Woman’s Hour had a long love in with the Female leaders of Scotland’s political parties (I think the Tory one, Ruth Davidson, might have been mentioned somewhere in the piece.)

Woman’s Hour asked how is it that if there is so much success in Scotland for women why is that not the case in Westminster?

You may have thought that that would be the occasion when the BBC might take a look at the prospects for women in a reborn Labour Party, would they prosper under one of the new leadership candidates, two being women and one being a far left, sorry, as corrected by a BBC presenter the other day, ‘left’ politician, Jeremy Corbyn?

But no, instead of looking at Westminster they concentrated on the rise of women in Scotland.

You could be forgiven for thinking Jeremy Corbyn is irrelevant in Scotland…but you’d be wrong…as the Spectator spells out..

Jeremy Corbyn can fill a Glasgow hall quicker than Nicola Sturgeon. It’s time for her to worry

Strange things have been happening in Scottish politics of late, and Jeremy Corbyn’s speech in Glasgow on Friday was one of them. I’m a Labour supporter, and can safely say it was the most electrifying and energetic rally I have ever attended. 

Within two hours of tickets going on sale for Corbyn’s Glasgow event, they sold out. A frantic search for a larger venue began and the rally was moved to the Old Fruitmarket in the centre of Glasgow; capacity 1,500. Again, it sold out within a few hours. Corbyn could have filled a hall four times the size.

Scottish politics dramatically changed in last year. If Corbyn wins, it could do so again.

That didn’t merit a mention in the BBC interview which might seem odd as surely it would be of interest/concern to the new Scottish Labour leader.

There was a swift mention of the leadership candidates, and Jane Garvey homed in on Corbyn…but it was his desire to get rid of Trident that was her only concern asking Scottish Labour Leader Kezi Dugdale ”You didn’t discuss Trident with Jeremy Corbyn, I can’t believe that?’

Apart from that brief foray into what life might be like under a Jeremy Corbyn regime Corbyn was allowed to slip off into the shadows once again without the BBC turning the spotlight upon him.  Which is just as well really as with his dubious associations with Islamists you might be justified in asking how women like Dugdale would fare in his brave new world.

Nick Cohen asked such questions….

The British left has a lot to answer for. The Labour Party’s long-shot leadership candidate, Jeremy Corbyn, embodies the worst of it.

He has a purity and certainty his rivals, who must deal with the messy business of governing, cannot hope to match.

But then comes the rub. The tribune of the left, the indomitable defender of equality and decency, is also the greatest apologist for clerical fascism in the British parliament.

Corbyn indulges radical Islam, and by extension  all that comes with it: the subjugation of women; the judicial murder of homosexuals in compliance with sharia law; the racism, most evident in its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; the denial of democratic rights, the demand to create a global caliphate must bring; and the denial of religious freedom the sharia-prescribed death penalties for blasphemy and apostasy do bring with miserable regularity.

Islamism is against everything the left pretends to believe in. But in Britain and elsewhere, leftists rather than conservatives are the first to defend it.

I could give you a dozen reasons why right-wing parties are winning elections everywhere here. But one ought to be obvious. Politically correct left-wingers say they believe in equality for women and gays. Everyone must agree with them apart from protected religious leaders, who can be as misogynist and homophobic as they please. 

The voters look on with jaundiced eyes. They mutter that political correctness is a sham and the left is filled with the most brazen hypocrites. The worst of it is, they are right.

The BBC just isn’t interested in Corbyn’s Islamist friends.

Why might that be?  Is it that they like the [Far] left wing candidate who favours the policies long peddled by the BBC itself...’There would be an end to austerity, higher taxes for the rich and protection for people on welfare’  or is it because he’s leading light in the ‘Stop the War Coalition’, again a cause the BBC has a lot of time for, or is it because the BBC also has a similarly benign and supportive approach to Islamist extremists and terrorists?

Curious how even the Woman’s Hour bunker can overlook Corbyn’s associations when they appear to be so strongly against the interests of the sistahood and indeed progressive politics as a whole.

The BBC does have a lot to say about Corbyn…but very little is critical, certainly none of it mentions his very dodgy friends and honoured citizens he applauds…..most is very positive and upbeat…

What is Jeremy Corbyn’s programme for government?

Where is Labour’s ‘Jeremy Corbyn mania’ coming from?

Labour risks ‘annihilation’ if Jeremy Corbyn is leader – Tony Blair

Jeremy Corbyn: It’s going extremely well

You may have thought that a man who seems to turn a blind eye to all of this ‘ the subjugation of women; the judicial murder of homosexuals in compliance with sharia law; the racism, most evident in its anti-Semitic conspiracy theories; the denial of democratic rights, the demand to create a global caliphate must bring; and the denial of religious freedom the sharia-prescribed death penalties for blasphemy and apostasy do bring with miserable regularity.’  would merit close inspection.

Nigel Farage and Tommy Robinson were torn apart by the Leftwing media, BBC included, indeed the BBC leapt in to recruit LBC’s James O’Brien after his mendacious kangaroo court hatchet job on Farage, and Andrew Neil, of all people, shamed himself by trying to hammer Robinson with questions laid out by the Islamist Mehdi Hasan who thought the BBC was ‘going easy’ on Robinson.

It does seem that Jeremy Corbyn is untouchable…..and Owen Jones seems just as unconcerned as the BBC about Corbyn despite his proclaimed passion for equality and the rights of oohh just about everyone if there’s a book in it.

They’re right, absolutely right.  Owen Jones, Mehdi Hasan, the Cardiff stooges.  They’re all right.

The BBC is right wing.  The Guardian is just to the left of the Telegraph. The Pope is Muslim.  It’s all so obvious now.

Alex, when you stated…‘How can anyone possible say that the BBC isn’t massively biased to the left? It’s plain for all to see!’ in the comments, you too are wrong. So wrong.

I know this because my eyes have been opened.  A whole new world has been shown to me, a world where the Truth really does exist and the News is not manipulated by sinister vested interests for their own nefarious purposes.

Russia Today is now my news provider of choice.  A more upstanding, professional and ethical broadcaster would be hard to find.  Think not?  Here’s a couple of samples of their work that persuaded me without doubt that RT is, IS, the only broadcaster with integrity and the balls to take on the Establishment…

The BBC, pah,….faking chemical weapons attacks, whinging about Frankie Boyle making an anti-Semitic joke, not allowing comedians to make rude jokes about bankers and UKIP…the BBC’s a joke itself!

Songs of Praise sang forth last night to great joy.

We heard that there was a Sudanese migrant ‘called Daniel, who claimed to have fled the war-torn country after being persecuted for being protestant; he said he tried to cross the Channel every night ‘under trains’.’

Now as there are around 50 million Sudanese, North and South.  Is the BBC suggesting we re-home all these people…surely all must be suffering like Daniel in a such a war torn region?

Damien Thompson in the Mail notes ‘Sorry to sound cynical, but the script glossed over one rather inconvenient but unavoidable fact about the camp: it is overwhelmingly Muslim.’

Which echoes my own cynicism about Aaqil Ahmed’s motives which I noted earlier…

‘Ahmed is of course Muslim…far be it from me to suggest an ulterior motive, but I have yet to hear a Muslim in the public sphere who doesn’t use his job to promote Islam.  Mishal Husain said she would use her position on the Today programme to improve people’s perceptions of Islam and Baroness Warsi in her role as minister for faith promoted the idea of more influence and a bigger role for religion in society knowing that promoting Christianity meant the government would also be obliged to do the same for Islam and provide it with similar privileges and powers.  A slightly more sophisticated version of ‘my enemy’s enemy’.

Ahmed knows that many, if not the majority, of illegal migrants and those claiming to be asylum seekers are Muslim…any chance he has stitched together this programme to promote migration and thence to further increase the Muslim population of Britain?’

The Songs of Praise programme seems, on the surface, to be a nice, heartwarming tale about migrants keeping the faith in difficult conditions but the reality is that this is a hard edged political stunt by the BBC as it tries to make a powerful statement in order to influence immigration policy, and there is that subtext about Muslim migration….dismiss it or not, it’s there.

The BBC in an even more obvious attempt to intervene in the immigration debate with an attempt to prick our consciences with the usual arm-twisting guilt-inducing tear-jerking emoting that passes for journalism at the BBC tells us that the migrants are ‘wonderful and beautiful people’.

The BBC reveals that we should all be horrified by Calais and that we should all leap into action to help out:

Thousands of migrants are camped in and around Calais. A handful of British people can be found there too. What are they doing?  Matthew Wright grew tired of shouting at the TV.  “I got sick of hearing the excuses and the lack of action,” says Wright, 45. “This isn’t an immigration crisis – it’s a humanitarian crisis.”

Calais migrants making nightly bids to cross the Channel have attracted negative press coverage in the UK. Prime Minister David Cameron has promised the UK will not become a “safe haven” for them.

So painting Cameron as the nasty Tory denying them a ‘safe haven’.  Are they entitled to such a ‘safe haven’ anyway?

The BBC has the answer…and tries to twist the guilt into the credulous, they hope, reader….

But Wright believes the British public will do more and more to help the migrants: “I know how generous British people are.”

Then we have another volunterr who is ashamed of Britain…

“I used to have a quiet pride that Britain was more liberal than most countries, but now there is a worrying strand of xenophobia running through social media and the press,” he adds

So anyone who wants to control immigration is maligned as xenophobic….who’s the fascist?

Don’t forget how terrific all the migrants are..

‘Morphew-Hedges says she knew people who wanted to help the migrants, but many were too “scared of the unknown” to make the journey.

“You don’t know what you’re going to find. We have found wonderful, beautiful people and we really want to help.”‘

Never mind that they had just told us that the women don’t feel safe in the camp…why would that be?  Surely wonderful and beautiful people don’t go around raping and attacking women!

And those security measures…they are a danger to the migrants…much like the Israeli security barrier is a danger to terrorists…how awful!

‘Every night hundreds of migrants risk their lives to reach the UK via trains and ferries from Calais. Some say new security measures mean it is now too dangerous – though most still harbour hopes of crossing.’

And of course yet another BBC junket for Giles Fraser….the Occupy patron saint who is now wealthier than ever on the fertile fruits of his TV evangelising. Just think of all those hair shirts he can buy.

The BBC has been pushing this story hard this morning;

The number of people living with diabetes has soared by nearly 60% in the past decade, Diabetes UK warns. The charity said more than 3.3 million people have some form of the condition, up from 2.1 million in 2005. The inability to control the level of sugar in the blood can lead to blindness and amputations and is a massive drain on NHS resources.

It interested me because I am a type 2 Diabetic. But this interested me too and yet the BBC completely ignores it.

Doughnuts and pizzas on the NHS: £116million of gluten-free junk food was handed out in prescriptions in the past year

The NHS is a sacred BBC cow that must not be criticised and here we have the BBC pushing the “Diabetes epidemic”  overwhelming the NHS narrative whilst studiously ignoring NHS culpability

A new week and time for a new Open Thread! Here is where you detail the bias! The floor is yours….

The Now Show has been replaced by ‘Dead Ringers’ and the difference is marked.

By comparison Dead Ringers is entirely blasphemous attacking the taboo subjects and iconic shibboleths of the BBC without fear.

Mo Farrah?  No problem…which kind of begs the question why Jim Davidson has been pilloried by the Left for being ‘racist’ for his ‘Chalky’ routines when other comedians are applauded for their routines which use stereotypical voices and mannerisms of various ethnicities and regions?

Then there was the Labour Party, a subject that was considered untouchable by the Now Show.  Dead Ringers stepped right into the breech and had a shot.  My only complaint is that their suggestion that Corbyn would take Britain back to the 80’s must have been evidence of the visceral anti-Thatcher hatred still lurking in their heads….it was the 70’s that was the period of time in which the left dragged the UK to its doom before being rescued by Thatcher, why did they choose the 80’s?

When the show ended the BBC announced the upcoming ‘Any Questions‘ by saying that they would be asking ‘What’s driving the growing popularity of Jeremy Corbyn and how do we solve the migrant crisis?’……The BBC told us that people could ring in on the same number for both questions.

Yes, I thought, that’d be right….The two are related….how to solve the migrant crisis?  Elect Jeremy Corbyn and turn Britain into the wreck of the 1970’s economic basket case that rampant socialism conjured up for the UK and the migrants, all those ‘asylum seekers’,  would miraculously stop coming when there was no money, no hand outs, on offer.  Simples.

The Today programme interviewed David Cameron (08:10).  The main concern?  Cameron’s use of the word ‘swarm’.  Yes that’s still top of the BBC’s list of concerns never mind it being an old story that even when new was based solely on the faux, manufactured and highly political ‘outrage’ of a few lefties, the BBC included, intended to manage the debate on immigration and close it down or at least limit as much as possible the messages from those who oppose mass, uncontrolled immigration.

Justin Webb was quite insistent in trying to make Cameron apologise for using the word swarm, the BBC default position being that he is ‘guilty’ which just goes to show just how out of touch the BBC is with the rest of the population.  I imagine that the vast, vast majority have not the slightest concern about the use of the word swarm, and probably agree with the concept.  The BBC has really lost the plot on this if it thinks Cameron will lose any support over it….he may, like UKIP, actually increase his support…the BBC never seems to learn.

Indeed almost immediately the BBC was again on the attack, excitedly pointing out that Cameron in the interview had used the phrase ‘break in’ to describe how migrants are trying to enter the UK….it made the Front page quite prominently...Stop migrants ‘breaking in’ – Cameron.    Not an unfair description by Cameron when you look at what is going on.  However the BBC immediately jumped on this appallingly de-humanising phrase and began to shout it from the rooftops, the clear intent was to again try and whip up another Twitter storm of concerned lefties with some outrage to spare.

Other media then immediately picked up on this and began to mention it.  The BBC’s job was done…it had  manufactured some media outrage that was aimed directly at Cameron and his approach to immigration.

This was purely a BBC spin operation, a ‘black op’ aimed at discrediting David Cameron and his immigration policies.  The ‘storm’ over the use of the word ‘swarm’ had died down but the BBC decided to re-open the battle by trying to put Cameron in the stocks over it again.  The following BBC news throughout the day then headlined on this story and doubled up with his use of the phrase ‘Break in’.

It looks like this was the BBC deliberately and knowingly setting Cameron up and using its ‘news’ service to attack and undermine him.  Is the BBC out of control and a political force all of its own?  Is it not about time someone took notice and dealt with it?

One other thing of interest was Justin Webb’s suggestion that Jews in the UK are also outraged at Cameron’s use of the word swarm.  Firstly the BBC has shown not the slightest interest in allegations that the possible next Labour leader, and maybe even PM, is anti-Semitic or at least has close and knowing associations with hard line anti-Semites, only meriting a nod to the story in the ‘what the papers say’ section with a  quick mention, so rather curious they are now so concerned about what Jews think, second, there is this…

Israeli government to refugees: Go back to Africa or go to prison

As Europe struggles to stem a spring flood of migrants from Africa and the Middle East trying to cross a deadly Mediterranean Sea, Israel has begun to toughen its stance toward refugees, telling unwanted Africans here they must leave now or face an indefinite stay in prison.

Israeli authorities are sending letters to the first of 45,000 Eritrean and Sudanese refugees, informing them they have 30 days to accept Israel’s offer of $3,500 in cash and a one-way ticket home or to an unnamed third country in Africa, or face incarceration at Saharonim prison.

Israeli leaders have proclaimed that their tough approach — building a fence along the country’s border, denying work permits for illegal migrants, forcing them into a detention center in the desert — may ultimately save lives by dissuading migrants from attempting a perilous journey. Critics of the Israeli policy counter that a country built by refugees should be more accepting of those fleeing war, poverty and oppression.

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.”

Amused to read this comment under Aaqil Ahmed’s interesting post on Jesus the migrant…

4. Posted by Tim

on 14 Aug 2015 15:13

Wonderful to see how scholarly BBC entertainment is reporting this! “The Dean of Durham, Decanus Borealis, wrote in a blog:”. Does no one know that Decanus Borealis means Northern Dean! The Dean of Durham’s name is Michael Sadgrove!

And indeed he is right, the BBC did name the Dean of Durham as ‘Decanus Borealis’ without noting it is in fact his blogger name….

Prominent figures from the Church of England have defended the programme including the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who tweeted: “The love of Christ is freely offered to all, celebrated everywhere, for everyone to know, well done #SongsOfPraise and @giles_fraser”

The Dean of Durham, Decanus Borealis, wrote in a blog: “I’m glad that SOP can be there to give the migrants air-time in a broadcast forum where it would be so easy to pretend they don’t exist.”

[He is of course a Guardian reader]

And here he is, Michael Sadgrove…or as he is better known now….

Decanus Borealis

    On Blogger since November 2008

 

My blogs

• Wool gathering of a northern dean
• Michael Sadgrove’s Sermons & Addresses

The BBC’s head of religion has sent in the Hot Gospellers from Songs of Praise to stir things up in Calais. (H/T Guest Who) and he insists this is not a political move.

It is, of course, patently a highly political intervention by the BBC and is fully intended to stir up debate and put pressure on the government to open the borders as the BBC continues to drip feed us, if ‘drip’ is the right word, maybe deluge is better, with tales of hardship, danger and ‘desperation’ of the migrants intending to generate sympathy, empathy and compassion for them and a subsequent capitulation and surrender of all reason, common sense and intelligent debate in favour of short term emotion which long term will produce far more conflict and ‘desperation’ for all than is being ‘suffered’ now as economies and societies collapse under the massive weight of these migrants and tribalism and war breaks out.   The BBC could bring you endless tales of desperate lives from any country in the world including on our very own streets in the UK.  Why not send Songs of Praise to the back streets of Delhi or Mumbai and then suggest that perhaps all the residents should move to the UK….what is the difference other than the location of the ‘desperate’ and downtrodden…are those in Delhi or Mumbai not also in need of salvation and sanctuary? Or Shanghai or Moscow or perhaps Ferguson in the USA?

Not political?  Very few programmes seem to have come from abroad…I could find only one recent one which came from Kenya.  There are churches all around the world and yet the BBC doesn’t send in the Songs of Praise squad to visit them and to comment/intervene on the political issues of the day there…..clearly it is not the church at Calais that is of interest but the fact that the congregation is made up of migrants.

This is what Ahmed admits is the pupose of the programme..

Almost two weeks ago, I read about the make shift church in the Calais camp known as ‘The Jungle’.

It started a conversation with the Songs of Praise team about the faith of the people who built and use the Church in the camp, what is the Christian response to the migrant issue in Calais and would it be of interest to our audience. Songs of Praise is not only about Christian music, it also explores contemporary issues and modern themes from a Christian perspective. 

What would be the Christian response to the migrant crisis?  Exploring contemporary issues and themes?  Sounds just a little like this is highly political as this next quote illustrates as he lays out what he thinks the Christian response would be…let ’em all in basically…

The Gospels themselves are full of stories and teachings of Jesus to help those in need, to find the dispossessed and vulnerable and to love your neighbour as yourself, whether that’s close to home or in a global context.

Ahmed is of course Muslim…far be it from me to suggest an ulterior motive, but I have yet to hear a Muslim in the public sphere who doesn’t use his job to promote Islam.  Mishal Husain said she would use her position on the Today programme to improve people’s perceptions of Islam and Baroness Warsi in her role as minister for faith promoted the idea of more influence and a bigger role for religion in society knowing that promoting Christianity meant the government would also be obliged to do the same for Islam and provide it with similar privileges and powers.  A slightly more sophisticated version of ‘my enemy’s enemy’.

Ahmed knows that many, if not the majority, of illegal migrants and those claiming to be asylum seekers are Muslim…any chance he has stitched together this programme to promote migration and thence to further increase the Muslim population of Britain?  This Songs of Praise is about a Christian church but the real narrative is about migrants and if they should be allowed to come into the UK and Europe as a whole in uncontrolled numbers…and it would be uncontrolled…..have you ever heard a pro-immigration advocate name a figure which when reached migration could then be ‘controlled’?  The very same hue and cry about ‘desperate’ migrants would then kick off again and the well practised moral blackmail would be churning out of the BBC filling the airwaves.

If Ahmed is so enthralled with Christian values perhaps he should convert himself and adopt them rather than pay lip service to them and make a pretence of respecting them when we know that Islam condemns Christians and Christianity.

As for Ahmed’s association of migrants with Jesus as a refugee, well there’s plenty in the Bible that we could use for inspiration….how about killing all the first born? Or seeing how far food banks get with a couple of loaves and a few fish.  Or, as Jesus was crucified, perhaps, like in the film Spartacus, we could line the roads with crucified migrants as if they were so many Jesus’ living and dying as he lived and died.  If Ahmed wants the Bible to be taken as gospel and a guide for our lives let him be the first to try…..

No?  Too far?

Or perhaps like Jesus the migrants would have no need for boats and the Chunnel…..why not just walk on water across the Channel to Britain?…