Here are a few great examples of BBC professional neutrality.
First, here’s BBC employee Mary Walker…
When I joined the team of “Living Islam” (the BBC series) two years ago, my perception of Islam was dominated by prejudice and ignorance, and I found its treatment of women abhorrent. To me the veil symbolised the oppression of women, making them invisible, anonymous and voiceless, and the cause of this oppression lay in the will to perpetuate the family and maintain a patriarchal framework – the very basis of an Islamic society. I thought women were entirely submerged by divine justification of their role as wife and mother.
Ah, but that was then. She knows so much better now. Give it a read here. And then, lest we think lovely Islam-loving Mary is alone in her admiration for the Religion of Peace, there’s posh Ed Stourton bending the knee…
In a feature about a ‘woman friendly mosque’, in Manchester. Ed Stourton interviews Sabina Hammed, who says she has ‘the very rare privilege of being able to come and go as she pleases’ at the Mosque. She notes the separate entrances and boys as young as eleven being banned from the women’s room inside. Stourton never challenges her about sexual segregation in Islam or the attitude of other Mosques which are breaking English law by keeping women out. At one point she trots out the ‘It’s cultural, nothing to do with Islam,’ argument. Later there is a report about a discount coat store being turned into an Islamic community centre/mosque only two blocks away from Ground Zero in New York. Stourton tells us: ‘There are strident voices attacking the proposal and using it as a vehicle to strike at Islam.’ A BBC reporter goes on: ‘Islam is once more under fire from a noisy minority who see the Koran as suspect.’
