Wording

Sometimes people try to do the right thing and their very effort to do the right thing causes them to do just the wrong thing they meant to avoid. Sometimes that’s sad, other times it’s funny. Sometimes it’s part funny part irritating.

A Bradford man attacked and threatened after his family converted from Islam to Christianity was told by police to “stop being a crusader”…The No Place To Call Home report, by Ziya Meral, states apostates are “subject to gross and wide-ranging human rights abuses.”…The report, launched today, describes how the Pakistani community in Bradford reacted to the family’s conversion by shouting abuse and death threats, vandalising their house and car, attacking Mr Hussein and following his wife.

Really?! The entire Pakistani community in Bradford shouted abuse and death threats and followed Ms Hussein – that must have been something to see.

No, of course that’s not what happened, and it’s not what the Bradford Telegraph meant to say, but it was so busy trying not to offend anyone by referring to people without the c word that it did in fact, idiotically, say that. Block thinking taken to its logical conclusion – if some ten or twenty Pakistanis do something then that thing was done by ‘the Pakistani community.’ So much for precision, clarity, accuracy, and above all, fairness. Any Bradford ‘members of the Pakistani community’ who don’t approve of such behavior must be feeling very chuffed.

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