Question Time from Salford

I am averagely squeamish and I certainly don’t get a kick out of self-inflicted pain, but I felt compelled to watch the special Question Time last night from Salford. You had to do it. 

I can’t be sure if the ISIS magazine ‘Dabiq’ is a fabrication, like a souped-up version of the ‘Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion’, but if you listened to Sam Harris’s Podcast, (as per my previous post)  (make the effort) you’d have a better grasp of the fundamental allure of ISIS than the panel on last night’s Question Time, with the exception of Sara Khan, who was accused of knowing less about Islam than Manchester’s new Mayor. Yes, I mean Andy Burnham, who has reputedly said that the ‘Manchester Concert Bomber’ Salman Abedi was “a criminal, not a Muslim”. 

Are we in a fool’s paradise or a living nightmare?

Jeremy Corbyn is about to resume campaigning with a speech that advertises his ignorance of Islamic State’s ‘vision’,  and appears to be basing his entire campaign on his own stupidity, while Theresa May’s suicidal manifesto and shifty denial that a U-turn is a U-turn has effectively scuppered her landslide.

Meanwhile the BBC is dumbing down. 

They invite that idiot Ceri Bullivant of CAGE on to Newsnight to opine on ‘the Prevent’ scheme. 

Rizwaan Sabir “Counterterrorism researcher’ was given airtime on BBC news.

The charming fellow standing on the right of this film and conspicuously shaking his head popped up again in the audience of Question Time. His main concern was for the Muslims.

(The symbols spelling out ‘LOVE’ on the front of the lady in the bag’s bag, if you didn’t notice, are: “gun, grenade, knife & AK47”.)

On Channel 4, he said:

“Muslims are the ones who suffer collateral damage from this kind of attack. I don’t think the Muslim community can do more than they’re already doing. This is nothing that we have to be apologetic for. We have done nothing wrong. Individuals are responsible for their own actions. My message is that part of who you are as a Muslim, the gift that Allah (!) has bestowed upon you mercy from him, use it wisely and don’t be afraid. If you get attacked - Islamophobia - then you report it. But do not come to Muslims and say we  need to do more. We’re doing everything we can Krishna. Muslim charities have already given money to the victims’ families.”

A QT audience member says the problem comes from the mosques. He reads from a leaflet he was given on Didsbury Mosque’s open day:

“Living in a society in which people have accepted Western lifestyle and their way of life brings immorality at every step. Modesty shame and honour have no place in Western civilisation.”

The man in the QT audience (and in the Channel 4 video) put his had up and delivered a revised version of his speech, which I assume he’d been practising ever since he had spoken to Krishnan. Maybe he realised his  victimhood schtick was too raw or maybe someone reminded him about the actual victims. 

“I want people to listen to me very carefully. I am Manchester. I was born in Manchester and raised in Manchester. I am a proud man and a proud Muslim. And when Manchester hurt, I hurt, and I am hurting after what happened on Monday, and what happened on Monday night was an evil act, an abhorrent act that should be condemned with the strongest condemnation and to think that somebody could target small girls, and that anybody could target small girls in particular to carry out evil, should be said by anyone as evil. But let me make a plea. 

Who, me?

“I’m sitting next to a reverend here, a friend, (spot the Reverend’s reaction) who I’ve known and worked with in Manchester and it seems that Muslims are to be the target of collateral damage when these things happen. 

Islam is not the reason that people do bad things. People do bad things because they’re evil and they’re bad people, and I think that after these things happen that Islamophobia increases and attacks increase, and let us please not let people who hate and who want to divide us, divide us. Let’s be united together and Manchester will be united and we should work together stand shoulder to shoulder and say we will not accept hate and we stand against Islamophobia and all sorts of evil in all its forms.

The BBC is indeed giving a platform to  ‘all sides’, according to the obligations embedded in its charter, but the appropriate amount of intelligent criticism would be helpful. It’s almost as though I’m asking for BIAS. Bias towards “British values.”