The West Midlands Censorship Bureau
So the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service issued a joint statement condemning Undercover Mosque and announcing that the West Midlands Police had referred the documentary to Ofcom. The cops wanted the programme makers prosecuted for stirring up racial hatred. They seem to be slightly confused.
[T]he real story should have been about the alarmingly censorial and quite possibly libellous attack on investigative journalism. No matter, on Radio 4’s PM programme, it was Dispatches’ commissioning editor Kevin Sutcliffe who was subjected to a grilling, while Abu Usamah, one of the subjects of the documentary, was portrayed as a harmless victim…[H]ere is Usamah spreading his message of inter-communal respect and understanding, as captured in Undercover Mosque: ‘No one loves the kuffaar! Not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffaar. Whether those kuffaar are from the UK or from the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!’
Who? The kuffaar – you know – everyone except ‘the people of Islam.’ You know, some five and a half billion people. We hates ’em! Because they are – kuffaar.
[L]et’s ask what conceivable context could make these quotes acceptable or reasonable? Was he rehearsing a stage play? Was it a workshop on conflict resolution? Or perhaps it was the same context in which a spokesman from those other righteous humanitarians, the BNP, might attempt to aid community relations by repeatedly stating that his followers ‘hate Muslims’.
Oh but that’s completely different. Hating the kuffaar is completely different from hating Muslims. It’s all about community cohesion, don’t you understand?
‘We hate the kuffaar’ is not a statement best designed for community cohesion, but whose fault is that – Abu Usamah’s for saying it or Channel 4’s for recording him?
The latter, of course. Duh.
Apparently what happened is, the police and the CPS tried to find out if prosecutions for crimes of racial hatred could be brought against the imams, decided they couldn’t, and by way of compensation, shopped Channel 4 to the broadcast regulators instead. That’s not actually their job, but never mind.
They had concluded that comments had been “broadcast out of context” and so they and the CPS had complained to Ofcom.They did not acknowledge, by the way, that at several points in the programme, the organisations and individuals concerned are given a right of reply, or that several moderate Muslim experts explain on air why they think the remarks shown are extreme. Do the West Midlands police side with Islamists against moderates?
Oh no no no no; good heavens no. Unless of course it seems like a good idea for community cohesion.
Let us, however, take the context point seriously. The context is, according to many of the preachers, that they are talking not about Britain now, but about the Islamic state that they seek…[E]ven if we accept that it is true, is it reassuring? The Islamic state envisaged by most of those featured is not an ideal, imaginary kingdom of heaven where the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
No it certainly is not. It’s an imaginary kingdom of hell where the lion shall persecute the lamb forever and ever amen.
I wish the U.K had a first amendment we wouldnt have to suffer from speech laws or the absurd outcomes that such laws provoke!
And a second amendment as well it helps protect the first.
This reminds me of the infamous ‘uncovered meat’ remarks of Australia’s Sheikh Hilally. When the furore first broke, there was much obfuscation about context and sad to say, outright lies by the Sheikh and his supporters as to what his obnoxious words really, really meant. When I finally got to read the entire speech, I realised that the media had in fact been giving the sheikh an easy time due to his status as religious leader and he was far worse than depicted. So much for bloody fucking context!
56 hours of footage is a bit much to ask for to determine ‘context’ here, so this ruckus will last for a while longer. C4 do need to do something to nail their critics or forever fall silent on any ‘muslim’ issue. Thier second despatches programme is also under investigation, appparently.
Reading through the transcript now (never saw the broadcast). The format is horribe – very much a mishmash of very short segments from different people and different contexts, a format that certainly lends itself to manipulation.
It’s perfectly possible to see how much of this could have been cherry-picked in such a way as to create a misleading ooverall impression of the general culture of the mosque itself: for instance, it could be the case that there is much dissent from the more extreme views expressed; or it could be that minority (personal) opinions are misrepresented as ‘rulings’. It could be that people with genuinely offensive prejudices but no more than this are being juxtaposed with people holding more extreme views in order to tar them still further through guilt by association. And so on.
My gut feeling is that the mosque has not been significantly misrepresented, but the prosecutor who has actually seen the footage that we haven’t clearly thinks that C4 was guilty of misrepresentation. Given C4’s recent record with documentaries – that awful fiasco on Global Warming, for example, which C4 has still not apologized for AFAIK – I for one am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.
Excuse me outeast? What part of congratulating the man who killed a (Muslim) British soldier in Afghanistan was ‘significantly misrepresented’? Did you watch the programme? If not, don’t be fooled by the distorted descriptions of it being put out by the self-serving CPS and West Midlands police. As others have pointed out, time was given to those shown to explain their statements and also to other Muslims to comment on what they’d seen. The former were happy (then) to elaborate, the latter were appalled.
Now, encouraged by the PC (pun intended)brigade, they are of course outraged and somehow we are being asked to sympathise with those who say they wish to convert or exterminate us and to excoriate those who try to warn us about this.
Extraordinary times we live in – and if the EU has its way we’ll be even less able to complain about it. See http://frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID={80D0BF73-5861-4B31-968E-98F0F9E81317} for details.
Addendum:
Watching Abu Usamah’s ‘Right to Reply’ vid on youtube now. First impressions:
In one place he definately and explicitly claims not to have said things (about hating non-muslims) that he was recorded saying (and his ‘out-of-context’ claims don’t change that). (I tried to post a question asking about this, but comment moderation is enabled so I’m not holding my breat for a response).
His explanation of the ‘women are deficient’ thing sounds (to me) honest (not intellectually honest, just sincere) but unsatisfactory. He seems to be arguing that the relative values of male and female testimony constitute the ‘deficiency’, rather than being an example of the application of the deficiency. This sounds pretty typically ‘moderate muslim’ to me: as an apologetic it cannot work because the rule itself is intrinsically inexcusable, but it’s a familiar kind of tune.
Chris:
Did you read my post? No, I didn’t see the documentary, and no, I don’t trust newspaper reports thereof. That’s why I’m reading the transcript.
The Afghanistan quote was by an unidentified ‘invited speaker’; although the documentary implies that this means his opinion was endorsed by the mosque, what grounds are there to assume this was so? For all you or I know, the next speaker may well have castigated that person for going so far. Of course, he might have praised the position as well: we just can’t know, since we are not told of any responses at the even itself…
In a well-made documentary the attendees would have been asked about this, the imams would have been asked… As it is, we are robbed of content. No, the speaker himself was clearly not misrepresented – but the implicit claim that this accurately reflects prevailing opinion could easily be false.
(In fact, as noted in the documentary the UKIM rapidly distanced itself from the speaker concerned and claimed he was nothing to do with them; though I’ll join you in a pinch of salt with that one, since public statements are less than wholly reliable as a guide to real grassroots opinion.)
“I wish the U.K had a first amendment we wouldnt have to suffer from speech laws or the absurd outcomes that such laws provoke!”
We now have a right to freedom of speech because of European human rights law.
How this sits with Noo Lubber’s vote-purchasing religious hatred laws (an apt name: can they call their next tax reforms the greedy git laws?) I don’t know.
You trust the E.U. on free speech isues?
I’m sure that many people here would be interested to know that CNN is going to have a 6-hour series next week called “God’s Warriors.”
It’s 9-11 PM Eastern, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.
Aug 21: “Jewish Warriors”
Aug 22: “Muslim Warriors”
Aug 23: “Christian Warriors”
That’s if you’re into horror stories…
outeast: “Given C4’s recent record with documentaries – that awful fiasco on Global Warming, for example, which C4 has still not apologized for AFAIK – I for one am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
This is very strange. Why should they apologise?
There are many genuine questions that can be asked about global warming and that documentary asked some of them.
Perhaps you should read Freeman Dyson on the need for heretics…
outeast: “Given C4’s recent record with documentaries – that awful fiasco on Global Warming, for example, which C4 has still not apologized for AFAIK – I for one am not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
This is very strange. Why should they apologise?
There are many genuine questions that can be asked about global warming and that documentary asked some of them.
Perhaps you should read Freeman Dyson on the need for heretics…
outeast: “It’s perfectly possible to see how much of this could have been cherry-picked in such a way as to create a misleading ooverall impression of the general culture of the mosque itself…”
Yes, and it’s perfectly possible that the documentary gives a fair impression of the culture.
Given what I have read from the more strident fundamentalists, I have no reason to disbelieve the documentary (which, not being in the UK, I have not seen).
I should also add that, like mirax, I read all Sheikh Hilally’s sermon and the media represented it quite fairly.
Keith, the entire undercover mosques prog is on youtube, if you are so inclined to view it. The soundbite about hating kuffars is not the worst or only instance of hate speech in it. If C4 misrepresented and decontextualised that much hate speech, jeez, I’d really like to see the evidence for it.
Outeast – so you did – sorry! I think I understand your following points but surely the C4 programme wasn’t suggesting that all Muslims have these views only that they exist and are being promulgated via the mosques and regardless of editing and ‘context’ this seems to be irrefutable.
Keith McGuinness:
The C4 Global Warming documentary substantially misrepresented the science of climate change (including misrepresenting the case for AGW), included falsified data (in the form of graphs mislabelled with incorrect dates to change the apparent data presented, for example), and used selective quoting to make at least one prominent scientist appear to be endorsing a view that he did not hold.
The programme’s maker had form for this kind of thing, too: he was criticized by the ITC for distortion of interviewees’ views in his C4 documentary ‘Against Nature’ (something for which C4 did apologize, while his ‘Storm in a D-Cup’ documentary on how silicone breast implants are beneficial for women’s health was screened by C4 (that channel again!) only after being rejected by the BBC for apparently ignoring a large body of evidence contradicting his claims.
But anyway, there’s a ‘need for heretics’ so C4 doesn’t need to apologize for screening blatantly false rubbish, eh?
I don’t have enough facts to decide what I think about this (although I agree strongly with outeast’s view that reading the papers is not sufficient), but a few suggestions:-
(i) might it possible to make a case that the Dispatches programme is a case of shouting ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre? it seems to me that this would be at least an intellectually respectable view, and I bet it’s how the West Mids police (who have the job of keeping the peace) think of it
(ii) the motives of the WMP and the CPS seem as though they might be rather more politically complex than is suggested. That they have reported to Channel 4 to the regulator does not necessarily mean that they want the programme suppressed. They might, for instance, want to preserve some credibility in the eyes of the non-extreme Muslim population of the UK (I’m not arguing that their action is necessarily either morally or pragmatically defensible on this ground, but neither is impossible). And/or, they might be aiming to escalate the debate, with C4 cast in the role of beleagured (sp? doesn’t look right) champion of free speech.
(iii) whether or not it is “the job” of either body to dob Channel 4 in is an interesting technical question, which needs to be answered by reference to the constituting documents of the two bodies, not by reference to the unsupported opinion of a Daily Telegraph Journo, especially one who descends to the usual tedious tricks of deabte (look at the bit about the CPS lawyer, for instance).
As to the more specific point here: the mosque documentary’s core claim was that supposedly moderate mosques are in fact being used as a front for extremism. In doing so, it seems to have cherrypicked quotes and presented them with framing that implies (in some cases) contexts which may well have been misleading.
Be careful about what that implies! It does not mean that the people interviewed do not hold unpleasant views, for example. Why should it? Watch the ‘right to reply’ stuff – it’s illuminating. Usamah, for example, denies advocating that homposexuals be thrown from mountains (and looking at his actual words in the documentary and his claimed context I believe him); but he still comes out very, very heavily against homosexuality. He gives context to the crucifixion of apostates thing – but again, he is perfectly upfront about crucifixion as one of the five prescribed penalties for apostasy.
If the documentary had been honest its focus could have been on how apalling even ‘moderate’ Islam can be.
outeast, which brings up another point about how poorly science is represented, even when it does get its minimal airtime. Interesting that, in all the coverage of the current BAA protest I have seen, no broadsheet or BBC journalists have actually questioned the widespread implication that airtravel is a major contributor to greenhouse effect. (It isn’t. It is expanding in its contribution, but at 3-6% of UK total that’s a different issue.)
As everyone from Hawkins to Brooker alludes, we’d be better off if our newspapers published more column inches devoted to science than horroscopes… but I guess people find the likes Ben Goldacre a bit too…. hard ? (tongue in cheek that last bit – hopefully !)
Outeast, was responding to your “C4 Global Warming documentary” post by the way.
Nick S
I realized:) It’s OT, but what’s the source for your 3-6%? I was under the impression that it’s a bit hard to put percentage figures on impacts on global warming specifically. I think air travel’s share of CO2 emissions is actually rather lower than your percentage (2-3% globally, according to the IPCC), though that’s still significant given that it’s a rapidly growing source… but this is way OT…
outeast, 2-3% as I understood it also, but got that 6% from the BAA itself…
“In the UK, the proportion of emissions from aviation is higher because the UK is an international aviation hub. Current CO2 emissions from aviation are 6% of the total..”
http://www.baa.com/portal/page/CRmicrositesLHR07%5EOverview%5EHeathrow+and+climate+change/4882b9ce2bc63110VgnVCM10000036821c0a____/448c6a4c7f1b0010VgnVCM200000357e120a____/
“We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!'”
They love with one breath and with the next breath they hate.
Who would feel safe with them. As they persistently kill the very people they profess to love. There is with them -no loyalty.
We love – we hate – we love – we hate we love – we hate.
At least kuffaar’s know what their fate is with these love/hate fundies.
outeast: “The C4 Global Warming documentary substantially misrepresented the…”
I am not going to continue the global warming debate here; it is done to death elsewhere.
I will point out the considerable discrepancy between the criticism of the C4 documentary and that of Al Gore. The latter makes, if anything, worse claims than the former but is largely left alone because it supports the current dogma.
outeast: “If the documentary had been honest its focus could have been on how apalling even ‘moderate’ Islam can be.”
You appear to be arguing that even ‘moderate’ Islam is extreme…