The BBC has treated us to a lot of Islamist propaganda recently, a lot of it from CageUK.
Allowing such people onto the airwaves is a good thing. It allows us to hear their arguments and understand what are the reasons for the various actions taken by such people and then lets us assess the rights and wrongs of the situation.
Or it would be a good thing if the BBC did its job and actually engaged them in debate and challenged their views. All too often however the BBC does not do that, frequently presenting them as charity workers, community leaders, religious scholars and academics. They are then allowed to get away with presenting their views without any robust challenge giving them credibility and authority they don’t deserve and twisting the narrative to their own agenda.
Yesterday we had yet another Cage mouthpiece, Moazzam Begg, on the Today programme (08:10)
Sarah Montague was interviewing him and surprisingly gave him a hard time repeatedly asking him if he supported ISIS….which he refused to answer directly…indirectly he admitted he did support ISIS by saying we should negotiate with the Taliban, Al Qaeda and ISIS…thereby indicating he believed these were legitimate organisations with aims and a status that we should recognise and accept.
Begg was claiming that he could have got Alan Henning released but that the government refused his help….therefore it is the government’s fault that he was killed. Begg being an Islamist propagandist you can discount that completely…and indeed Montague did seem suitably sceptical about his claims.
Montague did, as said, seem to conduct a reasonably tough interview that revealed Begg in his true light…Begg it has to be said does not give a good interview. Perhaps he should stay off the airwaves and stick to writing where he might seem less oily perhaps.
The problem is, as always with the BBC, when it comes to the news bulletins that then pick and choose which part of an interview they will highlight.
The bulletins chose to report Begg’s claims straight, and R4 made them the headline news…unfortunately the context and whole feel of the interview was lost and Begg’s slippery dissembling and evasiveness, which would have revealed the true nature of his claims, went missing, meaning any listener would have been misled as to the real truth of those claims…..all highly relevant if you believe that the government and society marginalises and ignores Muslims….as the BBC tells us is so…and yet does little to improve Muslim’s understanding of the truth.
Begg also claimed he knew who was holding the hostages….personally I don’t think an interview on the Today programme is sufficient here if he is telling the truth and yet refuses to reveal who those people are. The best place for Begg might be lying on his back with his head in a bucket of water.
That aside, war with the Islamists isn’t being fought merely in the deserts of the Middle East, it’s on the airwaves and in the newspapers here at home.
The Islamists are still winning…they have shaped the narrative….this morning I heard Peter Allen telling us that Muslims are radicalised because they are disenfranchised, angry and marginalised….and yet we know that’s not true…..only yesterday a Muslim was arrested who had been offered a place at King’s College London to study medicine...and how many times have we been told Muslims love being British?
Until the BBC understands what the underlying basis of the radicalisation is we won’t get a proper debate on the problem and the solution.
They could start with the fact that all Muslim terrorists are Muslim and an examination of the Koran and its commands.
Don’t hold your breath, unless you have your head in a bucket of water that is.













