Jarring awakening

I woke up in the night and switched on the radio, low,  to lull myself back to sleep. That usually does the trick. Unfortunately the programme then running was Assignment. (BBC World Service) 

Helen Grady has one of those piping voices that sounds particularly sanctimonious when she’s trying to promote Women’s Rights to Wear the Hijab and to publicise the ‘Frenchness’ of French Muslims.

I came in at the point where she was commiserating with the poor schoolgirl who couldn’t take her hijab-wearing mother on a school trip. The possibility of removing the offending garment wasn’t floated. 

I’m afraid that Helen’s pitch was remarkably different when it came to interviewing the nasty right-wing secularist republican. 

“What kind of threat would a hijab pose?” asks Helen, with tangible sarcasm.

Having ‘listened again’, I have to say the first part of the programme, which I had missed last night, did expose some of the relevant issues, albeit inadvertently.

However in the scheme of things, by which I mean the BBC’s campaign of normalising Islam and all the trappings, especially in the wake of ‘Je Suis Charlie’, yet another overly sympathetic programme about Muslims and their grievances really does go against the grain.

Still awake, I took in another of Angela Tilby’s Thoughts for the day. It concerned ‘Muslims’ and ‘Women.’ 

“Two years ago I was invited to speak at a conference convened by the Muslim Institute, a London based forum for debate and engagement between Islam and the contemporary world. I’d been asked to speak about my experience as a woman in the church, which I duly did, and at the end several people asked me when I thought there’d be women bishops. They were concerned because they felt that women bishops in the C of E would have a positive effect on the status of British women’s position in Islam.”

(She continued on the theme of Libby The Woman Bishop and feminism and women’s place in society in general) 

“The interest of those at the Muslim conference made me aware that what the national church does sends a wider signal to society.”

I don’t know what Angela Tilby is ‘on’, but she probably saw how ‘pleased with itself’ the BBC was over its Normalising Islam campaign, and said “I’ll have what the BBC is having”. 

(Apols to Harry and Sally)

Necessary disputatiosity

Today Radio 4. At about 7:45 we heard from Zineb El Rhazoui, “a Charlie Hebdo columnist who was on holiday in her native Morocco when the attack happened and who has been part of putting together the latest issue.”

I was mildly interested in the background of  one of Charlie Hebdo’s contributors with such an ‘Arab-sounding’ moniker. Well it seems she Tweets about Sweden’s decision to recognise Palestine, and about this.  Israelis breaking out the popcorn to enjoy the spectacle of the “bombs falling on Gaza.” (or the iron dome preventing bombs falling on them)

The jury’s probably still out on that. 

In her interview she kept on mentioning a mysterious Michael Eagues, which (silly me with my cloth eared inability to adjust to the French accent) was her pronunciation of ‘my colleagues’.

Not so cloth-eared was my instinctive apprehension at the way she was trying to defend Charlie Edbo’s attitude to Islam.’ Attacking Islam is no different from attacking any other religion’ is what she was saying. “It’s our way of recognising that Islam is an ordinary religion, just like any other” 

Well, that’s not very encouraging to some of us.

Boycott Israel shirt on Charlie march

What was Angela Tilby on about on this morning’s Thought for the day?

She went into a considerable amount of detail with a graphic and heartfelt summary of the Dreyfus affair. But the message she drew from it, if I’m not mistaken was we must never demonise the ‘other’. My instinctive apprehension detected that in this instance she was not only talking about the Jews. In fact, not even talking about them. Please correct me if I’m being unnecessarily disputatious.

“That inclination to disputatiosity is how Jews are, thank Marduk. (and that verbal borderline sacrilege is also how they/we are; lightening the truly serious.)” from a comment on H/P of which more later. Sorry, must dash.
Update.
I had to go to the dentist. (all clear!) Now I’m back, and I can link to the item, which is now available here. It’s the last bit that is rather menacing. I’m sure the message is supposed to be ‘beware of Islmophobia’.  I wonder if Angela Tilby watched last night’s Panorama?

(I thought it was perceived opinion that Jews are not a race, but as a secular individual with no religious education or cultural connections, where has my disputatiosity come from? )