Don’t mention the Jews!

             

Joke.

A Jew meets an Irishman.
“Are you Catholic or Protestant?” asked the Irishman
“I’m a Jew” replied the Jew.
The Irishman thought for a moment, then:
“But are you a Catholic Jew or a Protestant Jew?

An absurd version of that joke occurred on Sunday Morning Live because Justin Welby thinks Jesus could have been BAME.

“Are you black or white?" the Archbishop asked Jesus.
“I’m a Jew,” said Jesus
“Please don’t mention that,” said the participants of Sunday Morning Live, ”but was He a black Jesus or a white Jesus?”

Royal stitch-up

Due to a recent air of resignation that has come over me, call it despair, fatalism, submission, if you like, I confined the following allusion to last Sunday’s Sunday Morning Live into one solitary passage in a piece concerning that appalling Emily Mailtlis interview.

The BBC’s default position on Israel is even more obvious when you don’t watch too much TV. I keep catching breathless announcements about Prince William’s visit being ‘the first time a ‘Royal’ has  gone to the Palestinian territories.” And then some quip about Israel objecting to the term “Occupied” -  “but that’s what it is,” opined Sunday Morning Live’s whining, metropolitan media-bubble-inhabiting guest and part-time antisemite Christina Patterson. Sorry for the “smear,” but that’s what you are. She’s as ignorant now as she was back in 2010, and just as opinionated with it. But so are most of the BBC’s contributors. 

Of course, I knew it deserved its own platform, and lo and behold, here it is. Not only is there a link to the programme in question, there’s a transcription of the offending dialogue. 

To summarise, the topic was reviewed by two pro-Palestinian pundits, one of whom has a record of publishing false and defamatory comments about Israel. Together they spun Prince William’s Middle East adventure out of all recognition, presenting it as if it were a royal declaration of solidarity with the Palestinian people. This one-sided and ignorant interpretation of the event took place under the auspices of a supposedly ‘thought-provoking’ religiously themed TV programme. 

It was presided over by a couple of lightweight TV anchors who were clearly out of their depth.

This kind of thing is nothing out of the ordinary. It’s mainstream, it’s overwhelming and it accounts for the aforementioned air of resignation.

Antisemitism 'Entrenched' In UK Culture

Sunday Morning Live is technically a religious programme, and the BBC based the question concerning antisemitism on the Archbishop of Canterbury’s contribution to a new booklet for the Holocaust Educational Trust.  

“Antisemitism 'Entrenched' In UK Culture And Church Is Partly To Blame”

“Justin Welby has said that antisemitism is "entrenched in our thought and culture" and that historically the Church has "compounded the spread of this virus" in an essay for the Holocaust Educational Trust [HET]. 

In his article, Welby called antisemitism an "insidious evil", adding that the "habits of antisemitism have been burrowing into European and British culture for as long as we can remember." 

He went on: "It is a shameful truth that, through its theological teachings, the Church, which should have offered an antidote, compounded the spread of this virus. The fact that antisemitism has infected the body of the Church is something of which we as Christians must be deeply repentant. We live with the consequences of our history of denial and complicity." 

The Archbishop highlighted contemporary anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. "Even today, in the 21st century, it is shocking that antisemitism still has traction; the virus continues to seek a host," he said. "It latches onto a variety of different issues: financial inequality, wars and depressions, education, politics and government, grave international issues, such as the rights of Israelis and Palestinians, and interfaith tensions. It twists them to its own ends, with the perverted and absurd argument that a small group runs or plots against our society and manipulates international affairs."

In that elusive ideal world that we all hanker after, one would be able to produce short, succinct and snappy essays, but sometimes (often) one gets bogged down in a labyrinthian tangle, trying to cover all aspects of a topic. In this case I set out - with brevity in mind - to complement Craig’s piece, with a little detail but not too much, just enough to make a point or two. As you can see, once I got going I just couldn’t stop. Sorry.

Naga Munchetty introduced the item. 

“Justin Welby says ‘Christians need to be deeply repentant.’ “

Edwina Currie has been lampooned for almost everything she’s ever said and done, including a mutually inappropriate fling with John Major, the egg thing, writing a series of racy novels and having a somewhat abrasive character.  She has been on a long journey in the public eye and is approaching national treasure status, which means she can say what she likes without worrying about what anyone thinks. That amounts to a licence to abandon political correctness. 

She was on good form, almost flaunting her ‘nothing to lose’ attitude. She said:

 “The Arch of Cant, dare I say that? No I can’t!” 

She did though. 

Religious figures define their ranking with assorted waggish millinery, the ridiculousness of the hat being proportional to the outrageousness of the faith.

By that measure, Qari Asim, with what looked like an upturned jelly mould on his head, gave a mixed message; benign congeniality on the outside, perhaps belying an ominous turmoil smouldering beneath. As soon as he was asked for his view on antisemitism, virtually every viewer would have been timing the moments till "anti-Muslim prejudice" (Islamophobia) popped out. Not a long wait.

Just as poor old Ken Livingstone can’t help mentioning Hitler, Muslim spokespersons can’t help tethering antisemitism to Islamophobia. Since one of the main drivers of the current wave of left-wing antisemitism emanates from a religion where hatred of Jews is de rigueur, this elephant is almost as big as the room.

As Craig has already said, Digby Jones gave us a warning. If we don’t stamp out antisemitism now, we’ll be back in 1939. Such words, coming from Digby Jones, sounded promising:

“You know, there’s been anti Judaism, firstly because of their religion in the Middle Ages, then because of their race all the way up to 1945, and now it tends to centre round Israel.” 

That was certainly worth noting. He’s alluding to the business of cloaking antisemitism behind ‘justifiable’ anti-Zionism. The next bit started well but ended on a rather ambiguous note:

“And there’s always been a cause to be anti-Jewish, and if we acknowledge what antisemitism really is, it’s insidious in our free society, and it’s that disgusting, cos after they finish with the Jews, they’ll come after you and me, believe me, it ain’t stopping there and that really worries me. They’ll be after you guys” 

.......and as he said ‘you guys’ he gestured towards both Edwina and the Muslim. What, Qari Asim too? “They” are coming after the Muslims? 

Well, I suppose that’s already happened in Glasgow, but I’m not at all sure that the murder of Asad Shah was what Digby Jones was referring to. 

Perhaps he was being generous to Qari Asim, as a fellow guest on the BBC’s sofa. Perhaps he was giving his fellow guest the benefit of the doubt and including him in the category of ‘good’ Muslim threatened by the ‘bad’ Muslims.

On the other hand, does Digby Jones also lump antisemitism, Islamophobia (and all forms of racism) together, seeing them collectively as potential targets of a one-size-fits-all nationalistic Nazi mob, hell-bent on disposing of all minorities? 

Surely Digby Jones isn’t himself in denial about the roots of the ‘new’ wave of antisemitism? Surely he’s not just as much in denial, if not more so, than these mysterious unnamed ‘they’, the ones he describes as “disgusting antisemites who are in denial and don’t think they are.” 

We’re none the wiser as to whether he suspects that these “disgusting” antisemites are the Muslims - all of them or just the ‘bad’ ones - and their left wing sycophants, but lacks the courage to spell it out. We’re not sure if he knows that even if ‘good’ Muslims have learned to modify their attitude to Jews, they still use Israel as a proxy.

Mehdi Hasan is just about the only Muslim who has publicly acknowledged that antisemitism is ‘our dirty little secret’, though he appears to have backtracked ever since. 

I don’t actually think Digby Jones meant to couple antisemitism with Islamophobia. Maybe, on TV, he wanted to be polite to Qari Hasim, and appear generous and inclusive.

The interfaith movement ignores the elephant in the room as well. Edwina’s post 9/11 gesture of solidarity with Muslims seems all well and good, but if it isn’t reciprocated with a lot more ‘not in my name’ and with a lot less ‘Islamophobia and all forms of racism’ tagged on, it’s meaningless. 

Also, it was unclear as to precisely what the ‘not in my name’  was all about. We were talking about antisemitism, not terrorism, after all. While I can foresee more people insisting that moderate Muslims denounce terrorism more vociferously, I somehow can’t imagine anyone demanding that they denounce antisemitism, still less, anti-Zionism.

However, Digby Jones did say to Qari Asim:

“I’d like to see more of your faith out on the streets saying ‘not in my name’ ” 

At which Qari Asim came out with a reply that was so ridiculous that I don’t know how he got away with it. 

“I think we are, and I don’t think - that’s an issue, and I’d really like to have that conversation off the record in terms of…… Muslims are saying, all the way from the Muftis of Egypt to Sana'a (?) to other parts of the Muslim world, and in this country Muslims are saying it, it’s actually not being heard, or it’s not on our screens, and we need to work to get there.”

I’d love to know where and when he’s seen all these Muftis saying this. The truth is that what’s not on our screens, as anyone who has ever looked at PMW or Memri will attest, is exactly the opposite of Muslims declaiming ‘not in our name’. 

The most vile antisemitic bile emanating from the Arab world is what’s not on our screens.

Maybe Digby Jones, who described himself “as a lapsed Anglican Brummie who doesn’t have a dog in this fight” is not aware of PMW or Memri, but if he plans to sit in a BBC studio opposite a Muslim wearing a jelly mould hat to opine about antisemitism he jolly well ought to arm himself with a very fit dog.

Digby Jones said: 

“Why are they (The Labour Party) letting it happen? And it’s no good Corbyn sitting there going ‘I deplore this, it’s disgusting’ - I believe him, I think he means it. That’s not the point. They had to suspend some Momentum woman two days ago for remarks she made, and you have to - not just stamp it out, but you’ve got to publicly go there - learnt this a long time ago- don’t listen to what people say, watch what they do.” 

[…] “I never thought we’d have - this wonderful country of ours, this tolerant place where people over centuries have come because we have these values, I never thought in 2016 we’d even have to have this conversation, and you are right, sir, we need to be eternally vigilant.

Digby Jones also said, near the beginning: 

You know, there’s been anti Judaism, firstly because of their religion in the Middle Ages, then because of their race all the way up to 1945, and now it tends to centre round Israel.

Yes, it does tend to centre round Israel. Israel has been demonised and vilified by the media to the extent that Jeremy Corbyn can denounce antisemitism by comparing Israel with Islamic State and people struggle to explain why this is false. The BBC with its wide reach and its undeserved reputation for accuracy and impartiality has helped create the climate in which antisemitism can flourish. This means that when the Archbishop of Canterbury makes a contribution about antisemitism to a leaflet for the Holocaust Educational Trust, however mealy-mouthed, the dwindling Jewish community has to be grateful for small mercies.

Since I’ve started, in a long-winded, ranty fashion, I’ll continue with this. Over on Harry’s Place, 

they’re discussing the forthcoming film ‘Denial’, with Timothy Spall playing notorious holocaust denier David Irving and Rachel Weisz playing Professor Deborajh Lipstadt. 

Gene (on Harry's Place) warns us not to look at the comments on YouTube. 

The trailer makes the film look pretty tacky, but like the Archbishop’s essay, despite any shortcomings it’s a topic that’s worth raising. I noticed that the BBC has had something to do with the film. 

Someone told me they thought the current wave of antisemitism is like a tsunami. Nothing will stop it. The comments on YouTube indicate that this is true.

Crossing the Line. How much freedom of speech should religious extremists have?

“Why do I watch SML?” I ask myself this nearly every week. I might answer “For several reasons.” 

(Inner dialogue, you understand.)

Firstly, there’s the sweet and sour factor. You know, the cringeworthy element that used to make us keep watching The Office from behind the sofa. Not a good analogy, really, because the Office made us laugh and you can’t say SML does that. 

Next, there’s the excitement of seeing who’s on the panel. Like with TBQ - you spot your favourites straight away. Douglas Murray, and, and, and…… well, you get the drift. 

Then there’s those contributions from the public. (You! ) Tommy reads out a few banal and mostly puerile messages from unidentifiable commenters. He often reads them inaccurately, which is all the more bizarre because we can read them for ourselves from the giant screen. 

When he’s done, Naga or host-of-the-week turns back to the panel, which always continues as before; slightly embarrassed by the crude interruption, pretending it didn’t happen like a fart at a formal dinner.

I can see why the BBC keeps asking the public to join the conversation - but the fact is that the public’s contribution rarely adds value, and what’s more, often goes the ‘wrong’ way. Remember that audience poll they used to run - they scrapped it when the results were so consistently contrary to the BBC’s agenda that it became a bit of a joke. Entertaining though it was for we contrarians.

Anyway, while politics has been temporarily ripped from the Sunday morning schedule, we are grateful for SML. It’s all we’ve got.

Naga Munchetty has gone up in my estimation. She seems better suited to her role as SML host than she ever did when sitting on that sofa beside a male co-anchor, addressing the lightweight, chatty, gossipy items that dominate ‘Breakfast.’ 

Samira Ahmed also seemed to blossom when she quit Channel Four and started doing more intellectually demanding things at the BBC. I don’t compare them solely because they’re ‘ethnics’, or ‘women’, but because they both seemed to have spent a long time being under-utilised. 

Anyway, this morning’s discussion really suffered from SML’s constraining format. Too many topics squashed into too little time. At least they didn’t have anyone Skyping from a remote location, with their huge head on a huge screen, looking menacing while waiting to speak.

The main topic was about freedom of speech and Anjem Choudary’s recent conviction. 

 “How much freedom of speech should religious extremists have?”

The obvious retort would be “None” because most of us define religious extremists as anti-British, anti-democratic and dangerous. But of course it’s not as simple as that. There are many shades of religious extremism - and ‘freedom of speech’ is considered to be one of our fundamental rights. You can’t start clamping down on one person’s freedom of speech without compromising another person’s freedom of expression.

So SML confined itself to this one particular case, where Anjem Choudary was found guilty of incitement to actual killings. In particular, of supporting I.S. and encouraging others go to Syria and chop people’s heads off. This is where he appears to have crossed that crucial line.

Why Choudary didn’t join his ideal Islamic state himself is not clear; perhaps because he had a wife and family to claim benefits for? (rumoured to be £25,740 P.A.)

Chris Phillips, ‘Terror and security expert’ spoke first. He described Choudary as a revolting man - probably not a good enough reason to put him away - but he’s glad he’s finally been jailed as he has caused enormous damage to this country, but that “no-one actually knows how many deaths were the result of his words.”

It seemed kind of obvious that it was a jolly good thing Choudary has been locked up. All the more surprising, then, when Luke Gittos (solicitor) emphatically disagreed.

“I think his conviction is an outrage. I think he’s been locked up for what he believes and what he thinks”. 

He thinks it’s ridiculous to claim Choudary has caused any deaths. “he merely declared his support for ISIS in a pub with his mates, and made a bunch of loony videos on Youtube’.

Now that seems slightly at odds with Choudhry’s fanatical Islamic beliefs. I’m well aware of his early boozy, druggy, womanising days when he was a student known by his mates as ‘Andy’. But did he really still go to the pub with his ‘mates’ and say something rash about ISIS whilst under the influence?

Anyway, the solicitor felt he should have been left to express his nutty ideas and let them face public scrutiny, (much as he was doing now, perhaps?)

'Censorship pushes such ideas underground, where they cannot be challenged,' he said.

Of course he didn’t consider the actual danger of challenging such ideas - a danger faced by all, including dissenting Muslims.

The next speaker was Henna Rai, from ‘Women Against Radicalisation Network’. She cited the killers of Lee Rigby, and said Choudary was responsible for ruining the lives of many by inciting and encouraging young people to go to Syria, and spreading venomous lies and vitriol about Islam. 

“We need to protect the most vulnerable” she said, “and tell them the truth about what Islam really is.” 

So, another agenda, squeezed into an already overflowing time-frame. 

Last to speak, Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain, one of the regulars on this kind of programme. He explained that as a trained lawyer Choudary was clever enough to sail close to the wind, and got caught only when he crossed the line.  Freedom of speech trumps everything and it’s only ‘crossing that line” by inciting people to violence that can justify putting Choudary in prison.

That’s quite a platitude, but the argument, which boiled down to finding an explicit definition of ‘incitement’, was worth developing. 

The solicitor said there was no evidence that Choudary incited anyone to violence, so the conviction came close to imprisoning people merely for what they believe and think. He said that Lee Rigby’s killers couldn’t have been ‘ordinary men’ who ‘suddenly got radicalised’ after hearing Anjem Choudary preach. They must have been predisposed, I suppose is what he meant. 

That theory deserved a rigorous unpacking, but instead Ms Rai went down another path, the one that takes us to “I.S. does not represent ‘True Islam’.”

The solicitor (Luke Gittos) acknowledged that Choudary’s religious principles perceive the man-made construct ‘democracy’ as artificial, and he admits that Choudary’s religion denies others (women, infidels etc) freedom of speech. Gittos believes that if we deny Choudary the freedom of speech and make a martyr of him, we only succeed in ‘proving his point’.

The sort of faultless logic that is all very well in theory, but in not in practice. 

They did touch on the matter of radicalisation in prison, something that Michael Gove was beginning to tackle and his successor has pledged to continue.

The news that Choudary might be confined to some sort of isolation in prison met with the panel’s approval, apart from the lone voice (Gittos) who claimed we’re about to change our whole way of life (by imprisoning people for thought crimes) just for the sake of one or two deranged individuals. 

He certainly had a point, but seemed to be in denial over the rise of radical Islam in Europe and the rest of the world. Here we are teetering on the brink of the clash of civilisations.

Suddenly he seemed to be agreeing that as soon as a line is crossed, i.e., by incitement to violence, then it’s okay to punish the accused. So, back to square one and the unanswered question. What exactly is incitement?

Jonathan Romain rounded off the circular debate by reminding us that Choudary has had 20 years of freedom, and by crossing that all important line, was the architect of his own downfall.

However, we must question ourselves, he said. Ask what was the real cause of radicalisation, be more vociferous in challenging extremists and reinforce our own values.

There came a short intervention by Tommy for YOUR tweets and messages  (in which an extreme split has been detected)……… and back to the debate.

The solicitor still insisted that  there was no evidence that Choudary ever directly incited anyone, and that most Muslims think of him as a bit of a windbag and don’t take any notice of him. It seemed as if we were about to embark on another lap of the same circuit. But no. At last we all agree. 

We need more democracy and more freedom of speech. We also need less time-consuming padding on SML if it’s ever going to compete with Sunday morning’s regular fare.

What sort of country do we want to be?

Further to Craig’s Sunday Morning Live piece, I’m going to deliver my Sunday Morning Lecture. If you don’t like being lectured to, look away now.

If you don’t like being lectured, you certainly won’t like  being proselytised by the BBC.

The sanctimonious tone of all those heartwarming stories about virtuous immigrants is pretty counter-productive. 

The other day Mishal Husain interviewed a 20 year old who is now studying at Manchester University.  His mother sent him away from Afghanistan for a better future in England. He travelled alone at 12 years old. “She didn’t want me to be killed by the Taliban or the American forces”

He described a harrowing journey, and some equally harrowing experiences on arrival in the UK.  Somehow he is now a student.  He also has a massive chip on his shoulder, a decidedly subversive attitude and unless he calms down a bit he could be a potential troublemaker. He believes his predicament is ‘our fault’ for messing up his country (Afghanistan) and he thinks we have a duty to take responsibility. He didn’t say whether or not he’d have preferred the west to have stayed away from Afghanistan, or if he was willing to live under Taliban rule. 

The BBC’s left-wing ‘let them all come” agenda is so obvious and preachy that it antagonises recalcitrant viewers and makes it easier for them to harden their hearts.

Anecdotes about individual asylum seekers who overcame numerous insurmountable obstacles and are now “studying for their masters” or their PHD tend to invite reflection upon the ones who are not studying for anything apart from how to get around the welfare state.  Or, to be less emotive, at least the ones who are less industrious or less integrated.

  

The message from people like Owen Jones and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown is that we must regard would-be migrants as potential professors and engineers, therefore we should welcome them all..

Of course, this is silly. Do they really believe that the Somali gangs who are here already, supposedly hanging about on street corners dealing drugs (or whatever they allegedly get up to) are the exception, and completely unrepresentative of all the potential philosophers and leaders of industry who are throwing themselves over, under or at lorries in desperation to get to Britain? 

The trouble is there is truth in there somewhere. Surely the struggle involved in getting so far indicates enterprise and dedication, especially when looked at in comparison to the ennui and apathy of some of the indigenes, whom Christina Patterson reminded us were only here by accident of birth?   Calling migrants ‘cockroaches’ and suggesting all manner of hard-hearted solutions seems very wrong as well.

We can’t ignore our instinctive humanitarian reaction to genuinely affecting stories, but however much we sympathise with the plight of the would-be migrant, at some point we have to ‘get real’.

Don’t we have enough problems already?’It’s one thing to keep repeating “What sort of country do we want to be?” as they did on Sunday Morning Live.

 Well, for a start we might say charity begins at home. We might say, as Liz Kendall and George Osborne seem to agree, that we need a strong economy before we can implement all our idealistic, charitable principles.

Immigration is already a shambles in this country, isn’t it? I understand that illegal immigrants keep disappearing. If the border agencies can’t even keep track of who’s coming and going, how on earth could they cope with hundreds or thousands more?

Did I hear Owen Jones saying that we should follow Germany, and take in our fair share?   What about this?

 "There are districts where immigrant gangs are taking over entire metro trains for themselves. Native residents and business people are being intimidated and silenced. People taking trams during the evening and nighttime describe their experiences as 'living nightmares.' Policemen, and especially policewomen, are subject to 'high levels of aggressiveness and disrespect.”

I don’t suppose those problems are caused by PHD students and philosophy graduates, although some of the most radical Jihadis apparently are from that milieu.

Did I hear you ask what was all that to do with BBC bias? I might be straying away from the core point, but I’d love to ask Jones and Alibhai-Brown and anyone else who asks “What sort of country do we want to be?” if they want it to be the sort of country that tolerates this?

H/T Daphne Anson

Personally I was disgusted and alarmed. Where’s the crackdown? 

In fact at the end of Sunday Morning Live, they managed to come to a sort of consensus. There should be a cap, or a quota. Although that lets Britain off the hook in terms of rich European countries taking equal responsibility for absorbing immigrants and refugees,  it doesn’t actually solve the moral dilemma, because once the cap is reached, we’re back to square one.  

Ignorance or design?

If I worked at the BBC (winking emoji) I might be one of the views-my-own Tweeters who whiles away their spare time opining on antisocial media. I might take on matters about which I know dangerously little, and I might promote causes by reTweeting political messages. (innocent face) 

I’m not though. I don’t have a Twitter account and I access Facebook vicariously. That means through someone else’s Facebook account, like I’m a spy. A peeping Tom, if you will. Something about Facebook makes me uncomfortable. The most prolific posters are so confident that everyone else has the same political outlook as theirs that they link to creepy stuff with total bravado. I don’t want to see it, so that’s why I’m out. Logged off.

It’s already like that on Channel 4, and now it’s getting more and more like that on the BBC. You often have to switch off just because you don’t want to see people with agonisingly wrong-headed opinions, opining.

Further to Craig’s post about last week’s ridiculous edition of Sunday Morning Live, there was a lively thread on Harry’s Place about Dilly Hussain’s longing for the Ottoman Empire and loathing for the UK. 

Do read it. The particular aspect I wish to pursue is to ask why the BBC persists in inviting misfits and, well, fruitcakes - virtually into our homes? More specifically why do they bring them on to their Sunday Morning religious-ish slot. 

The producers might be hoping liven up a boring topic, and think they’re hiring people with outrageous views. They seem unable to tell the difference between the mavericks and iconoclasts they might wish to recruit and the fools and knaves they end up with.

Listening respectfully to the opinions of Hussain and the unprepossessing Peter Owen-Jones reduces the level of discussion to absurdity.

They engage similar spokespersons for some of their dumbed-down political-themed jamborees  on other days of the week as well, like the youth forums they put out on BBC3.

Somehow Dilly Hussain, Asghar Bukhari and Mo Ansar managed reach positions of  authority; head of this, spokesman for that and leader of the other. They seem quite like impostors who pretend to be doctors and get away with working for the NHS for years before being found out; they don’t even have any medical knowledge whatsoever, they just wing it.

The truth is, many of these telly imams and celebrity religious experts don’t know much about anything, let alone the religion they’re supposed to represent.

And it’s exasperating that they get treated with so much respect and are given so much  credibility till someone exposes them.

On Harry’s Place Mark commented:

  “I've no idea if it was through ignorance or design that the BBC invited him on. His smugness was tangible, but he got even smugger when "clergyman" Peter Owen-Jones trashed all British History in a kind of ashamed, head-bowed manner.In fact, what Peter Owen-Jones did was to feed the talk of radicalisation on a kind of Asghar Bukhari level.While I wouldn't go around saying that the British Empire was completely built on countries asking us in for a cup of tea and then agreeing to everything, there's otherwise much through history to actually be proud of.Dilly Hussain is one of those who hate this country, and certain people in the media, nod sagely and say, "I think you have a point." Who else gets that sort of treatment?

Lamia replied:

On previous form, it is absolutely deliberate, Mark.The BBC ought to be ashamed to keep inviting Hussain on as a commentator. He's a crypto-ISIS fan who has a habit of abusing people - especially women, and extra especially female Muslims - who disagree with him. To put him into perspective: when even the odious Haitham al Hadad and other Islamists went through the formality (sincere or otherwise) of 'urging' ISIS not to murder hostages, Hussain angrily refused. He's pretty much on the level of Anjem Choudary, and in a sense is a worse influence because while the mainstream media views Choudary (rather inadequately), as a nasty clown, it seems to think Hussain's a completely different species of Islamist.

James Delingpole was on the programme too. "The BBC's new pet Islamist::

Now I’m all for the BBC canvassing as wide a range of viewpoints as it possibly can on programmes like this (yes, even evil climate change deniers!) but it does worry me — as a licence fee payer, a keen upholder of the nation’s moral standards, and a tireless campaigner against prejudice in all its forms — that the BBC may inadvertently be guilty of racism by having invited Dilly onto the show. No worse, of full on Islamophobia.
Certainly if I were a typical, law-abiding, well-integrated British member of the religion of peace, I think I might find myself being mildly troubled that this Dilly fellow had been invited on by the BBC to represent my faith. “An incredibly thick and ill-informed extremist,” I’d be thinking. “That’s just what we British Muslims need to improve our tarnished image.”

Silly season

Pandering to attention-seekers is a very annoying trait of the BBC. Putting people like Owen Jones, Mehdi Hasan and Tim Stanley on our screens at every opportunity is a ratings-grasping ploy, the equivalent of an internet phenomenon I keep coming across, called ‘click-bait.’

Then there’s the Bongo Bongo Land thing, which Ed West has nailed, and the ‘is a 13-year-old too young to be called a sexual predator’ question, which is another multi-faceted issue rather than a suitable topic for knee-jerk politically correct outrage. 

We all know that the BBC’s charter obliges them to appear impartial, but I think that’s an unachievable goal. The BBC’s current interpretation of impartiality has had a bizarre outcome; a policy of banning value judgements wherever they see them, be they hiding behind stones or trees. (Then the stones or trees will call: 'Oh journalist, servant of the BBC, there is a value judgement behind me, come and kill it.'” )  

If properly adhered to it would oblige the BBC to give equally balanced non judgmental coverage to the utterances of, say, the devil incarnate and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the case of the West versus Islam, the BBC would need to give equal credence to the president of Iran and the prime minister of Great Britain. Oh, wait! as they say on the internet.

Deciding which topics to highlight is of course a fundamental value judgement that all news editors have to make; therefore those they choose, and even more tellingly, those they ignore, are bound to reveal partiality while serving as a constant reminder of the impossibility of  achieving the charter’s aspirations. 

After much consideration, the inevitable conclusion is that this policy could only be truly realised if the BBC were to provide wall-to-wall blanket coverage of everythingeverywhere, or none at all. 

Blank screens would genuinely offer rolling 24 hour impartiality, but that’s quite silly, bearing in mind that we are forced to pay to watch the BBC on pain of imprisonment. If there were no BBC programmes at all, due to an ultimate, terminal avoidance of taking sides, who would pay for the upkeep of Broadcasting house, and all the gagging orders and stuff? 

When a subject upon which they patently do make value judgements raises its head, (say, the assumption that Israel and its inhabitants and politicians are inherently evil)  the powers that be simply pooh-pooh the matter with the one-size-fits-all Devil’s Advocate Defence. Peter Allen’s bosses assure us that’s what he was doing when a value judgement slipped through, and he accidentally said  ‘Israel always wreaks its revenge’’ and ‘it does it all the time!’  - the devil!

They say August is the silly season, and things are indeed looking silly but this is not confined to any particular month.

Tim Stanley came to my attention on a recent edition of Sunday Morning Live. He’s writing in the Telegraph about Tommy Robinson who, it seems, while trying to illustrate why the EDL objects to unlimited Muslim immigration on Twitter, linked - he claims inadvertently - to an antisemitic website. Stanley concludes, therefore, that the EDL and its leader must themselves be antisemitic.  

Tim Stanley is a proud Catholic, a convert no less, so condemning a whole group by association, or as people like to put it, “tarring with the same brush” the bad apples that discredit but don’t necessarily typify said group, might probably be something he’d best steer clear of. That’s disallowing Tommy Robinson the benefit of the doubt, for the sake of the devil’s argument. 

That is not to make a  “he of all people,” accusation, by the way; not the “he should have learnt the lesson,” philosophy, as in Lib Dem MP David Ward’s illogical advice to “the Jews” who he (Ward) believes are inflicting a holocaust upon the Palestinian people. His flawed logic seems to be that because the Jews endured a holocaust at the hands of the Nazis, they should have somehow learnt to sit there and take another beating from the Islamists, when anyone with a modicum of common sense would conclude that ‘once bitten twice shy’ is a far more logical response. Of course David Ward refuses to acknowledge the genocidal aspirations of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranian Ayatollahs and the goals of assorted participants of Arab uprisings.  (Which is the elimination of Jews/Israel by the way.)

Accordingly, the unfortunate principle of Ward’s ‘lesson’ appears to be that Jews, as ‘experienced victims’ should sacrifice themselves on a morally superior altar - ‘empathy with the new victims’ instead of restraining an enemy from carrying out its murderous aspirations, to the extent that the well-taught, once-bitten Jews must let history repeat and allow themselves to be annihilated once again.

 Tim Stanley, as a Catholic, would no doubt object to the assumption that he and all Catholics are associated with and jointly guilty of deeds done by other Catholics, so can he really make a similarly unfair and sweeping assumption about the EDL on the strength of an ill-judged Tweet from Tommy R? 

I wasn’t impressed with Tim Stanley on Sunday Morning Live. The way he lolled in his chair in a disrespectfully supercilious slouch that says I’m so arrogant I can’t even be arsed to sit up straight didn’t help. And his bouffant hair. When he started eulogising about Muslim immigration I’m sure many people wondered in what English region of Bangladesh he resides. “I divide my time between London, Oxford and Los Angeles, with the occasional weekend in Washington DC.” So not Luton then.

Stanley has caught the attention of several other  bloggers. I now realise that although some say he’s written a decent biography,  he’s taken to full-time attention-seeking, the gratification of which I am duly furthering. 

Here’s a clever summary of Stanley from commenter ‘Sarka’ on SarahAB’s thread on Harry’s Place.

“Oh dear, I shall get lowdown here. Tim Stanley is terribly comic. He is a religious hobbyist - raised a Baptist, converted to Anglcanism, then to RCism. He claims he will die a Catholic, but he's still young and I'm not sure...He already finds cradle Catholics and many priests wimpy and liberal - and professes to shock at how many American Catholics disagree with church doctrine on contraception...

But Sarah, is there really any point in picking him up on his using secular as a dirty word? It's just part of the act (which is sort of cobbled together from bits of Evelyn Waugh, late Muggeridge, Longford, Piers Paul Reade etc etc...). He only does it to annoy because he knows it teases. It would be more to the point to suggest that his "orientalist" excitement about Europeans going off and going all romantically Islamic is quite revealing about his own religious tourism. As does the calculated grovel to Muslims now (which might be paraphrased as "Splendid fellow, Johnny Muslim...stands up for what he stands for, lesson to us all!" Though of course, if Stanley was going just for a young fogey image that would be more straightforward - in fact he seems to be trying for the impossible - i.e. a trendy cultural relativist Americanophile Islamophile culturally conservative going-to-the-dogsism...Very odd, but I guess this is the post-modern age so we can expect all kinds of weirdo fusions."

 As I started with click-bait: “Pandering to attention-seeking is a very annoying trait of the BBC. Putting people like Owen Jones, Mehdi Hasan and Tim Stanley on our screens at every opportunity is a ratings-grasping ploy,” which was an attention-grabbing beginning intended to captivate the reader before confronting him with material he might skip, I’ll end with the Bongo Bongo Land thing. 

People (ordinary folk like retired taxi-drivers) are saying that this country has turned into a place where "telling the truth turns you into a racist." Why, just such a fellow made that unsolicited observation this very afternoon, on hearing that the local day centre for the aged has had its funds cut.

Talking to someone who’s doing a stint in Cambodia I was told that everyone there is paid in cash because they haven’t got a tax system or anything. “How does the staggeringly rich leader come by his vast wealth?” I enquired. “Oh, he purloins the foreign aid.” came the cavalier reply. I don’t know if Cambodia qualifies as bongo bongo, but I’m sure Nigeria does.

The BBC doesn’t like people criticising the concept of this country doling out foreign aid when we’re feeling the pinch - and which organisation has been obsessing about Tory cuts and the hardships they’ve caused to all and sundry the minute the Labour party lost the election? Worse still, the crime of using the term  bongo bongo land, which has provided a convenient diversion from exposing the double standards alluded to above. Yes the offender might not be a credit to UKIP, but who is?

It’s silly, but it isn’t just in August though, is it.