Following the BBC’s misconceived attempt to shame Boris Johnson by ambushing him with a surprise question from the “imam from Bristol” it seems that Nicky Campbell’s morning show (I believe it’s on radio 5 ?) also featured the good imam. Subsequently, Nicky Campbell himself felt moved to apologise on the Twitter.
I would like to apologise. We had the Imam from the BBC Tory leadership debate on our programme this morning. His social media comments have been extremely disturbing. We should have checked. We didn’t. I’m sorry.— Nicky Campbell (@NickyAACampbell) June 19, 2019
All five candidates should be ashamed of themselves for rushing to align themselves with Abdullah Patel last night and to commit to Sajid Javid’s grandstanding call for an investigation into Islamophobia in the Conservative Party.
(Did I really hear Baroness Warsi demanding that this inquiry was to be ‘proper and rigorous’ thereby tacitly admitting that Shami’s was not?)
It’s absurd of the BBC to assume that colourful descriptions of the burka are Islamophobic. Why doesn’t anyone ask Maitlis and Co if they seriously think it’s in any way normal to walk about in such an absurd costume. Here is Dr Taj Hargey’s take on the matter:
“The burka and niqab are hideous tribal ninja-like garments that are pre-Islamic, non-Koranic and therefore un-Muslim.
“Although this deliberate identity-concealing contraption is banned at the Kaaba in Mecca it is permitted in Britain, thus precipitating security risks, accelerating vitamin D deficiency, endorsing gender-inequality and inhibiting community cohesion.”
He added that Mr Johnson “did not go far enough” in his column for the Daily Telegraph on Monday, which sparked widespread outcry.
This morning Nick Robinson interviewed Richard Ratcliffe for what appeared to be another spot of Boris-bashing. The gist of it was that Boris had tried to “blame” Iran for Mrs Ratcliffe’s predicament, when “obviously”, as Nick implied, it was Boris’s gaffe that was to blame. The Iranian regime was bound to leap upon any remark that might justify holding Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe for an extra stretch, and Boris’s remark was reckless, whether there was any truth in it or not. Fair enough.
Think about it though. Mrs Ratcliffe is Iranian. Her Iranian mother currently resides in Iran. Mrs Ratcliffe is in prison in Iran, as a kind of hostage, if you like.
Richard Ratcliffe could hardly say anything too harsh about the Iranian regime publicly, for fear that they would seize upon it and extend her incarceration even more. You wouldn’t want to annoy the Ayatollahs if your wife was at their mercy, would you?
So was the BBC wise to orchestrate that interview?
So far, the BBC are covering up the Imam's decision to delete his Twitter thread which contained numerous anti-Semitic tropes, wished for Israel's destruction and called for gender segregation of women from men, as for women to avoid being assaulted by men. Will they go on censoring this news or will they be forced to admit it is the case?
ReplyDeleteThey are also covering up the fact he is a senior staff member of a failing Islamic Faith School.
Boris can't win. When he stands up in Parliament and tells the truth about Zaghari-Ratcliffe he is criticised. At other times he is criticised for "lying" - although the evidence is thin.
Yes. The 8pm R4 News had a whole litany of moans about 'crimes' Boris committed last night; prominent among them was that "He forgot the Imam's name!" Shock! Horror! - has INTERPOL been informed?
ReplyDeleteStop press - 1 pm news had a statement saying that the BBC did due diligence on the imam's social media accounts, but that, at that time he had suspended his Twitter account containing the anti-semitic comments. The imam subsequently reinstated the comments. Do we believe this?
That Nicky Campbell has issued this apology is significant. I have always thought of him as leading the clarion call for BBC PC ideology.
ReplyDeleteThis is getting better!
ReplyDeleteWe now find that BBC had on a Labour Party HQ staffer as another questioner, one "Aman Thakar"...
https://order-order.com/2019/06/19/aman-london-worked-labour-hq-investigating-anti-semitism/
He was charged in the Labour Party with organisation their (weak) investigations into Anti-Semitism by people who share Abdullah's sorts of views...
Hmmm...get out of this one Burley.
Aman has deleted his twitter thread. How did the BBC end up with 40% of its questioners deleting their twitter threads? The 40% both being, it would seem, Muslim. The Muslim population of the UK is 5%. So that's x8 representation.
DeleteOddly Aman claims to be a "nationalist" and is thinks the worst part of Hit ler's legacy is is abuse of the term nationalism...interesting...but what nation is Aman talking about I wonder? Aman appears to be an Urdu name, common in Pakistan.
Time, surely, for a formal complaint from one - ideally all - of the candidates or, better still, from the Conservative party, itself!
DeleteThat’s the sensible way forward , Sisyphus.
DeleteUnfortunately the candidates will not and nor will the Conservative party.
The sad thing is that they dare not go there, such is the hold cultural Marxism has over the levers of power and media.
A long but useful summary of the Abdullah Patel saga by Quilliam
ReplyDeletehttp://journal.quilliaminternational.com/2019/06/19/mufti-abdullah-patel-on-the-tory-leadership-debate/
I don't like that Quilliam article. I don't accept that Abdullah Patel "appeared on the programme to ask a reasonable question about the impact of incendiary language about Muslims".
DeleteWhat is "incendiary" about Boris Johnson defending the right of women to wear the Burqa if they wish? What is wrong with making fun of certain modes of dress - that has been done down through the ages (there was once a TV comedy called "All Gas and Gaiters" - a common phrase about Bishops I believe)?
People do find Burqas either comical or sinister - why wouldn't they? That's perfectly normal in our culture. It's the wearing of Burqas that is "incendiary" as it implies a complete rejection of our societal norms and that is why a number of countries considered democratic ban them either entirely or in varying degrees.
With hindsight, yes. I think David Taub was bending over backwards to avoid being dismissed as another Islamophobe.
DeleteConsidering that he was responsible for unearthing some of the revelations about Abdullah Patel, it does seem unnecessarily cautious of him to describe the question as reasonable.
In fact, the question doesn’t seem reasonable at all now we know how seriously Abdullah takes his Islamic practices and rituals, meaning he’d regard as incendiary anything less than obsequious, fawning respect for Burka-wearing.
Knowing what we now know, we can safely assume that Boris was the object of his question and letter-box / bank-robber-gate the subject.
Had these revelations remained hidden, and had he been given the benefit of the doubt and successfully passed himself off as a neutral or benign participant, then “Do you accept that words have consequences?” might seem a fair question.
However, the evidence unearthed by David Taub and Stephen Daisley point to one thing. That this man is clearly in the wrong country.
He’d be much more at home in one of the ‘conservative’ Islamic countries, though if he likes the burka, he’d better steer clear of Mecca, where it’s illegal to wear it.
Sajid Javid and the rest of the contenders immediately leapt up to distance themselves from the “Islamophobia” supposedly so rife in the Conservative Party. This should be a great embarrassment to them now that the truth is out. But it doesn’t seem to be. They don’t even seem a tiny bit fazed by it, and neither does Baroness Warsi.
Yes, it's a case of: "Come on guys, we've just had another demonstration of Taqiyya in practice, so we can see this whole Islamophobia thing is a scam to make us Sharia-compliant, isn't it guys? Agreed? Great!!"
DeleteOf course I'm dreaming!
So to summarise:
ReplyDeleteThe BBC failed to do proper checks on participants in the debate.
They had on one extreme Islamic cleric who references anti-semitic tropes and tells female r*pe victims that it "takes two to tango". They had on one Labour apparatchik on who has posted dodgy tweers about the German Leader 1933-1945.
40% of the public participants were Muslim. None appeared to be Hindu, Sikh, or practising Christians.
The two Muslim participants deleted their twitter threads after appearing and both have been suspended from their jobs.
They had one questioner on who was arguing for carbon neutrality within 6 years - a policy which would result in societal breakdown, mass starvation, mass deaths from hypothermia, mass unemployment, mass emigration, collapse of the NHS and extreme poverty for tens of millions. The BBC considered it reasonable to ask on this extremist to ask her question.
Ok and one more thing: Rob Burley thinks the BBC did nothing wrong.
And the BBC defence has unravelled because the Twitter account was live until the weekend. See Guido.
DeleteSorry not Guido but here’s the link
Deletehttps://twitter.com/search?f=tweets&q=%40abdullahpatel94%20since%3A2019-06-01%20until%3A2019-06-18&src=typd
Yes, Arne, I'd seen that earlier...Burley says they checked on Monday but Guido seems to be saying they could have found that there was twitter account live at the weekend.
DeleteThis of course smacks of deception. Why would an Islamic cleric engage in deception?
Why indeed!
DeleteMB/Arne - I'm suffering from getting up at 4am & ferry lag, so may have got it wrong, but I think that the main 6pm news is still claiming that the BBC did due diligence on Abdullah's Twitter account. If they have,indeed,lied, heads must surely roll.
DeleteArne - On our patch, BBC Midlands 6pm News has just just featured Mary Rhodes interviewing a man from MEND - a controversial Muslim pressure group. She let his spin on Boris & Hunt go largely unchallenged. No attempt to raise with him Abdullah's abhorrent sexist views or anti-semitism.
10 pm BBC 1 News - Amol Rajan has just assured us that there was no suggestion that the BBC had intended to deceive - Mmm...Remember the fake pastor/seed-saleswoman/actress? Maitlis was involved in that one too. It really does get more like 'Drop the Dead Donkey every day.
DeleteEven if they weren’t intentionally deceiving, they were intentionally asking loaded questions aimed directly at Boris
DeleteSisyphus , just saw the MT report tonight with the MEND man given a free rein to support Patel and attacking Boris. Saw the clip of primary schoolchildren at the school too, all observing a strict religious dress code.
DeleteVery interesting that Emily Matlis described Abdullah Patel's tweets as having been anti-Israel and not anti-Semitic! The audacity of it.
ReplyDeleteShe seemed somewhat chastened by last nights events on Newsnight this evening.
Interesting...Where was that Anon? Was it on Newsnight? We need to know exactly where these horrible people are lying so we can hold them to account. Emily doesn't think wiping Israel off the Middle East map is anti-Semitic?
DeleteIt was on Newsnight, just at the start of the paper review near the end:
DeleteEMILY MAITLIS: "Let me take you through the front pages first of all. The Mail's front page is the BBC, the imam who was exposed as being anti-Israeli after making those comments on our debate programme last night about Islamophobia. 'Biased Brazen Contemptible' is the Mail's take on the BBC on that one."