Offensive content
God the BBC can be infuriating. In its reporting on the murder by torture of Mashal Khan for instance.
A university student in Pakistan accused of blasphemy against Islam has been killed by a mob of fellow students on campus, police say.
Many students have been arrested after the brutal attack in the northern city of Mardan, and the campus has been closed.
Reports suggest that two young men were accused of posting offensive content on Facebook. One survived with injuries.
It’s not for the BBC to call the content of Khan’s posts “offensive.” It’s not for the BBC to agree with the idea that skepticism or mockery of religion is “offensive” – especially not hours after someone was violently battered to death over such accusations.
Blasphemy is a highly sensitive and incendiary issue in Pakistan.
Critics say blasphemy laws, which allow the death penalty in some cases, are often misused to oppress minorities.
Critics say that, but others might disagree. And what do they mean “misused” – how could laws against blasphemy be properly used?
Last month Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif voiced his support for a wide-ranging crackdown on blasphemous content on social media.
In a statement on his party’s official Twitter account, he described blasphemy as an “unpardonable offence”.
An official at Abdul Wali Khan University who spoke on condition of anonymity said Mr Khan was disliked by other students for his liberal and secular views.
At least 65 people have been murdered in Pakistan after being accused of blasphemy since 1990, a recent think tank report said.
And it serves them right for being so “offensive”?
You know, this BBC report offends me too. Wonder if the reporter would be comfortable to let me bang their skull in with a plank? In my own eyes I am divine and never to be offended.
I agree about the general tone, but to be fair to the BBC, it does not say that the men posted offensive content, only that they were accused of it.
The ‘islamophobia’ industry that has set up shop in most western countries in the guise of ‘anti-racism’ is the gateway to blasphemy legislation.
Since, at least for the moment, “blasphemy” laws are still considered medieval and in bad need of re-branding, any criticism of Islam must necessarily be classed as ‘racism’, a most fashionable and sought after commodity
You can’t actually kill Hirsi Ali…at least not yet… but you can make the absurd claim, and do so with a straight face, that she’s a White Supremacist.
Such *othering*, though still far from the islamic ideal of Easy-Kill Blasphemy, will nonetheless do for now.
The BEEB and many similar news outlets, like Canada’s CBC, willingly midwife this process.
It’s not just ‘infuriating’, it’s suicidal.
I was about to make the same point as David Evans, but will add that if there is one thing about the BBC that winds me up it’s their use of ‘the so-called’ Islamic State’ every time they mention I.S. They’re not ‘so-called’, they do call themselves Islamic State, it’s their name, there’s no ‘so-called’ about it. The job of the BBC News Dept. is to relate the news honestly, not to appease Muslims by playing down the link between Islam and its No.1 terror group.
David @ 2 – I know, and I didn’t say the BBC did say that the men posted offensive content, but the point is, they used that pejorative label without definition or explanation or quotation marks or anything else that would separate the BBC from the pejorative. I strongly doubt “offensive” or even its Urdu equivalent was the word Khan’s murderers used.
To put it another way, by writing “Reports suggest that two young men were accused of posting offensive content” the BBC endorses the theocratic idea that any dissent from Islam is automatically “offensive.” That’s absolutely standard for the Beeb, it does it all the time.
Maybe the BBC should have applied the epithet ‘so-called’ to offensive?
The BBC should have been careful and accurate.
My understanding of the use of “so-called Islamic State” is because they are not a state in the eyes of any nation, and they don’t operate as a state in anything but the most minimal sense. That is, the “so-called” applies to “State” rather than “Islamic”. Indeed, it didn’t occur to me until this minute that some people might think the BBC usage implied the organization was not Islamic. I recall reading about the reasons for the BBC policy, and if I recall correctly it was all about “State”.
That’s what I’ve always assumed it meant. I understood it as, if anything, belittling the claim to be a state.