’ from non-Muslims?  History suggests that it was more at the point of a sword than gentle persuasion and mutual respect.

This claim is also of interest…’Highly pragmatic, taking the best ideas from other cultures and making them their own‘….so the Golden age of Islamic science was in fact standing on the shoulders of giants….a golden age which was actually based upon the science of other cultures and civilisations.  Which provides the answer as to why Islamic countries have been so backward for centuries…once Islam kicked in fully and imposed itself properly upon the nations its rigid, uncompromising, unintellectual approach to life, guided by the Koran, stopped all innovation and the spread of ideas.  They created a desert where thought, science, innovation and intellectual development were choked off by religious rules and certainties.

Once we understand that we can see that many of the BBC’s recent lines about Islam, that it is the religion of peace, that there is no connection between Islam and ‘Holy war’, that we should thank Muslims for all scientific progress, are somewhat less than true and are purely meant to persuade us that there is no problem with having a backward, unpleasant religion [to quote Mishal Husain] thrusting itself upon the European civilisations.

 

In the video at the top of this post, “God: TV’s Holy Grail?“, Roger Bolton from the BBC’s Feedback programme, states that programmes like ‘Rev’ are religious and teach us to care for all humans, that all human life is valuable however criminal or destitute and broken. He claims this revelation about humanity is one brought to us through religion alone and has nothing to do with the Enlightenment or being just part of the natural human condition and thinking…we are not naturally ‘humane’ or altruistic apparently…we need God’s self-appointed representatives on earth to guide us to the moral high ground.

That’s complete hogwash.  Religion is the most divisive and judgemental of any of the ideologies, if you’re not a Christian or a Muslim or whatever you’re going to Hell….so where’s the valuing all humanity regardless of sin or condition?  Not there is it?  Religions value only their own and to hell with all the rest…..which is a bit ironic when Bolton complained that it was the ‘liberal, secular elite’ dominating TV that had ‘a lack of basic understanding about religion meant faiths such as Islam were being oversimplified, leading to dangerous levels of ignorance.  The BBC had a responsibility to improve understanding about religion and not just for educational reasons. “It is also frankly for the safety of society,” he said.

You have to know about Islam and religion generally ‘for the safety of society’.  Go figure.

He rounded off by saying Muslims should get a sense of humour…‘Mr Bolton also said many listeners and viewers had written to the corporation complaining “that Christianity is unfairly treated: that other faiths do not have to put up with what Christianity has to put up with”.

He added: “What I do think is that Muslims in particular ought to be mature enough in this country to be able to take that humour and that Christians do have a right to say it’s about time that the satire which applied to them ought to be applied to others.”