‘After years of trying to make sense of extremism, I want to understand the lives of ordinary Muslims, to go behind the walls and dispel the mystery and suspicion felt by non-Muslims on the outside’
The BBC has just broadcast what can only be described as a very provocative piece of pro-Muslim propaganda for the East London Mosque which has a well deserved reputation for extremist teachings (any search on Harry’s Place will confirm that…or Andrew Gilligan in the Telegraph). The BBC programme by Robb Leech was deliberately naive, shallow and very restrictive in its scope as to what it investigated in an attempt to avoid and downplay ‘Muslim’ issues. As said the ELM is well known for its extremist associations and it looks like the BBC has set out to whitewash those concerns and paint a picture of brave British Muslims under siege from both government and the media….Leech repeatedly suggesting that the racism of the 70’s was back in the form of ‘Islamophobia’….and yet he made little, no, attempt to delve into the most controversial aspects of Islam that give rise to very serious and credible concerns about its teachings preferring instead to concentrate on how Islam segregates women….an issue but hardly the one that is relevant to radicalisation and joining ISIL.
Rather astonishingly even Mishal Husain on the Today programme (08:47) found Leech’s narrative of Muslims under siege not credible saying, when Leech and a Muslim guest from the Mosque suggested that Muslims were being unfairly targeted, besieged, as likely subjects of radicalisation, that that was because most terrorists were Muslims. Leech jumped in to say his brother had been radicalised proving that it’s not just Muslims being radicalised…Husain pointed out the obvious flaw in his argument…his brother, the Jihadi, had converted to Islam and then been radicalised.
Leech is always keen to claim that his brother converted to ‘an extreme form of Islam’…he ‘hastens to add’. However there is no moderate or extreme Islam, there is just Islam….as any Muslim would have told him. However Islam, everyday, conservative Islam, is extreme in relation to a Western society….something Leech was trying to hide.
Leech’s programme was simply a long, disingenuous piece of highly misleading film that gave a very one-sided view of the Mosque and Islam. Where were the critics of the Mosque, where were the claims about what the Mosque had been doing, where were the indepth explorations of Islamic teachings? Nowhere to be seen.
Leech gave us a film that said Muslims are lovely people, just like you and me, yes they may have ‘conservative’ values but you know what, live and let live, we must ignore such alien and scary beliefs and values being fostered in our midst.
Here’s a taste of Leech’s thoughts…
The general reaction in Britain to Islam…it’s another form of racism comparable to what happened in the 70’s….it makes Muslims feel different….hmmm…the whole film showed them to be different…because their religion taught them to be that way…..an Imam in the programme said if not submit to God, the teachings of the Koran and Hadith, then Islam is compromised….so to be a good Muslim you must be fundamentalist….that seemed to pass Leech by.
We heard that the families of the three ‘Jihadi Brides’ were ‘just normal East London families’ and that Leech was ‘just as puzzled as the families as to why the girls were radicalised’…he was ‘struck by how ordinary the families were’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54R4gdaxdoI
Unfortunately we know that at least one girl’s father was a radical himself…Leech slipped round to his house for an explanation….apparently the father knew nothing about it, he had no idea the protest was radical…despite all the flags, banners and chants of death to America and no’s to democracy.
Leech tells us that ‘It’s not hard to see how a man like [the father] might feel lost and seek identity and empowerment in a protest whether extremist or not.’ WTF! Really? Is Leech really saying that for some reason the father is ‘lost’ and that that is an understandable reason to become a ‘radical’? Does Leech really believe that the man had no idea what he was doing at that protest?
We then heard from Leech’s mosque guide that ‘Young people are MADE to feel not part of Western society so of course there is an attraction to something which welcomes them, invites them to join and makes them feel valued’ OK…except it is Islam that tells them they are not part of Western society, and why is an ELM official justifying and almost endorsing radicalisation?
We then had an Imam come on to tell us that the ELM was progressive, it is the media that is wrongly portraying it as extreme, that Muslim values were the same as British values…Leech declaring that he didn’t even know what British values were…thereby trying to suggest perhaps that they didn’t exist and therefore Muslim ones can’t be ‘alien’ to British society.
Leech says ‘I can see how Muslims can feel victimised by government policy and besieged by the media.’ The Imam prefers ‘moral clarity’ to ‘interference from government’ i.e he wants Muslims to be left to follow their religion whatever form that may take…without ‘draconian‘ laws restricting their fundamental beliefs.
Leech again sympathises uncritically with Muslims saying ‘I understand the predicament that Muslims find themselves in, under constant siege they lack the confidence to have a loud and clear voice.’ That is just complete rubbish…there is no more vocal and aggressively loud and demanding group than the Muslim community and government is constantly pandering to those demands with money, influence and political positions handed out to placate them.
When Ofsted visits the school at the mosque Leech is shocked that they ask the pupils how they felt about the Islamic state and if they support its views and actions….Leech thinks this is only being asked because they are Muslim…and therefore is unjustifiable…hmmm…yes it is being asked because they are Muslim, because, as Mishal Husain pointed out, most of the terrorists are Muslim. Leech thinks this is forcing Muslims to ‘prove they are British’…and that’s ‘not a good thing’. Curiously, paradoxically, at the end of the film he asks exactly the same question to some young Muslims…and they all denounce ISIL….have they proved to him they are British?
Leech concludes that any radicalisation, such as with the three Jihadi Brides, was purely a social media phenomenon and nothing to do with the Mosque…or indeed Islam….we are told the girls didn’t even go to the ELM and yet that’s not true and the first port of call for the families is….the ELM.
Leech is constantly confronted by evidence of fundamentalist, conservative Islam, especially amongst the young, and yet he manages to dismiss the importance of that and suggests that it has nothing to do with ‘radicalisation’ or that it may pose a problem for a Western, democratic, liberal society.
He talks to three youths who are part of their college Islamic society and are devout Muslims….we know that such societies are ‘hotbeds’ of Islamic fundamentalism and yet Leech doesn’t have any recognition of that….he makes absolutely no connection between the strong conservative Islamic values held by the young Muslims and potential radicalisation.
Finally he concludes that the level of conservativism on display at the Mosque maybe ‘alien and scary‘ to non-Muslims but these are normal British people with British values….so he seems to know what British values are when it suits his narrative…apparently they come from the Koran.
He tells us that (I paraphrase) ‘What I’ve seen is a community under siege, the younger generation suffers racism because of their faith just as their parents did for the colour of their skin. I don’t believe the mosque is a hotbed of radicalisation. The people here are British with British values, values which mean accepting and celebrating our differences together’.
Lovely sentiments….pity Islam doesn’t teach that. Pity Leech doesn’t actually do a proper investigation of the mosque, its activities and its associates and the real meaning and teachings of Islam.
This whole programme was badly misconceived….firstly we have a film maker who is unable to separate his own feelings from the reality and instead of analysing that reality gives us his own naive, sentimental and overly sympathetic interpretation of events. The film didn’t get anywhere near a genuine investigation of the claims about the ELM’s association with extremists, nor did it explore Islam and why its teachings alienate its followers from a Western society and may lead to radicalisation. Instead we had an uninformed, misleading rant against the government, the media and non-Muslim society putting the blame for alienation and radicalisation squarely at their door.
The BBC is highly irresponsible in producing such a one-sided and deliberately misleading programme that paints Muslims as victims of a racist society and thus incites radicalisation by encouraging that feeling of alienation and ‘disenfranchisement’ we are so often told they suffer from….which the BBC ‘proves’ that they do.
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