The BBC’s ‘Sunday’ carries on as usual with its unusual world view that is at so odds with everyday folk.
We had a piece on the pages of the Koran found at Birmingham University. The BBC did ask some very awkward questions for Muslims that these Koran pages raise…such as the carbon dating may show that this Koran may show that ‘Islam’ may have been in existence before Muhammed, the man who allegedly ‘invented’ the Koran…which is kind of awkward. However the carbon dating was only done on the paper used for the Koran, and there was no control reference material to compare the dating process results with….so there could be few genuine conclusions about this Koran either way really. Anyway all that was dismissed by someone expert from Birmingham who said, in his opinion, that he didn’t think that any of that was true….the Koran couldn’t predate Muhammed. Yes…‘in my opinon’ or ‘I think’.…..a valuable ‘expert’ insight.
We then had a Muslim councillor from Birmingham tell us that this showed the Koran was unchanged for 1400 years…’unlike’, he slipped in, ‘other religions’. Now that is kind of aggressive isn’t it, a bit unnecessary. Why mention that? If I was a Jew (Though I believe the Torah is itself unchanged and considerably older than the Koran) or Christian living in Birmingham I would be thinking that this councillor clearly has no respect for other religions and looks upon them as false….therefore what does he think of ‘us’? Curiously the BBC didn’t ask, or didn’t broadcast the question and answer, about the questions raised of the authenticity of the Islamic narrative about Muahmmed and the Koran. Possibly the answer was somewhat detrimental to the tolerant image of ‘Islam’..much as the ‘unlike other relgions’ is.
We also had a piece that portrayed East Germans as prejudiced, backward hill-billies who hated religion and immigration…and hating immigration and religion was a bad thing, not allowed in the BBC’s view (an irony really when the BBC has spent so much time and effort trying to smash and discredit Christianity despite the lip service of Songs of Praise). Who did the BBC have on to discuss the issues, and it all related to immigration of course, a Christian and a Muslim, Rev Dr Christophe Tylermann and Dr Riem Spielhaus, no other voices appeared to put any view other than the one that said East Germans were essentially racist, atheist barbarians….unmentioned went Hungary, which I suspect was the real target. Curious how you are not allowed to have anti-immigration views.
We also had on Alister McGrath, an extremely aggressive Christian (a fanatical convert from Atheism justifying his own personal journey?) who steamrollered Atheism, shouting it down in effect, ironic in that he attacks Dawkins for being an ‘extremist’. The presenter seemed to be in happy agreement with him as he claimed and wished for the end of Atheism….the presenter suggesting Atheism perhaps, as a ‘movement’, was a ‘busted flush‘ and asking when we might expect the ‘funeral of the new Atheism’. Colourful eh?
McGrath said that Atheism was a ‘hopelessly outdated way of looking at things’….unlike the 2000 year old Christian world view? No explanation of what Atheism actually represents and why it critiques religion, and no reasons why religion is good for the world, better than Atheism. We also heard that there was no contradiction between science and religion. Somehow that doesn’t seem to be the real picture does it?
No voices putting the other side here which would have been fascinating given the aggressive, bombastic nature of McGrath. Christopher Hitchens is well missed.
The BBC also looked at this ‘Bishop Michael Nazir Ali, expresses his concerns on the latest stage of the government’s plans for ‘countering extremism’ which will be discussed at the Conservative Party Conference this week’ which I’m sure we’ll hear a lot of as it is a narrative that the BBC seems all too ready to follow…that it is the government’s anti-extremism programme that is driving radicalism itself….a BBC narrative that we have just looked at.
I’m an atheist, Life of Brian is my favourite comedy film, I loved Fawlty Towers. However, isn’t John Cleese arrogant!
I’ve seen that clip before and I got the sense that Cleese simply didn’t understand that there were people outside his own intellectual bubble who might actually be offended by ‘Life of Brian’. I don’t have a problem with the film, although I find the final scene making fun of the crucifixion a bit difficult to watch – would people laugh as willingly at the crucifixion of ISIS victims, for example?
Of course the cowardly thing about the Pythons is that they did not follow up with a film making fun of Islam. I never really found them very funny anyway and I know I am not alone !
Islam wasn’t part of the debate (we are having now) in the late 70s, so to suggest Phython’s were cowards because they didn’t then make a film about Islam is just nonsense. Personally I think its a great film.
I agree with you Englands Dreaming. But despite loving the Life of Brian and not believing in a benign God I still found some of Cleese’s comments and attacks on the religious bods, in the above clip, much more offensive than anything in the great film.
“simply didn’t understand that there were people outside his own intellectual bubble”
Cleese must have felt really at home in the BBC.
“I got the sense that Cleese simply didn’t understand that there were people outside his own intellectual bubble who might actually be offended by ‘Life of Brian’.”
Hmmn… That sounds familiar. Puts me in mind of those who were offended by cartoons of Mohammed.
Pot – kettle – black.
Religion offends me, but I don’t cry about it. I’m offended! As Stephen Fry would say, “So f**king what!?”
Not all that sounds familiar. Bless.
A Martian, who only got his news of the UK from the BBC, would assume that this is a muslim country. The last census
( unreliable, of course ) gave muslims as 5%. The BBC are bonkers ! I am a devout atheist , but the only people who are trying to kill me come from the muslim religion.
I have often imagined a conversation with a friendly Martian visitor, whom I am introducing to our little world:
Martian: What is this “BBC” that I keep seeing everywhere here in your country?
Mustapha: It’s just a set of initials; you know, initial letters … standing for whole words; it means the “British Broadcasting Corporation”. Do you understand what that means?
Martian: I think so. British is to do with Britain, obviously. Broadcasting is sending out information and entertainment?
Mustapha: Yes, that’s right.
Martian: And a corporation is a type of company or organization?
Mustapha: Yes, you’re learning fast.
Martian: So let me guess. This BBC sends out information and entertainment that reflects life in Britain and the views of the millions of British people, rather than those of the French or Germans or …. I’m not criticizing but I imagine it is a sort of pro-British propaganda; we have the same thing on Mars.
Mustapha: Well, er, no, not exactly, it’s more complicated than that … welcome to Planet Britain!
Just let him watch a little of the BBC and be straight back into his spaceship !
One of the most viewed TV items ever.
On ITV, not BBC.
An item about Martian views of Islamic State behaviour towards others.
“First they peel them with their little knives.”
“Then they boil them for twenty of their minutes.”
“Then they smash them to bits.”
“Clearly they are a most primitive people”
I’ve watched the confrontation between Cleese and Palin on the Monty Python side and Muggeridge and the Bishop of Southwark representing the church several times. I’m sorry to tell you, guys but I find watching the, as ever, pompous and overbearing Malcolm Muggeridge getting hot under the collar almost as hilarious as the Life of Brian itself.
Personally, I thought the film was brilliant – by far the best thing any of the Pythons did before or after. It’s interesting to note that Anthony Burgess, who by the 70’s was something of an establishment figure himself thought the film was very funny and quite an accurate representation of 1st century Judea. Yes, it offended people, but isn’t that the whole point of free speech. Back in the 70’s we actually thought we could challenge institutions like the church and what was then a rather stuffy establishment. We thought we were living in a free society. The sad truth is The Life of Brian could never be made today.
If you don’t like the Python’s humour that’s fine, but I think it’s a little harsh to criticise them for not making a version satirising Islam. Islam simply wasn’t an issue in this country in 1979.
I agree that Islam wasn’t an issue in 1979, but this is 2015 and it is now an issue, a very big one in fact – so what’s stopping someone doing it now?
I think we all know the answer to that one.
Lobster, Some of the Pythons could have a reunion and do it !
oldartist
“Islam simply wasn’t an issue in this country in 1979”
Where have you been?
Egypt, Syria, et al, had recently (1973) been at war with Israel.
The PLO were carrying out attacks throughout the 1970s.
Khomeini had taken over in Iran early in 1979.
The USSR invaded Afghanistan a month after the film was released, due to widespread Islamic rebellion against the secular state.
Etc.
I would agree that the evils and nastiness of Islam did not seem as important at that time.
Since then The Labour Party started a war which killed half a million Muslims and whose ramifications have yet to be seen.
Labour also imported millions of Muslims to vote Labour.
Thank you Labour, for your foresight, for your wisdom, and your eternal vigilance in ensuring the well-being of the indigenous British people.
Well yes, we do know the answer. I also think that the presence of a large intolerant group i.e. Muslims, has played a large part in the present day culture of not being able to offend anybody.
I’m Catholic and remember the parish priest giving a full-on hell and damnation sermon about LoB, go and watch it and you’ll be excommunicated kind of rant. At school, we had the same from the monks who ran the school. Then we went to watch it and who were in the queue? I learnt about religious hypocrisy thanks to LoB even before seeing the film which I love to this day.
Although you couldn’t make a similar film today about the genesis of Isalm, we do have the wonderfully dark “Four Lions”. I cry with laughter watching that film, and no I haven’t got my confused face on.
Just for you, BBC delenda est, I’ll rephrase the statement: In 1979 Islam was not an issue in this country in the same way as it is today.
You missed out on BBC One Sunday Morning Live, a man wearing a Chelsea football shirt walks into West Ham’s ground and wonders why he can’t walk freely as a Chelsea fan; no that wasn’t it ,a Chinese coolie, banging in railroad spikes across ‘Indian’ hunting trails wonders why he isn’t accepted as Comanche.
No, wrong again. Woman who looks like Pakistani Muslim, who dresses like a Pakistani Muslim, wonders why she can’t walk freely in her ‘home’ country of Britain. “Is Britain racist?”.
Meanwhile millions of Britons, with roots stretching back hundreds of years in these damp rain-sodden isles, whose forefathers rejected the rule of a foreign religion, wonder how they came to be foist with aliens that look differently, talk differently and who dress like they live in a sun-baked land, bringing a supremacist cult that regards all others as inferior, yet are somehow ‘to blame’ for not surrendering their birthright.
“Woman who looks like Pakistani Muslim, who dresses like a Pakistani Muslim, wonders why she can’t walk freely in her ‘home’ country of Britain.”
What parts of Britain is she unable to walk freely? As far as I’m aware the only places these self-apartheided women would not be free to go would be Muslim areas unless accompanied by their owner (father, husband, brother).
Of course there are places that non-Muslim Britons can’t go freely on pain of being beaten up if carrying a tin of beer or a bacon sandwich. Now where would those places be? And who would be restricting their freedoms?
Songs of Praise just finishing now. I watch because I enjoy the music. But it set me thinking as to why the BBC do not televise friday prayers from a mosque. Smacks of religious discrimination to me.
Bizarrely, it included a blessing from Ely Cathedral for people’s pets. Mostly dogs, but there was an alpaca, a ferret and a tortoise ( yes, really ). I wonder if the Religion of Peace will ever embrace this idea ?
“Bizarrely, it included a blessing from Ely Cathedral for people’s pets. ”
That’s copied from one of the slightly funnier episodes of the Vicar of Dibley. Bizarre is the word.
Ah, Vicar of Dibley. That is when the BBC used to do comedy !
No!
The purpose of The Vicar of Dibley was to soften us up to accept female vicars – the writer, Richard Curtis, was quite clear about that. That and a dig at the people that it is acceptable to stereotype, the non-metropolitan English.
JimS, maybe , but I still thought it was funny.
Until I started serving on a parochial church council, I thought the Vicar of Dibley was meant to be a comedy. Then I realised it was actually a documentary. Fortunately we didn’t have to suffer a vicar like Dawn French though.
“But it set me thinking as to why the BBC do not televise friday prayers from a mosque.”
For pity’s sake don’t go giving them such ideas!
Roland, LOL !
An excellent piece, Alan. The elephant in the room is always Islam and it is risible the lengths to which the Left avoid all discussion of the religion of pieces. I mean, come on. If Christians were causing murder, mayhem and intolerance the world over, with its followers reciting passages from the Bible as they were mowing down innocent victims and blowing things up, any intelligent and rational individual, with the faculties of independent, critical thinking, would quite rightly conclude that the content and teachings of the Bible were in need of substantial and rigorous scrutiny; not so the Koran. It’s never the Koran; it’s always someone else to blame as you quite rightly observe, Alan. Islam is the biggest threat to peace on Earth. A huge proportion of Muslims seem to be incapable of respecting the religious views of others. And that spells T.R.O.U.B.L.E.
Glad to hear that Alistair McGrath is “aggresive”-my God, the atheists have run the BBC for years, so will look him up.
That said, I never hear thoughtful and reasoned Christians like John Lennox or William Craig Lane on the BBC…so maybe the BBC want aimless controversy-which the likes of Hitchens C were well-paid to do.
I only heard a couple of bits-one where the BBC asked the Catholic Archbishop about the “institutional homophobia” at the Vatican…why, it`s all that the BBC EVER ask Christians about…and another bit about the poor returning victims of the Sauid hajj-but seemingly happy to omit the bit about the crane crashing down on them on Sept 11th.
Guessing that the BBC only cares when its hundreds dead-but to top and tail Hajj with monumental numbers of dead tells me that God doesn`t think much of Saudis and Islam.
If you`re an atheist you don`t have that rationale-but “I believe in an interventionist God”(as Nick Cave sang about once)
I myself think that the Life Of Brian put the skids under Christianity for my generation.
Slippery, subversive and a huge hole below the waterline for the culture that we once might have been able to access.
But I don`t blame George Harrison, the mockingjays of Python necessarily-they merely lit the bonfire under the self-righteous creeping Jeezies like Stockwood and Muggeridge-who had obviously gone old and not been replaced by younger Christians who would have been expected to take up the cultural “challenges” of the 60s/70s.
The likes of CS Lewis and Billy Graham have not been replaced-there is no current Christian figurehead with courage, intellect or access to contemporary culture-and , if there was, the BBC would ban them.
Thank God for the Internet.
The Pythons drilled a hole in the boat-as if they themselves would not drown as they got their laughs and money.
Which is where we are today…typical too that they filmed LoB in the Maghreb…Muhammads story was not an issue in 1979, but they`d not have done any paedo stuff in Marrakesh OB, that`s for sure.
That it is OUR issue now is in large part due to The Life of Brian types-but it`s not as if the Church had any answers at that time…and it still doesn`t.
I think that’s probably giving too much credit to ‘Life of Brian’. That film was only possible because the wheels had already fallen off the Christian bus long before. Christianity in Britain amongst ordinary people began its long slow decline in the industrial revolution (when people lost touch with rural tradition and the village church).
The First World War and the rise of socialism killed off the remainder; what was left was a sort of deferential nod to tradition and Christianity, such as it remained, was largely just about being ‘respectable.’
The sixties generation confronted ‘tradition’ and ‘respectability’ head on as part of the generation gap war, particularly in comedy and entertainment. For example, a common theme of sixties/seventies comedy is an older authority figure (Steptoe, Rigsby, etc) who has no real religious belief but who still defers to it, being made fun of by a younger person who thinks it’s all just twaddle. ‘Life of Brian’ was really just a fairly late example of this kind of thing.
70% of people went to church in the 1950s, now it’s down to 7% and those who do go to church are just Sunday Christians, to them it’s a social occasion.
There`s much in what you say Cranmer.
I did say that the Church was buggered, but I think that the Life of Brian made it “safe and cool” to mock the crucifixion itself-whilst claiming that it wasn`t Jesus they were making fun of…not really.
The fact that so much of the film is funny, that it scorns the lefty weekend rebels of the Left as well isn`t really the point-had it not mocked Christ on the Cross, it could and would never have been made…that was not the USP.
It crossed a Rubicon. I myself was a Christian-baiting Lefty at that time and loved the rebellious nature of it all.
That “Look On the Bright Side of Life” is so popular at funerals tells you so much…and I think that the cultural lefties who egged on those who mocked Jesus then learned a lot on the power of comedy and satire.
Hence no humour about Green Crap, Carrier Bag taxes/charges, the likes of Pistorius and Blatter etc…these Gods are too real to those who beg you to fill up on their beer,gambling and crisps etc.
Film mattered then-and you`ll not see any Midnight Express type skit on the Turks anytime soon again.
Tne Python cynicism has made them rich-but cost our culture dearly.
Can live with it-but it need not have been so bad…Islam certainly allows no parody.
If God doesn’t exist why do atheists hate him so much then ? Stephen Fry’s anti God rant.
Had a listen to Fry.
Poor old Gay Byrne is no theologian.
Fry talks verbose crap-and manages to completely avoid the very name and nature of Jesus Christ.
If you don`t face that-the person of Jesus and your need to decide-there is no argument worth having, surely.
If I`m wrong about Jesus-it won`t matter.
But if I`m right about Jesus-and He is who He says He is(and He is!)…then nothing else matters…..
You die once and face judgement(Hebrews 9.27)…only wish there was wriggle room, would make my life easier at times…but once you fear God, you don`t really need to fear much else.
RTE are a shit as the BBC-only with a plastic paddy gloss that`s blagged from the worst of the Big Country over the water-and all of Ireland gets the BBC for nothing…so whay don`t we?
Poor old Fry is just a thick persons idea of what a clever person would sound like( P.Hitchens said that!).
Remember him in tears with just a gentle pulling up by Ann Widdicombe in her series on God a few years back…the Lords Prayer I think it was-but he broke down and cried as I recall.
So hardly a Sam Harris or a Hitchens.C .
Very weird-damaged goods in many senses.
That said, he had a torrid rime on his gay honeymoon in Honduras or somewhere like that as he got his TV series funded-AND he did say some decent things in support of Israel, whilst popping at Islam-it was fey, but-in these monocultured days of the left and its culture-I did note that he was quite brave in what he said.
That`s how craven and easy to please we`ve all become.
I watched the entire Hitchens debate offered at the start of this thread. Was i entertained. Hitchens made mincemeat of his rival, whose pitch was rambling and , to my lowly opinion, incoherent for the most. Hitchens is such a sad loss, just as we need sane, vigorous voice raised against the muslim invasion of the West.