The next item on the Sunday menu was something that also could have been predicted: the inevitable BBC 'backlash' feature in response to What British Muslims Really Think:
The TV documentary that sought to reveal what Muslims really think is accused of perpetuating anti-Muslim prejudice. We'll debate that claim with a Muslim activist and the programme's executive producer.
...except it didn't turn out to be the usual 'backlash' angle.
William Crawley told us that "newspapers and social media have been awash with criticisms of this programme and of the survey at the heart of it" - which may be true of the newspapers and social media he reads but certainly wasn't true of the newspapers and social media I read!
William Crawley told us that "newspapers and social media have been awash with criticisms of this programme and of the survey at the heart of it" - which may be true of the newspapers and social media he reads but certainly wasn't true of the newspapers and social media I read!
The activist Shelina Janmohamed said the data didn't back up the "terrifying" thesis that Muslims are "a nation within a nation". Executive producer Samir Shah defended the data and the programme.
Here's an extract from it.
(It got a bit tense between the BBC man and the Channel 4 man, with quite a bit of crosstalk. Shelina remained calm throughout).
Shelina Janmohamed: So I don't think anyone is denying that there are issues in the poll that we need to address. What we're denying is there's this idea there's a kind of separate nation, that Muslims are living separately and don't want to be part of society. What Muslims are saying is that we are very much part of society. So we have 13 Muslim MPs, We have, you know, a One Direction boy band star, Nadiya's going to be baking the Queen's cake. So this is the landscape from which British Muslims are flourishing. Are there attitudes we still need to tackle? Of course there are, As a nation, as an entirety, we are tackling issue of discrimination against homosexuality, against...
William Crawley (interrupting): Yes, but on this idea of "a nation within a nation"...I'll just put this to Samir...If you were to do an analysis of Evangelical Christians and their views, for example, about homosexuality you could probably make the argument that they too are "a nation within a nation", couldn't you? Isn't this analogy...isn't this comparison with the general population unrevealing ultimately?
Samir Shah: No. First of all, that is a profoundly mistaken form of comparison because you're comparing a subsect with the whole community when you look at Evangelical Christians. We sampled the whole British Muslim community and we weighted it according to age, sex, class, regions, ancestry. So we're talking about the whole British Muslim community. It's not just one subsect of it. Secondly, I don't think you'll find Evangelical Christians...a quarter of them wishing to live part of their lives under Sharia law. I don't think you'll find...
William Crawley (interrupting): No, but they would say they want to live their lives under God's law.
Samir Shah: ...among Evangelical Christians almost a half wanting their children to be brought up in Muslim...
William Crawley (interrupting): Samir, they might not use the word 'Sharia law' but they may say they want to live their lives under the rule of the Scriptures.
Samir Shah: I know, but I'm not sure what the point you're getting at is.
William Crawley: The point is whether it's a false comparison to compare Muslims to the general population rather than whether Muslim attitudes to other religious populations.
Samir Shah (interrupting): Yes, but you're looking at a particular subsect - Evangelical Christians - and you're comparing that with a sample of the whole British Muslim community. That's a comparison of apples and oranges. It doesn't make sense.
William Crawley: Shelina?
Shelina Janmohamed: You know, I think what we want to do, where Samir and I agree, is there's a story that we want to tell about Muslims and we genuinely want wider society and Muslims to live in a fairer, more equal, just society, and there are issues that come up around how Muslims can participate greater in society. And, you know, Samir has previously spoken about things like the challenge of getter more minority voices into, for example, the broadcasting industry and we have data this week released by the TUC talking about how BME graduates are two-and-a-half times less likely to be employed, that there's a pay gap. You know, these are some of the barriers to integration that also exist, and when we're focusing always internally on a limited set of ideas about what Muslims are or are not then naturally we're going to find it difficult for those minorities to....
William Crawley: Shelina, I'm sorry. We're out of time. I'm sorry.
