Phyllis Chesler Interviews Carol Gould

carol gould

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The British Police and the Radical Imams
Last uploaded : Monday 27th Aug 2007 at 19:30
Contributed by : The Editor

 

It is utterly absurd that the British authorities have decided to censure a major broadcaster for inciting racial discord rather than investigating the violent and hate-filled rhetoric of the relgious leaders depicted in a film. This is, however, the position in which Channel Four Television finds itself in the dog days of August.

I attended a seminar in London earlier this year in which Dr Mohamed Abdul Bari, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that he thought the Channel Four 'Dispatches' programme, 'Undercover Mosque,' generated Islamophobia and stirred racial hatred. Putting two and two together in the past fortnight since attending the Policy Exchange event on 'Undercover Mosque' and the implications for free speeech and free expression by broadcasters, it is clear that the MCB had something to do with the police turning their attentions to the programme-makers rather than to the radicals in the film.

In this documentary we saw an Imam imitating the snorting of a pig when referring to Jews. We saw outlandish pronouncements being made by radical religious agitators whose entire demeanour and attitude towards the outside world contravened every tenet of decorum. Had I not spent the weekend in Wendover, Bucks and been treated like a lady by the local gentlemen I would begin to think Britain as a nation of gracious and genteel folk, in which young lads of all social classes were raised to respect women and the rest of Christendom, had ceased to exist.

At the risk of being dubbed a 'racist ape,' as I was two weeks ago by an enraged Muslim gentleman in my sweet little local Costa Coffee shop in London, dare I say that the concept of an Englishman has been so distorted as to be unrecognisable? In the same country in which men used to tip their hats to me and cabbies called my father 'Guv'nor,' we now have British citizens and naturalised immigrants who rant and rave and want women subjugated, gay men thrown off mountains and the 'Infidel' beheaded, and whose entire demeanour is so alien to anything in my entire life experience that I wonder if I have left planet Earth.

Yes, it could be said that the worst of the characters who people Speakers' Corner on a Sunday in Hyde Park, and the ranting Christian preachers of 'Elmer Gantry' threatening Hellfire are just as awful as the imams on display in 'Undercover Mosque' but somehow one feels the visceral hatred of the latter is very real and very dangerous. They seem to proliferate across the British Isles and are influencing hundreds of thousands of young British people of all faiths, not just young Muslims. This is not what I thought Britain would become when I arrived in 1976.

To read an account of a very important and emotional meeting of Britain's top journalists, barristers and MPs at the Policy Exchange on 16 August, please pay a visit to the website of the excellent New Culture Forum:

http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/home/?q=node/113 .

http://www.newcultureforum.org.uk/home/

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Related link:

http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Publications.aspx?id=307 .



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