How you doin'?

Irony piled upon irony. 

The BBC bods at The Big Questions decided not to show a close-up of the 'Jesus and Mo' T-shirts, worn by members of their audience, for fear of offending Muslims.

Maajid Nawaz, one of the programme's other guests, then tweeted a picture of one of the T-shirts in protest at what he saw as the BBC's craven censorship - and received death threats for his trouble. 

Newsnight (like Channel 4 News) then discussed the controversy and decided not to show the cartoon image of Mo, thus compounding the original offence caused to supporters of free speech.

Next up, Newswatch tackled the subject, noting more complaints at the BBC's cowardly-seeming refusal to show the cartoon image of Mo. And yet Newswatch itself opted not to show the image of Mo either!! 

All this is surely the kind of thing that satire was made for.

Here's some lovely Islamic art to end with, all depicting a certain person - and it ain't Jesus. 

Update: Janice Turner has written an interesting piece for The Times (£):

It was hard to watch Wednesday’s Newsnight without concluding that Britain has become a very strange place. We saw an artist so frightened for his life that his face and even his voice were disguised. We saw his hand sketching the Christian prophet in a crown of thorns, but forbidden to draw the Muslim one. An 11-minute film debated a drawing at the heart of a national controversy but at no point could we see it.

From this article, we get Newsnight editor Ian Katz's defence of his decision not to show Mo's image:

When challenged, Newsnight’s editor, Ian Katz, said that there was “no clear journalistic case to use” the cartoon, and that “describing” it was sufficient. (TV news will get a whole lot cheaper if we needn’t send a camera crew to war-ravaged Damascus: let’s just have it described by Jeremy Bowen.) Any depiction of Muhammad, Katz argued, “causes great offence to many, not just extremists” and to run it would be “journalistic machismo”.

Janice Turner makes what to me seems the main charge against the BBC (and Channel 4) here:

Mr Nawaz’s frustration is understandable. In banning the image, the BBC cast him as the faux-Muslim, his opponents as the rational, majority voice that must be heeded.

How can moderate Muslims be expected to speak out, if they are cast as apostates by national TV? Those who have not yet made up their minds will see angry offence as the default position. They hear it proclaimed by the deceptively reasonable Mohammed Shafiq, the Lib Dem, whose Ramadhan Foundation hosts homophobic speakers, and that hot-air balloon Mo Ansar, who argues that gender-divided public meetings are just like BBQs where guys cluster around the grill while wives chat with the kids. No biggie.

The title of her article? Show us Jesus & Mo. It’s the price of freedom 

Bad Egg

Isn’t it odd that the BBC lags behind events in oh so many ways? When something they find distasteful comes along they drag their feet until they simply can’t ignore the elephant pounding on the door.

This time it was the black egg over on Channel 4. I rarely watch Channel 4 news because of the obvious political bias of Jon Snow. He really can be a disgrace, as Richard Millett will testify. 

But via Harry’s Place (I know) I was urged to watch the episode of Channel Four News that was aired on the 28th. It was broadcast before the Newsnight edition I mentioned here. 

That probably explains why the BBC actually deigned to address the issue - a catch-up type of thing.

“We’ve taken the decision to cover up the image in case it causes offence to some viewers..”

Anyway, it seems that Channel 4 introduced the Jesus and Mo debacle with an illustration of the offending cartoon. With “Mo” blacked out. They’d specially made a Mo-shaped blackout graphic that looked a bit like Mo was wearing an eyeless burka, or as the cartoonist described it “ a black egg.” 

The egg of Islamophobia.  It was asking to be lampooned, and so it was.

Here’s that Channel 4 news, which includes an interview with Mohammed Shafiq.

Note  how Shafiq repeatedly calls him Jon throughout the interview. In my opinion Shafiq is asking to be lampooned and at least he’s *against violence*. We really really need one of those old style impressionists. Who would dare to do Mohammed Shafiq? Rory Bremner? Culshaw? McGowan? 

“This sounds neither liberal nor democratic!” “ Who elected you? “  - some of the counter arguments put by Snow. But I don’t think his heart was really in it. Innit.

Stayin alive

There’s a story that makes me think of a sketch in a long-forgotten show, where the character dismisses a bunch of random topics as ‘rubbish’.

Can you guess which story it is? It’s not the quenelle. That story was given the BBC’s default Politically Correct treatment for a while, then after evidence too overwhelming to ignore, the quenelle gesture gradually became accepted as being unquestionably, indisputably antisemitic. Now the issue seems to have segued seamlessly  into ‘racism in footie’ and the whole matter has been muddied with the slightly counter-productive question of “yid”.

So even though I thought the Today programme did a reasonable item on the topic yesterday, (and made a bit of a pig’s ear of it on Newsnight last night,) I think it’s now widely understood that the quenelle gesture is considered to be a justifiably offensive act, and the story currently appears upon our screens nearly as ubiquitously as Benedict Cumberbach.

That brings me to the story in question, which at the time of writing hasn’t been covered by the BBC at all. 

Huffpo, Harry’s Place, Homo Economicus, to name a couple or three, yes. It’s been covered extensively, mainly because it’s so ridiculous.

Everything about this story is ludicrous. Every single one of the ingredients.

Lib Dems

George Galloway

Maajid Nawaz

Twitter

Islam

Cartoons

Jesus and Mo 

So it seems that Maajid Nawaz, who, despite campaigning for the modernisation of his religion, is still a religious Muslim, which for me gets a down-ding, but that’s my problem I suppose - anyhow, for some reason he wants to be a Liberal Democrat so much that he’s an actual Liberal Democrat candidate.

Why would anyone want to be a Lib Dem these days? I mean that would entail being tainted with David Ward!

The Lib Dems’ association with large Muslim constituencies, think Sarah Teather, and Cleggie’s tardiness in dumping Jenny Tonge; think the Lib Dems’ propensity to take CAABU sponsored trips to the Middle East to be fed raw pro-Palestinian propaganda. All this bruises my pro-Israel sensibilities. I might even take offence at it all, which is my prerogative.

Anyway, Nawaz does want to be a Lib Dem M.P., but the persistent high-profile media presence he has cultivated led him to rashly appear on The Big Questions, during which some fellow-panellists (for want of a better word) wore their Jesus and Mo T shirts, which in turn had been the catalyst for a freedom of speech issue at their university. (they’d been banned, then unbanned)   if I remember correctly.

The BBC, pandering to a misunderstanding of Islamic regulations, or a misunderstanding of Maajid’s Islamic sensitivities, or for some other unspecified reason, thought they’d better not let these T shirts be shown Live On National TV, so later Maajid chose to show, on Twitter, that he was such a liberal Muslim that he didn’t mind the T shirts, and he Tweeted the very T shirt image in question to prove it.

Then I hear all hell broke loose. I mean - fatwas all round.

 What is the objection, exactly? What is the actual offence? Is it: 

a) Mocking Islam?

b) Mocking Christianity? (I don’t think so) 

c)  Showing an image of the prophet Mohammad PBUH which is only a very badly drawn cartoon that obviously makes no serious attempt to be a likeness?

So Maajid’s Twitter feed with the image of the Jesus and Mo cartoon that was on the T shirt caused offence.  People from far and wide have clubbed together to campaign for Maajid’s deselection. Can you Adam’n’Eve it? And all this amidst an existential crisis for the Clegg party!

Enter George Galloway. He Tweets:

“No Muslim will ever vote for the Liberal democrats anywhere ever unless they ditch the provocateur Maajid Nawaz, cuckold of the EDL” 

Apart from being a completely bonkers statement, one might wonder why the hell should he care? He’s not a Lib Dem now, is he? Surely not... 

Even the cuddliest Muslims that the BBC are so fond of calling upon for their opinions on this that and the other have weighed in with varying degrees of condemnation.

 Mohammad Shafiq, himself no stranger to The Big Questions,  says it was despicable behaviour.

What, tweeting a cartoon on a T shirt?

despicable behaviour

Then with all the hooha about Twitter and vicious, racist and threatening Tweets therein, think whassername that got the feminist image on the fiver,(or was it the tenner) and the footballer who’s been racially abused,  some Islamist or shall we say misinterpreter of Islam has tweeted a threat. He’s going to cut  his neck off. (Maajid’s, not his own) It would be hard to do that without causing a very serious life changing injury - I don’t imagine he had in mind a simple neckectomy, you know, attaching the head directly onto the shoulders. No. He means he’s going to kill him.

Just imagine.

Everyone has weighed in with their own opinion, even me. Mine is that the whole thing and everything about it is utterly ridiculous.

The Lib Dems are ridiculous.

Maajid Nawas is ridiculous.

Fatwas are ridiculous.

The campaigns for deselection and antideselection are ridiculous.

The Big Questions is ridiculous.

George Galloway is ridiculous.

Mohammad Shafiq is ridiculous.

Twitter is ridiculous.

The LSE is ridiculous.

Me writing this is ridiculous

The only things that are supposed to be ridiculous, i.e. the Jesus and Mo cartoons, aren’t ridiculous.