The homepage of the BBC News website has a prominently placed new 'The Reporters' piece:
It's by Shaimaa Khalil, the BBC's Pakistan correspondent, and makes the case for the burkini, ending:
But to me, as someone who wore it for years, it has always meant that I could swim, and in that was a freedom that I still remember and am still grateful for.
Her piece has provoked a heated debate on Twitter, in which she's been participating. There's not been much of a meeting of minds.
Curiously, however, she seems to believe that her piece doesn't take a biased position on this sensitive issue.
I doubt anyone reading the piece would seriously think that she's anything other than against a burkini ban though.
For me if you have free will to wear it feel free to do so.
ReplyDeleteWhat I actually find more objectionable is that there are many other faiths and beliefs in Britain.
How about something promoting and supporting them for a change? BBC? It's currently day to day promotion of Muslim beliefs.
Quite. There are nearly a million Hindus in the UK, for example. They hardly ever get such promotion.
ReplyDeleteExpecting the BBC to give up its Islamic Love In ideology is like expecting an alcoholic to give up the bottle. It's become habitual.
ReplyDeleteStrange isn't it? But I think I've worked out the dynamic - even though Islam is poisonous to all the left-liberal elite hold dear (feminism, gay rights, youth rebellion, pacifism, socialism and human rights) they need to drink deep of it...they need to convince themselves (first and foremost and then us by extension) that Islam is a normal system of belief that can be compatible with a PC multicultural left-liberal society. They can only do that by praising and promoting its followers, making them seem an integrated part of the wider society (through drama, lifestyle programmes and news items and hiding all references to Sharia...they realise that if Islam appears somehow not to fit into their overall vision then it will undermine PC multiculturalism as an ideology.
Of course they end up with terible hangovers - like that one after Cologne New Year's Eve...but they are soon "back on the bottle" - going for the stronger stuff this time, like Catrin Nye saying it is Islamophobic even to object to Sharia law.
The BBC has a very long history of allowing personal advocacy from their journalists on special, sensitive topics. Justin Webb was allowed to do a special feature advocating for embryonic stem cell research because his son has juvenile diabetes, for example, or Stuart Hughes and his campaign to carry the Olympic Torch because he is an amputee.
ReplyDeleteObjectivity and impartiality is out the window, and we're supposed to pretend they all know when to draw the line.
One drunk woman summed up what people don't like about this garb, in the cry: Go home, Saudia Arabia. She went further than that, ending up in court for aggravated criminal damage to a black-garbed artwork: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/1462049/what-drunk-brexit-supporter-screamed-as-she-destroyed-hijab-sculpture/
ReplyDeleteIf the sculpture itself isn't bad enough, The Evening Standard obligingly gave us the thoughts of its creator, a woman from Jordan living in London - the ironies pile up: http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/woman-destroys-students-burka-sculpture-while-launching-bizarre-postbrexit-rant-a3300751.html