In which Aslan sees off Polly Toynbee

A BBC taxi brings Polly to Broadcasting House

Like the Pevensey children, I lived in Narnia for part of my childhood and felt the breath of Aslan on my face. So I tuned in with great interest to this week's Beyond Belief to hear three writers singing the praises of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

By the Lion's mane, alas, it appears that not everyone appreciates C.S. Lewis's children's classic, foremost among them Polly Toynbee. She calls it "manipulative" because she doesn't like its underlying Christian message. She was definitely the White Witch denying us Christmas in the eyes of Ernie Rea's contributors, but they saw her off with a mighty roar. And she was never heard from again. (If only). 

We heard some extracts. Ernie Rea described the following as "beautiful" and "a great piece of descriptive writing", and I agree. The resurrected Aslan is here carrying the children on his back to the Witch's castle as winter gives way to spring in Narnia:

That ride was perhaps the most wonderful thing that happened to them in Narnia. Have you ever had a gallop on a horse? Think of that...and then imagine you are going about twice as fast as the fastest racehorse. But this is a mount that doesn't need to be guided and never grows tired. He rushes on and on...right across Narnia, in spring, down solemn avenues of beech and across sunny glades of oak, through wild orchards of snow-white cherry trees, past roaring waterfalls and mossy rocks and echoing caverns, up windy slopes alight with gorse bushes, and across the shoulders of heathery mountains and along giddy ridges and down, down, down again into wild valleys and out into acres of blue flowers.

"That's recognisably County Down", said Frank Cottrell-Boyce - which rather makes me want to go to County Down. 

Richard Dawkins heckles Radio 4

It's rare to read radio reviews by Richard Dawkins, but, bless him, he's been listening to BBC Radio 4 this afternoon and the experience has evidently severely punctured his equilibrium. He's evolved without intermediary stages straight into Dame Gillian Reynolds:

Wrong anniversary?

How very disappointing! At the start of this week's Beyond Belief, marking the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, all of the experts debunked the story that Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to a church door in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. They told us they didn't think it happened and that all that actually happened was that Luther wrote a letter to (The Times) his archbishop in order to get an essentially academic debate going about indulgences. The first recorded account of the "great myth" of Luther nailing his theses to the church door dates from 1543 but the story grew exponentially so that by 1617 the image of Luther as 'the man with the hammer' was fully established.

It was in 1620 that three further theses were produced, addressing the German nobility, and the academics on Beyond Belief believe their publication to be the real anniversary of the Lutheran revolution. The third - On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church - brands the Pope as the Antichrist and dismisses five of the seven Catholic Church's seven sacraments (leaving only baptism and the Eucharist).

Craig's Out of Office Good Friday message

Veterans of our curious little blog might recall, a few years back, that I mentioned my family's Good Friday walk to Morecambe's Bronze-Age barrow to witness our local Methodist church's annual carrying and placing of a cross atop that ancient man-made mound. 

I found it moving.

Four generations of my family again saw that very cross today, gleaming in the inevitable Morecambe sunshine against the distant backdrop of the Lakeland hills. 

I found that moving too.

And then we all started drinking.

The toddlers drank huge amounts of milk and orange. Their dad drank pale ale, while the rest of us older-and-wiser menfolk drank liver-defying quantities of red wine (the blood of Christ) in remembrance of our Lord and Saviour (not that anyone mentioned Him.) And three generations of our womenfolk honoured the Blessed Virgin by consuming government-guideline-defying units of New Zealand sauvignon blanc (without mentioning Her either).

We then collectively read Rabelais and died of alcohol poisoning. (My last words were: "I'm not bloody Oliver Reid you know").

All of which reminds me that at least two BBC Radio 4 programmes discussed the date of Easter this week: Monday's Beyond Belief and Tuesday's Making History - and specifically the question of why Easter is 'a movable feast'. 

The BBC bias angle was especially blatant on Beyond Belief. All three guests, responding to Justin Welby's suggestion that the date of Easter be fixed, strongly rejected Archbishop Justin's proposal. Not one of them defended it. Ergo: #bbcbias.

That said, I learned a lot from both programmes. 

It turns out that the Western Church bases the date of Easter on the Gregorian solar-based calendar whilst tracking the lunar-based Jewish calendar in the light of Passover, and that this results in complications. The date of Easter can fall between 22 March and 25 April as a result. The Eastern church, however, still follows the Julian calendar and seems to be much less tied to Passover whilst continuing to use an anti-Semitic liturgy. An academic - linking to official Catholic belief - dates the resurrection of Christ to Sunday 5 April 33 AD. (Others are less sure - to put it mildly). And what about 'Missing Wednesday', the day the New Testament seems to miss? Plus there's 1928 UK legislation in force to fix the date of Easter which has never been acted upon. 

Food for thought...which is all I can manage at the moment, except to give you a Bach Easter chorale:

Beyond belief!

After all those brickbats, a couple of bouquets.

First, this afternoon's Beyond Belief on Radio 4 on French secularism. It is well worth a listen. 

Its three guests were: Kay Chadwick, Reader in French Historical Studies at Liverpool University; Mona Siddiqui, professor of Islamic and Inter-religious Studies at the University of Edinburgh; and Natasha Lehrer, writer and literary editor of the Jewish Quarterly.

The first part looked at the history of French secularism; the second part look at how French secularism stands now; and dividing the two parts was an interview with a Muslim gentleman from a French "organisation against Islamophobia" who blamed the French state for pretty much everything, whose contribution was then discussed.

I found it all very interesting, and I suspect the discussion about the tensions between French secularism and French Islam didn't pan out quite how listeners would have expected. (It certainly didn't pan out how I expected - to put it mildly!).

The three guests were well contrasted. 

Mona Siddiqui gave a defence of French secularism and the way it "puts the citizen before the religion." She criticised the "mantra" of Muslims across Europe - whether they be Turks in Germany or South Asians in the UK - that the state is to blame. She said she didn't agree with them. She also said there are lots of issues that are "endemic" to these communities that aren't being looked at by those communities - and that those communities are the ones that need to "do some soul-searching". She said that the "visibility" of French Muslims is a "problem" - and meant that their hijab-wearing (etc) causing that problem. 

Natasha Lehrer espoused what might be called 'the left-liberal line', that it's understandable if French Muslims find French secularism problematic and that they blame the French state. They feel as if they have "no hope" because they face long-term, increasing mass unemployment and systematic discrimination, she said (which, of course, is uncannily close to 'the BBC line' in report after report from the banlieues).

Kay Chadwick rejected the 'anti-Islamophobia' guy's claim that "Islamophobia is the acceptable face of racism in France", and rejected the term 'Islamophobia'. She agreed with Mona, saying that French secularism discards ethnicity in favour of 'being French' first and foremost. 

Natasha countered that the French state is failing to bring ethnic minorities "into the fold" and that discrimination is rife.

Mona Siddiqui

Mona replied that the big issue facing Europe is "about values", and that we would welcome immigrants if they bought into our values of liberal European democracy. However, we are now seeing that no matter what we do with these communities "their values are essentially different from European liberal values" - and some of those people's values are essentially different because they choose to keep them different, and a lot of these communities "do fail" on those values.   

Natasha disagreed saying that allowing and valuing diversity is what a tolerant multicultural society demands, but Mona interrupted her to say "But that's only if it's positive", and a lot of the "demands" aren't a positive contribution to liberal democracy. It's all very well talking about diversity, Mona went on, but when different "diversities" rub up against each other that can be a problem. You've got to buy into liberal democracy. 

Natasha persisted in her point that the state is failing and there's discrimination. (50% of people in French jails are Muslim, she said - obviously blaming the French state for that). 

Mona said that shouldn't "eclipse the other problems", and it's a chicken and egg situation anyhow. Problems like low educational standards could be the result of problems within these communities or within society as a whole. It's hard to measure.  

Kay said many do live integrated lives; others don't. Everyone should respect each other. 

Mona said that a lack of integration and extremism don't necessarily tie up and Natasha surprisingly agreed with her, saying that many of the people who have gone off to fight in Syria (etc) come from fairly comfortable backgrounds and that "to simplify it to being a question of deprivation or exclusion is fairly inaccurate" - though that is what she herself appeared to have been arguing all along up till that point! 

As for their concluding comments? Well, Mona said she loved France when she lived there and would be happy to live there again; Natasha said that being Jewish in France isn't a problem and that French secularism is being used by politicians - and damagingly so for "cohesiveness"; and Kay said that we should hold on to cross-cultural unity but that France is a place where you can be many things, thanks to French secularism.

As for presenter Ernie Rea, he let it all flow and gave the 'anti-Islamophobia' guy a fair hearing but raised sceptical point about the man's incessant blaming of the French state both during the interview and after it.

As I say, well worth a listen - though I probably should have put something about 'spoilers' at the top of the post first!

As for my second bouquet, that must go to Andrew Marr and this morning's Start the Week on Russian from the Tsars to Putin - and not forgetting the commissars. 

It had Simon Sebag Montefiore on the Romanovs, presenting a highly juicy take on their wickedness (which suggests that his blockbuster on them probably isn't written 'in the academic style'); plus Amanda Vickery on the Siege of Leningrad and that Shostokovich symphony; Arkady Ostrovsky on the fall of the Soviet Union, very interestingly putting the case for Boris Yeltsin (among other things); and David Aaronovitch engagingly discussing his communist parents' cult-like ties to The Party.

Also well worth a listen. 

Beyond Belief

No, this isn't a plot line from the BBC Two satire W1A....

If you're a producer in the BBC's Religion and Ethics Department and you're feeling the urgent need to re-charge your spiritual batteries, you can apparently take advantage of a "Wonder week" away from the BBC:

Beyond Belief producer Rosie Dawson did just that earlier this year, describing the "Wonder week" concept as:

....a scheme dreamed up by my BBC department whereby weary producers can seek refreshment and inspiration away from the demands of programme production and deadlines. 

For her "Wonder week", Rosie accepted an invitation to spend a week at the Cambridge Muslim College:

From her write-up of the experience, she certainly seemed to have enjoyed it and drew a lesson from it concerning media coverage of Islam:

But it was simply the experience of being with the people at CMC which will stay with me. I was told to be at home - and I felt I was, almost at once. The four women students were my lunchtime companions ( the food was fantastic, by the way!). Three wore the niqab and I wondered if that might inhibit our relationship, but there was no lack of communication or sharing, and when their faces were presented to me in a women-only Koranic recitation class, it felt like a gift. As the week went on, the friendships with both women and men grew, until in the end there was much banter and teasing. I also ran a couple of sessions on radio interview techniques which developed into passionate discussions about media representations of Islam, a sobering reminder to me of my responsibility as a programme maker. 

I doubt she needed much reminding.

'Beyond Belief': Muhammed and Aisha

Sahih al-Bukhari, 7:62:64 & 65

This week's Beyond Belief on Radio 4 was quite a bad-tempered affair at times.

It featured two Muslim converts and an infidel, and the two Muslim converts were surprisingly rude on occasions to the infidel - historian Tom Holland. (Ed - Fancy that! Who knew that Muslim converts could be so uptight and huffy?)

The programme discussed the Hadiths - the collected stories and traditions about Muhammed compiled after his death and held in high importance by Muslims.

The programme's guests were (to cite the descriptions provided by the BBC): Jonathan Brown, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilisation at Georgetown University; Sahib Bleher, Imam and author on the Qur'an; and Tom Holland, a Classicist and author of several best selling books including In The Shadow of the Sword, on the origins of Islam.

This is the second time I've failed to warm to Sahib Bleher on Beyond Belief. 

The last time I heard him he was being less than moderate in his denunciation of the 'heretical' Ahmedis. Our Is the BBC biased? post at the time laid out the extraordinary record of this man, a co-founder of the Islamic Party of Britain. (He thinks 9/11 was organised by the U.S. and Israel, has described 7/7 as a "set-up", refers to the Holocaust as "the Holocult", and associates with the anti-Semitic far-right.) 

Quite why Radio 4 keeps inviting him on is beyond me.

Professor Brown is  much more respectable (if no less prickly). He's a distinguished academic after all.

The Prince Alwaleed bin Talal whose chair he holds at Georgetown University, if you were wondering, is a billionaire member of the Saudi royal family. He funds lots of Western universities. There's a Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies at Cambridge University and an Alwaleed Centre at Edinburgh University too.

For those who missed it, here's part of their discussion - the bit where Tom Holland stopped turning the other cheek.

It's well worth following closely not just for the good sense of Tom Holland, but also to study the slippery response of Sahib Bleher and the truly extraordinary arguments of Georgetown University's Professor Brown - arguments that even seemed to take presenter Ernie Rae aback. (Ernie Rae deserves credit here for asking the questions many an astonished Radio 4 listener would have wanted asking):

*****

Tom Holland: The classic example...I guess the single hadith that has caused most anxiety would be one which describes Aisha, the favourite wife of Muhammed, marrying him at six, and them Muhammed consummates the relationship when she is nine. People tended not to have a problem with this until quite recently, as under-aged sex has become ever more of a taboo, so this has provoked more and more anxiety among Muslim commentators, and various attempts have been madeto solve it - either by saying, "Well, this was the practice of the age", which is, of course, to relativise the prophetic model, or to say, "The chains of transmission by which we know this aren't reliable", which, of course, I would absolutely agree but, again, that is to problematise the relationship. Or possibly to go back and look at this hadith and to regard it not as sort of a literal detail, not as a snatch of historical information telling us what the historical Muhammed did, but as something more symbolic, something more representative of the significance of Aisha within the Muslim tradition.

Ernie Rea: Sahib?

Sahib Bleher: It's the usual mud slinging that's going on here again. A careful reading of the hadiths defined that Aisha was about five years younger than Fatima. That means that when she was betrothed to Muhammed then she must have been at least ten years old. It was another four years before she moved over to his household. so the marriage wouldn't have been married until she was fourteen or fifteen...

Tom Holland (interrupting): So Bukhari is wrong?

Ernie Rea: So where does this story that she was nine when the relationship was consummated come from?

Sahib Bleher: Well, there are various reports. But this is the whole thing. You don't...

Tom Holland (interrupting): But they are canonical accounts of Hadith, aren't they? I mean, they are absolutely canonical.

Ernie Rea: Jonathan?

Jonathan Brown: I think it's an absolutely authentic report. In fact I think the scholar whose work does represent the state of the field in Western scholarship on Hadith, the German scholar Harald Motzki, if you were to take his methods of dating hadiths, I think you could date that report of Aisha back to actually about the time of Aisha, so I think...

Ernie Rea (interrupting): Contemporary reports, you're saying?

Jonathan Brown: Yes, I think that's accurate. I think even from a non-Muslim perspective it's a good argument that that goes back to Aisha.

Ernie Rea: So how do you reconcile this with your sense of modernity?

Jonathan Brown: Well, I reconcile it because nobody had a problem with this until 1905. I mean (laughing) there was just not an issue. Even Western scholars writing about Muhammed in 1800, even in the 20th Century, just didn't care about...

Ernie Rea (interrupting): So the problem is that you're using Muhammed as a moral exemplar. You're saying this is the person that we should follow and he had sex with his wife when she was just nine years old?

Jonathan Brown (interrupting): OK, OK, well, Muslim scholars have been very clear about this. You cannot have sex with someone who is not physically able to have sex. Just because the Prophet did something doesn't mean Muslims have to do it. In fact the Prophet himself in another hadith refused to marry his daughter to somebody he felt was too old for her. Just because the Prophet did something it means it's permissible in general. It doesn't mean you have to do it. And, in fact, it also doesn't mean that you can't make very good arguments that it's bad policy. I mean, if you look and you say now people go to high school and have ambitions of university degrees and they want to have careers in our day today, it might be very good policy for Muslims to say it's better not to marry until you're sixteen or eighteen years old. That's why if you look at most Muslim countries, now have age restrictions that are sixteen or eighteen years old.

Ernie Rea: Tom?

Tom Holland: Now, this is absolutely an illustration of the point that is possible when you have hadiths that are generally held to be reliable that by the moral standards, say, of the 21st Century secular liberal society are regarded as rebarbative it is possible to sort of essentially wash away the more unpalatable aspects of it - and that. obviously, has to be a process that I personally hope will carry on. But we also have to recognise that there are plenty of people out there who do still regard the fact that Muhammed slept with a nine year old as sanctioning them to do the same. And we have the evidence for that in the fate of the capture Yazidi girls. That is what is providing Islamic State with their sanction. So this is not a purely academic exercise. It is having a knock-on effect in the Middle East.

Ernie Rea: Jonathan?

Jonathan Brown: This idea that somehow what's happening to Yazidi girls in Iraq is caused by this hadith...an American soldier in Iraq was convicted by an American military court of raping and murdering an Iraqi child, and American soldiers sexually abused Iraqi children in Abu Ghraib prison...

Tom Holland (interrupting): They probably weren't saying that they were inspired by a religious leader.

Jonathan Brown: No, no, my point is...(laughing)...my point is that this kind of action of warfare is not just the purview of Muslims.

Tom Holland: No. No one is saying it is, but the issue is that Islamic State are sanctioning what they are doing...they are sanctioning slavery, execution, the rape of nine year olds by drawing on the hadiths. I'm not saying that is what every Muslim does. It's clearly not what has happened over the course of Islamic civilisation, but the fact that it is possible to use hadiths in this way seems to me a problem.

Jonathan Brown: There's families in Iraq and families in Afghanistan that gladly marry their children off at young ages not in a war time and not in situations where the Islamic State is taking over. So this is not just something that is being used by some extremist organisation. This is part of the culture in those areas.

Ernie Rea: But Jonathan, you don't think it's a problem that people like Islamic State and Boko Haram in Nigeria can use a hadith as justification for the sexual abuse of their captives?

Jonathan Brown: I think the problem is that they're engaging in the practices. I don't blame a body of tradition that's been around for 1400 years for the decisions of some group that exists today. I blame people who use and abuse the law for those decisions. I don't blame the legal tradition itself.

Baffling things and conundrums

A couple of weeks ago Beyond Belief (Radio 4) tackled antisemitism. In the chair, Ernie Rea. 

Ed Kessler and Dr. Yaakov Wise were there to speak as ‘Jews’, and for some reason best known to the BBC, Mo Ansar had been invited to represent ‘the Muslims’, doing his utmost to shoehorn 'Islamophobia' into the picture at any and every opportunity. 

Islamophobia

I’ll summarise (my impression) as follows:

"Did you, know, Muslims are the new Jews, and wherever you find antisemitism, Islamophobia is lurking nearby? (Well you do now) Also, antisemitism doesn’t emanate primarily from the Muslims.  No, where it comes from is a bit of a mystery. 
Some people conflate Jews with Israel. Of course not every Jew supports the Israeli government, in fact more and more young Jews support the Palestinians! Not a lot of people know that, so hating Jews just because you think Israel is evil is the wrong thing to do. It’s a complete misunderstanding of the situation, which is (obviously) that almost everyone, including Jews, thinks Israel is wrong. The few exceptions who don’t, they’re the ones you should hate.” 

Here’s me thinking that Mo Ansar had made an absolute fool of himself over various issues; cartoons and stuff like that. Yet there they go again, dragging him in for his ‘opinion’ as though he wasn’t an utter charlatan. Silly me.

*******

Last week German Jewish writer Julia Franck reflected on her move from East to West Berlin.

Listening to the beginning of this episode, a description of her family’s unhappy experiences as East Germans trapped behind the Berlin wall, then, as new immigrants to the west, the family's gratitude and willingness to put up with the harsh conditions imposed upon refugees, such was their relief at escaping the GDR. 

Upon listening to this lead-up, a casual listener who understood that the talk was supposed to be about PEGIDA, might assume that Ms Franck was about to declare that she was somewhat in favour of protests against the 'Islamification' of Europe. 

Not a bit of it.  In fact it turned out that she was about to explain, from her special position as a one-time immigrant, that she was not at all against immigration, mass Muslim or whatever, nor was she concerned about the Islamification of Europe. 'Islamicization', she (or the voice-over) called it, enunciating it with disgust. Not because she thought it was undesirable. No. She didn’t even recognise it. She didn’t accept that such a thing exits, but if it does, there was nothing undesirable about it.

This is the BBC, and Julia Franck was so heartily in favour of immigration, that the producer (or whomsoever was responsible for directing the actress translating Ms Franck’s words) made sure they were given the full-on ‘Islam is the Religion of Peace’ treatment with a reverential, saccharine, smiley-face tone of voice.

“I am a fugitive myself, therefore all fugitives are benign; look at me,” was what she said, completely forgetting that she was a fugitive for a reason, and similarly forgetting to ask herself what she was trying to get away from and why she needed to get away from it. There’s stupid.

*******

More melodrama on Harry’s Place over George Galloway. From a link on the thread, more about his attention-seeking threats to sue, and the ‘chilling effect’ of this and most of what he does.

This ‘chilling effect’ is another way of describing the ramifications of what “the terrorist” does. Scares the pants off would-be dissenters from his particular rules.

I understand that Hadley Freeman (me neither) deleted the offending Tweet as soon as George started expressing his outrage, so the forthcoming ‘day in court’ if it ever comes to pass will be a massive publicity stunt for the gorgeous one, whereupon he and his acolytes will be delighted.

Also on Harry’s Place, more on Sizer and  more from Archbishop Welby: Good grief. One interesting point, which I read in a comment, I’ve forgotten where, is that if Sizer religiously (ha) complies with his promise never again to refer to the Middle East, it would seriously hamper his ability to do his priestly duties. It’s where Jesus hung out, after all.

*******

The BBC has presented 'member of the International Solidarity movement 'Kayla Mueller as another saintly martyr.

She certainly  ‘didn’t deserve to die’, (who does?) but it turns out that she’s a bit of a Rachel Corrie. 

Mark Steyn:

“If "idealism" is defined as taking the side of the Palestinians against the Israelis, Kayla Mueller was super-idealistic. That's her right, of course - the right to choose which side she was on. And then she took her "idealism" and "optimism" off to Syria. And, even though she was on their side and believed as they do that "resistance flows from the minaret five times a day", to ISIS she was just another high-value infidel. So they kidnapped her and killed her.”

More revelations; She might have ‘married’ an ISIS commander before she died! 

"I'm not sure yet how to live in a world without Kayla, but I do know that we're all living in a better world because of her," said a tearful Eryn Street, one of Mueller's closest friends, as she spoke from the courthouse plaza in Prescott on Tuesday.

What can she mean??

*******

The Telegraph online has a picture gallery. The other day it featured about  30 pictures of a Hamas youth training camp. 

Today it’s Prince Charles touring the Middle East.  “Comments are closed on this picture gallery.” Shame. No. 5 was particularly strange. 

I’d swear that HRH prince Alwaleed bin Talal bin Abdulaziz al Saud (!) is wearing an actual tea-towel and one of those glass-cloths, on his head.

********

And finally, just for fun:

Jerry's final thought

There's been so much to say today. It's been rather overwhelming. 

The BBC's been absolutely relentless (from what I've heard and seen of it) in pushing a small number of messages very vigorously. 

What they've been up to only becomes clear when you watch them very closely over a period of time. Some communique must have gone out from on high to push these angles, and those very angles are duly being pushed for all they're worth.

I like blogging, but a big part of me would much prefer to blog nice stuff about the BBC. There's lots of BBC radio (rather less TV) that I really appreciate. I don't hate every BBC programme or fail to find any Radio 4 comedy funny. (Stop/Start's funny for starters). I could fill this blog with posts about things I've enjoyed hearing on Radio 4. I've even tweeted BBC producers (usually of nature programmes) thanking them.

But I really don't appreciate what they've been up to in the wake of the massacres in Paris. I really, really don't.

And I don't appreciate having to pay for it. (And I'm not the sort of person to steal things by not paying for them).

Anyhow, on related matters, and to round things off for the day...

Alan at Biased BBC has highlighted some more Jon Donnison tweets, pushing various angles, including a tweet praising UKIP-bashing James O'Brien of LBC for bullying some some 'ordinary bloke' from Maidenhead (ringing in to his phone-in show) for daring to demand that Muslims speak out without reservation about the stuff done in their name. Anita Anand would be proud of him.

Nabila Ramdani, meanwhile, has, by all accounts, been busy on the BBC today. BBC World (which we UK licence fee payers can't receive) used her for their running commentary during the Paris march. She apparently used the opportunity to denounce Benjamin Netanyahu as a "war criminal". Classy. 

Allah knows what other rubbish she came out with but, as we've said before, she's fully entitled to come out with it. The BBC, however, isn't obliged to invite her onto every programme going. That it does seem to feel it's OK to do so, suggests either bias or an absurdly small address book.

Radio 4's Beyond Belief will be tackling 'Fundamentalism' tomorrow, in the light of recent events. Ernie's guests will be (1) Haras Raffiq, Managing Director of the Quilliam Foundation, (2) Julie Scott Jones, Associate Head of the Sociology Department at Manchester Metropolitan University; and (3) Salman Sayyid, Reader in Islam and Politics at the University of Leeds. 

Here, in advance, is a flavour of where Salman Sayyid is coming from:

The attitude of many of those responsible for publishing the hostile cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed (praise be upon him) can perhaps be best understood by a Marxist analysis. I refer to the quip by (Groucho) Marx: "How dare she get insulted just because I insulted her?"

The supporters of the publication of the cartoons appear to be surprised that many Muslims found the cartoons offensive; at the same they claim these cartoons are part of an effort to throw back the forces of multiculturalism in favour of national (i.e. European) cultural restoration. The conflict between those who see in the publication a noble principle at stake and those who see just another episode of European racism disguised as high moral principle has itself become a metaphor for other conflicts that exceed the xenophobia of a tiny statelet.

And finally (h/t DB), Tim Willcox (of "A lot of these prominent Jewish faces will be very much against the political mansion tax presumably?" fame) "interviewed a French Jewish couple today on the BBC News Channel. The lady was saying that the Jews are the targets now when Tim Willcox interrupted her to say, "Many critics though of Israel's policy would suggest that the Palestinians suffer hugely at Jewish hands as well"...

[UPDATE: This one's going to run. I see BBC Watch and Biased BBC are also on the case now].

...and, frankly, that's the last straw. I'm off to bed. Good night.

More 'Tablets' to swallow

Returning briefly (well, at least by my recent standards) to an old complaint....

Thanks to this blog - and the Daily Telegraph, and various Catholic blogs who took up our findings - Radio 4's Sunday found itself in a wee bit of bother a year and a bit ago for featuring large numbers of contributors from the liberal Catholic magazine The Tablet but no contributors whatsoever from its more conservative rival The Catholic Herald - a massive discrepancy over a long time which looked even worse given that Sunday's main presenter, Edward Stourton, just happens to be a trustee of the The Tablet. 

[If you're knew to this story, think 'The Guardian' for 'The Tablet', and 'The Daily Telegraph' for 'The Catholic Herald'].

Thankfully, since that 'scandal', Sunday has behaved itself, drastically reducing its number of Tablet contributors, and seeking out different Catholic voices instead. 

I recall all this ancient history only because Radio 4's Beyond Belief discussed the first year of Pope Francis's pontificate yesterday and, being the BBC, instinctively sent out two of its invitations to a pair of Tablet trustees - Paul Vallely and Tina Beattie. 

Against these liberal voices was set parish priest Fr Marcus Holden.

A 2:1 bias in favour of liberal Catholicism is, I suppose, only to be expected from the BBC - in fact, even better than might be expected given that Sunday used to think it acceptable to have only Tablet panelists in its discussions of Catholic matters. So we should be thankful for small mercies then I supposed (though probably not that thankful for Tina Beattie, who was incredibly rude toward Fr Holden). 

Still, those small mercies granted, the programme did continue to vigorously reinforce the longstanding Sunday/Tablet line - essentially: Pope Francis good, Pope Benedict bad [in spite of Fr Holden's presence].

This bias was then further reinforced by having Fr Brian D'Arcy, no fan of Pope Benedict - and the programme's third liberal Catholic voice -, re-recount his experiences [something regular Sunday listeners will have heard on more than one occasion before] of being berated by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under Benedict. He's still not happy about that.

This then, I would say, is another example of an ongoing bias at the BBC that seems hard to shake - unless you force them to confront it and change their ways.

Simply put, they prefer liberal Catholics  - which is why Thought for the Day's two main Catholic presenters are Tablet columnist Clifford Longley and Tablet editor Catherine Pepinster, both liberal voices, and why, when Dateline London wants a guest to talk about Catholic matters it instinctively turns to Tablet editor Catherine Pepinster, or when a new pope is elected the BBC News Channel opts for The Tablet's Rome correspondent Robert Mickens to serve as commentator. It's just what the BBC does naturally.

It's a bias that probably only really matters to Catholics - and bloggers about BBC bias - but it's a genuine bias nonetheless, and it shows the BBC to be what it truly is: an organisation riddled with all kinds of biases - some major, some minor.

Hence the need for blogs about BBC bias.

Beyond Belief. Is beyond belief.

Thanks to all the time I've (wasted) spent listening to the BBC, I think I'm becoming quite well-versed in Islamic disputes, Islamic history, the politics of Muslim nations, the tenets of Islam, the aims of Islamism, etc.

I suspect I'm far from alone in that.

Today's Beyond Belief (BBC Radio 4, 4.30pm) introduced me to something new though: The Ahmedi Community - a 12 million-strong religious movement which regards itself as Muslim, but which mainstream Muslims regard as being completely outside the fold of Islam. 

The Ahmedis' main offence in the eyes of mainstream Muslims is that their founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, claimed to be a prophet - albeit a lesser prophet than Mohammed. 

Mainstream Muslims, of course [as we regular BBC listeners know], believe Mohammed was the final prophet, and are deeply offended by the Ahmedis' assertion that he wasn't the final prophet after all. 

Often violently offended.

You may not be entirely shocked, therefore, to hear that the Ahmedi are vigorously persecuted in many Muslim lands - including their original birthplace, Pakistan - and that murderous terrorist acts are carried out against them. Thus are the ways of the Religion of Peace, are they not? 

You will probably also not be surprised to learn that this hatred has followed them to Britain and that, as a result, the nasty religious squabbles of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan have now become our squabbles too. (Fan-flipping-tastic!)

Today's Beyond Belief was noticeably sympathetic to the plight of the persecuted Ahmedi, with its likeable presente, Ernie Rea, giving every impression of being on their side. As were two of the guests - Imam Ataul Rashed from the Ahmedi London Mosque and Dr Simon Valentine, author of "Islam and the Ahmaddiya Jama'at." 

I ended up feeling quite sympathetic towards them myself.

Against them was set Dr Sahib Bleher, co-founder of the Islamic Party of Britain.

I have to say, I didn't warm to Dr Bleher at all. 

Dr Bleher does not like the Ahmedi, to put it mildly, and launched several diatribes against them as being tools of British imperialism, used by the Raj to undermine the Ottoman Caliphate. He deplores violence against them, but wasn't exactly moderate in his criticism of them either.

No, I didn't like him at all.

Dr Valentine described Dr Bleher's assertion that the Ahmedis were part of a British plot to defeat the Ottoman Caliphate as a "conspiracy theory" with absolutely no evidence to support it.

Sahib Bleher (PBUH)

Hmm, well all this made me crank up Google to look up this Dr Bleher, and Google informed me that he is no stranger to conspiracy theories. 

For starters, Dr Bleher is a 'truther' about 9/11. He says it's the US-Israeli axis wot did it. 

The absolutely vile interview you'll hear on the end of the link above [do yourself a favour and don't click it] hears Dr Bleher rehearsing the truther calumnies with a vicious U.S. antisemite called Daryl Bradford Smith. The latter describes the former as his friend and, strikingly, though both of them relentlessly slam the Main-Stream Media, Dr Bleher makes an exemption, and singles out the BBC for praise for being critical of the 'Establishment'.

Dr Bleher also claims the 7/7 bombings were a politically-motivated "set-up". 

This tie-in between Dr Bleher and the white far-Right becomes ever clearer the more you google his name. 

Dr Bleher has been closely linked, for several years, to the 'New Right' organisation - a group which involves Holocaust deniers like David Irving. The 'anti-fascist' organisation Searchlight says Dr Bleher "brought a Muslim antisemitic perspective to the New Right Club". 

Dr Bleher is fond of describing the Holocaust as the 'Holocult' and said that Ahmedinijad's Holocaust-denying conference in Iran "cut the Achilles heel of the current Anglo-Zionist world order". 

And yet...and yet...

...and yet...

Radio 4's Beyond Belief still sees fit to invite this man onto today's programme as if he were the respectable voice of mainstream Muslim opinion. 

(No wonder Maajid Nawaz gets so mad at the BBC.)

Sahib Bleher may well actually be the true voice of mainstream Muslim opinion, but respectable he most certainly is not. Obviously.

And it's not the first time Beyond Belief has invited him onto its programme. He's been on before, astonishingly. 

It really is a truly bizarre state of affairs that the BBC, which wouldn't even think of inviting Daryl Bradford Smith or David Irving onto its airwaves, is perfectly content to invite their friend Dr Bleher onto Radio 4, and then treat him with respect. (No wonder he approves of them).

Why do Muslims like Dr Bleher get a free pass while his white, far-Right-wing chums are considered completely beyond the pale? 

Or, as Mrs Merton might have put it, 'What is it, BBC, that you see in Muslim Sahib Bleher?'

Actually,  a better way of putting it is "WTF is wrong with the BBC?"


[Incidentally, for more on the horrific death threats against Maajid Nawaz, please have a read of my fellow fence-sitter Sarah AB at Harry's Place.]

Archaeology and Bias

Radio 4's often engaging Beyond Belief tackled the fascinating topic of 'Archaeology and Religion' this week. 

Ernie Rea's guests were: Professor Robin Coningham, the man who led the excavation in Nepal which seems to have proved that Buddha lived around 200-300 years earlier than is commonly supposed; Professor Francesca Stavrakopoulou of Exeter University, an occasional BBC presenter who specialises in Israelite and Judahite history; and Professor Tim Insoll of Manchester University, whose main work is in the field of early Islam. 

All three believe that they are not biased in their work, preferring to see themselves as disinterested academics pursuing a knowledge of history for its own sake - though Francesca Stavrakopoulou conceded that, being human, even archaeologists can't be entirely certain that they are bias-free. Thus, Francesca herself may be an atheist but that doesn't impact on her work, she says, and Tim Insoll may be a Catholic but that doesn't impact on his work either. 

Against this attractively unprejudiced-sounding panel was set Geoffrey Smith, a Christian Zionist. He was interviewed (briefly) midway through the programme.

Ernie Rae questioned him about whether he was looking for confirmation of his faith through Biblical archaeology, about the whether he thinks the story of King David is true, and about whether any archaeological evidence could shake his faith in the Biblical accounts. Mr Smith said that he's discovered nothing so far to shake his faith. 

Though reasonable-sounding, Geoffrey Smith did seem to me to have been set up by the programme, cast as the kind of blinkered person who uses archaeology merely to reinforce his own faith - unlike the programme's three main guests - and, thus, as representing the 'bad side' of archaeology. 

As his area of interest overlapped strongly with hers, Francesca Stavrakopoulou was then allowed  to sit in judgement on what Mr Smith had said.

As someone whose views have proved controversial (especially her questioning of the existence of King David) and who robustly defended Ilan Ziv’s film, Jerusalem: An Archaeological Mystery Story after it was broadcast , it was therefore hardly surprising that she gave his views short shrift ("simply wrong", "misinformative" [sic], "distorted", etc). 

If things weren't bad enough for Geoffrey Smith, there followed an exchange between Ernie Rae and Francesca Stavrakopoulou where Ernie raised "this business about the extent of the kingdom of David - whether it was widespread or whether he was just a tribal leader" and said it was a "a political hot potato".

Francesca suggested it was more plausible to take the dismissive view about King David and said that, even if the Biblical account was true, 

David himself, according to the Bible, took on Jerusalem as a site that was occupied by the indigenous peoples before him so, even if you can prove that David made Jerusalem his capital city, brought the symbol of God, the Ark of the Covenant, into Jerusalem and, so, laid the foundations, if you like, for the beginnings of this great state, there were still indigenous people living in that place before him. So it doesn't solve any of the problems that we face today when we look at contemporary Jerusalem.

I think we know where she's coming from on the Israel-Palestinian issue.

Most striking of all, Ernie Rae then raised an example of archaeological sites that become "seriously problematic: "I'm thinking of the Dome of the Rock, the Temple Mount."

The following exchange ensued:

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: When it comes to the Temple Mount or the Dome of the Rock it is incredibly difficult. A lot of the digging that's going on in that particular area in Jerusalem at the moment is ideologically charged.

Ernie Rae: A lot of it is financed by American evangelicals... 

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: A huge amount.

Ernie Rae: ...who basically think that until you restore the Temple the Messiah will not come again, so I'm tempted to say 'if you want to look at the motivation of the archaeologists, follow the money, find out who's funding it'. 

Francesca Stavrakopoulou: That's exactly right. So much of archaeology, particularly in my field, comes down to 'Where does the money come from?'

I have to admit that, even though the subject interests me, I did listen to this programme half-expecting - and fearing - that Israeli archaeology would get a bad press, especially after seeing Francesca's name on the guest list.

Even so, it was still disappointing to find that the sole modern representatives of 'bad' modern archaeologists turned out to be Israeli archaeologists and their Christian evangelical supporters. 

It's the sort of thing that leads us to blog about BBC bias.