Here’s an interesting tip off I received in the mail. It concerns the BBC enforcing Islam compliance with regard to headscarfs. It shows how the BBC caves when it comes to Islamic bullying. How can we trust it when it does not trust itself?
“The BBC World Service has censored a video of its OWN JOURNALIST reading a news bulletin because Islamists complained she was not wearing a headscarf. The journalist works for the BBC Somali service which is paid for by BBC Licence Fee. The decision was made by BBC Africa Editor Solomon Mugenra and agreed by senior BBC managers.
Read this and then this for the details
This is shameful. The BBC should not surrender to blackmail. The BBC is trying to hide this so please force them to explain in public.”
This was the reason given for withdrawing the piece….
‘In this case we took the decision to remove the piece because of concerns around our staff’s safety.’
Which of course opens the door to all sorts of pressure on the BBC not to broadcast anything that someone, somewhere might construe as offensive….it is bad enough that the BBC already self-censors on anything to do with Islam but now it is open season for any Islamist with a computer and a grudge…..no AK47 needed despite what Mark Thompson once admitted…
“Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms’, is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’,” he said. “This definitely raises the stakes.”
However if you are being deliberately provocative and writing an anti-Christian play, say something along the lines of Jerry Springer the Opera, no problem, the BBC will broadcast it regardless of how many complaints it gets.
I think the reason the BBC treat Islam differently from Christianity is that Christians don’t go around beheading people when they get insulted.
At least if it were fear that would be a rational response!
My feeling is that it is really due to our old friend, post imperial guilt: anything done by a brown person is ‘justified’ due to the ‘terrible’ treatment we are supposed to have meted out to them. You know the sorts of things – the ruthless imposition of a functioning legal system, sanitation, democracy, medicine, railways, roads….