Moderate fundamentalism

Last night, the so-called moderate Regent’s Park Mosque was revisited by Channel 4 in Undercover Mosque: the Return. "So-called" because what followed showed anything but.

This was a follow-up to last year’s Undercover Mosque, a Dispatches documentary in which a reporter carried out secret filming in British mosques whose public faces are presented as moderate while, in private, its Muslim preachers campaign against integration into UK society, condemn democracy and praise the Taliban for killing British soldiers.

Last night’s sequel displayed plenty of Islamic hatred and intolerance towards anyone who isn’t Muslim. It showed a female Muslim preacher, Um Saleem, at London’s Regent’s Park Mosque claiming that a Muslim must hate as well as love. This same female preacher waved about an Islamic text, which advocated the killing of ex-Muslims, adulterers, homosexuals and those who support them, and said, “This is a very good book.”

We also saw her talking to non-Muslim schoolchildren and college students, who were visiting the mosque as part of its pretence at promoting integration and understanding. However, as soon as the visitors had left, she started condemning all non-Muslims, saying that Muslims should not integrate with them.

We were shown Saudi religious rulings being handed out in the UK to British Muslim women. We were told of the billions of dollars that the Saudi royal family have been pumping into preaching extremist Islamic teachings throughout the West.

Despite assurances given last year after the exposé of the unacceptable goings on at the Regent’s Park Mosque, we saw that its bookshop was still selling offensive Islamic publications: books of Islamic verdicts (fatwas) and DVDs preaching vile and disgusting views about Islamic punishments, such as chopping people’s hands off, beheadings and crucifixions, and how they should be available all over the world once a Sovereign Islamic State has been created. This is the bookshop that claims to promote peace, respect and tolerance.

While all this is going on behind the mosque’s closed doors, as the documentary clearly showed, British government ministers are laughing and joking and rubbing shoulders with those who run it. Why?

You can see some of the footage from the documentary here at Little Green Footballs.

(We have carried a number of posts mentioning these programmes; you can get to them here, which will take you to all posts that mention it, including this one and any future ones.)

Let's hear it for Channel 4

Chanel 4 have won their case against West Midlands Police, who accused makers of a documentary of faking footage when they uncovered Muslim preachers calling for jihad, praising the Taliban for the murder of British soldiers and calling for gays to be killed by being thrown off cliffs, among other things.

The doccie was called Undercover Mosque, and West Midlands Police – in whose area one of the mosques was situated – reported the programme makers to Ofcom, the watchdog, for what they claimed, in a fit of political correctness, was heavy editing. Ofcom rejected the complaints last year. Police had begun investigating the issues raised in the programme but decided that C4 itself was wrong and could have been stirring up racial hatred (that conflation of racial and religious again – they all do it).

A story in the Daily Mail says, "Documentary excerpts from preachers and teachers included 'Allah created the woman deficient' and 'by the age of ten, it becomes an obligation on us to force her to wear hijab and if she doesn't wear hijab, we hit her'."

The story continues,

The programme, Undercover Mosque, broadcast in January, featured TV footage of an Islamic preacher praising the death of a British soldier.

At a meeting in a Birmingham mosque, the cleric said: "There was an individual killed in Afghanistan recently.

"Do you know what was written in a newspaper? Hero of Islam! The hero of Islam is the one who separated his head from his shoulders!"

Abu Usamah, a preacher at the Green Lane mosque in Birmingham, was secretly filmed saying: "If I were to call homosexuals perverted, dirty, filthy, dogs who should be murdered, that is my freedom of speech, isn't it?"

Although Ofcom had concluded that the West Midlands Police were talking crap, the force left the offending press release, headed "Broadcast out of context", on its website, so C4 decided to take legal action.

The upshot is that the force has to pay £100,000 to C4 (half of which it will give to the Rory Peck Trust, a charity that helps correspondents killed while on assignments) and issue an apology through the High Court, which it, along with the Crown Prosecution Service, will do tomorrow.

You can see some of what was said in the documentary and the disgusting people who said it by clicking on the video below, and you can find more video on the same YouTube page. See also this leader article in today's Daily Telegraph.

Undercover Mosque: the Return

This should be a nice one in the eye for the PC PCs at West Midlands Police, who tried to sue Channel 4 recently for its "Undercover Mosque" episode in its Dispatches series. Channel 4 beat off the force's attempts to sue it, and brought a libel case and a grovelling apology. (We carried several posts mentioning this programme; you can get to them here, which will take you to all posts that mention it, including this one and any future ones.)

The Guardian tells us:

It has now emerged that the same Hardcash production team have revisited the subject to "see whether extremist beliefs continue to be promoted in certain key British Muslim institutions".

In the new documentary, a female reporter attends prayer meetings at an important British mosque which claims to be dedicated to moderation and "dialogue with other faiths".

According to Channel 4, "she secretly films sermons given to the women-only congregation in which female preachers recite extremist and intolerant beliefs".

In one scene, as hundreds of women and some children come to pray, a preacher calls for adulterers, homosexuals, women who act like men and Muslim converts to other faiths to be killed, saying: "Kill him, kill him. You have to kill him, you understand. This is Islam."

Not much changes in the wacky world of extreme religion, does it? You can catch the programme at 8 p.m. on 1 September. A definite date for the diary.

A "balanced and impeccably sourced documentary"

A "balanced and impeccably sourced documentary". That's how Nick Cohen in the Observer describes Undercover Mosque, the Channel 4 documentary that led to a row that led to a row that led to an apology from the police.

Its undercover journalists infiltrated radical mosques. They recorded assorted preachers calling for the subjugation of women, the murder of homosexuals and Jews, the replacement of the "man-made" laws of a democracy with the religious edicts of a theocratic state and the eternal damnation of Muslims who did not follow Wahhabi doctrine and infidels who did not accept the true faith.

So secularists, humanists, freethinkers and those non-PC types who can spot the PC in a PC PC from a mile off are not the only ones who think West Midlands Police were stupid for wanting to prosecute Channel 4 for allegedly fiddling with the footage. Cohen contines:

The station took every care to ensure the accuracy of the programme. I speak from experience when I say that being edited by Channel 4's commissioning editors is like having a team of revenue inspectors going through your accounts. Its lawyers swarmed over the script of Undercover Mosque to make sure it complied with the law and Ofcom's regulatory guidelines. Two weeks before transmission, they sent letters to every cleric criticised in the film explaining what Channel 4 had accused them of and offering them a chance to reply.

It's in the "Comment is Free" slot – Guardian Unlimited's blog – so there are a fair few comments there for your reading pleasure.

Failing to root out extremism

Is it any surprise that British mosques are, on the whole, not rooting out extremism when 97 per cent of imams (Muslim mojo men) weren’t born in the UK? Not only that, but – according to a report from the Quilliam Foundation, as reported on the BBC news website – the lecture before Friday prayers in nearly half of British mosques isn’t in English.

Nearly half have no women’s facilities, either.

The Quilliam Foundation’s director, Maajid Nawaz, tells the BBC that the findings show mosques lack the “resilience to challenge Islamist extremists”.

The statistics, he says, are “deeply disturbing”, and he has warned that extremism could not be tackled while imams were “physically in Britain, but psychologically in Pakistan or Bangladesh”.

Easy. Let’s stop them from being physically in Britain and ensure that they are entirely in Pakistan or Bangladesh. Let’s do more than allow the media to do the odd story and then forget about it. Shouldn’t there be a campaign to root out extremist preachers and send them packing, thus sending a message to others who want to try doing the same?

It’s amazing how we can bar Geert Wilders from coming to the UK to show a film that exposes extreme Muslim thinking within the religion’s “holy book”.

We can bar the nutcases of the dysfunctional Phelps clan – of Topeka in Kansas – from this country when they want to wave a few placards outside a showing of the anti-homophobia play The Laramie Project, when even many gay people and liberal-leaning blogs such as this one are against such a ban, believing that free speech should be played out on a level playing field.

But we can’t root out genuinely dangerous, demented, lunatic preachers of the sort we saw on Channel 4’s Undercover Mosque. Need we remind ourselves of that now famous documentary, which found evidence of extremist preaching among hate-filled, rabid preachers?

We blogged on it here, and then again when we discovered that West Midlands Police’s Political Correctness Rapid-Response Unit, having tried to prosecute the makers, found themselves having to grovel in abject apology because they’d got it wrong. Oh, how we did rub our hands!

You can see some of that Undercover Mosque programme by clicking on the link below. This gives part of it. It’s a YouTube clip and, as usual with YouTube, you can go to the site and find several videos relating to the programme with a simple search.

How Islamic preachers incite murder – in Britain

Last time it was the men calling for gays to be executed in rather unusual ways. This time it's women doing the inciting. The one thing they have in common is that they're all Muslim.

As we reported a while ago, Channel 4's Dispatches series is back with "Undercover Mosque: the Return". And it's on tonight.

Yesterday's Sunday Times has been previewing the programme, and tells us:

Women preachers are urging followers at one of Britain’s most influential mosques to kill homosexuals and view all non-Muslims as “vile”, according to a television documentary.

The London Central Mosque and Islamic Cultural Centre, known as the Regent’s Park Mosque, is one of the most respected centres for moderate Islam in western Europe.

However, an undercover investigation by the Channel 4 Dispatches programme has found extremist preachers have held study circles there and are teaching followers a hardline version of the faith followed in Saudi Arabia, known as Wahhabism.

A female reporter infiltrated women's study circles for the programme. In one, a woman preacher using the name Umm Amira told followers, “We are not going to be like animals . . . or to be like the homosexuals, God save us from that, you understand? We have to take the judgement, the judgement is to kill them.”

Charming! But we shouldn't be surprised.

More taxpayers' money spent on Muslims

Another public body – funded by the taxpayer – is to be set up by the UK government for Muslims. This one aims to try to stop Muslims from blowing us up, suggesting that police methods of prevention and detection have failed.

This idea will be announced this week by Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, as part of a strategy called Prevent, which was set up after the 7/7 bombings.

According to the Sunday Times, this new "board of imams" will attempt to "refute the ideology of violent extremists". Quite how it will do that, considering that refute means not just to repudiate, but to prove wrong, is anyone's guess. How do you "refute" an ideology? Or is this just sloppy writing on the part of the Times Whitehall editor, Marie Woolf?

Anyway, this committee "will issue pronouncements on areas such as wearing the hijab and the treatment of wives and is part of a government strategy to counter radicalism". The Sunday Times story continues:

[The committee] will rule on interpretation of the Koran and promote the moderate strain of Islam practised by most British Muslims. It will also comment on controversial issues affecting Muslims living in Britain, including whether or not they should serve in the armed forces.

And is this going to be then enshrined in public policy, something dredged up out of a book of desiccated scriptures? It goes on:

The government is concerned that extremist leaders who preach jihad have been able to radicalise young Muslims, partly because of the failure of leading Islamic figures to challenge them.

A committee of Muslim young people will try to ensure the policies are relevant to them and do not inadvertently lead to further radicalisation. The government also plans to support Muslim women by providing discussion groups and work placements.

Something called the Muslim Public Affairs Committee "questioned whether the board would address issues relevant to Muslims’ lives".

"To be successful," says a committee spokeswoman, "this initiative must have credibility with the Muslim community as a whole. What matters is what happens at the grass roots in someone's local mosque."

If Muslims wish to set up committees to regulate life in their communities, they're at liberty to do so, provided nothing that comes of their deliberations is expected to be legally binding. All sorts of organisations have their committees, with the power to recommend, decide, reprimand, hire, fire, kick arse. But Muslim committees should be paid for out of participants' pockets.

If the country can't handle those who want to bomb the hell out of us, what are the police and intelligence services doing? If such a committee can really prevent young people from being radicalised, why is it being suggested it rule on women's fashion and how men treat their wives?

And do they really think this is some sort of hearts-and-minds measure that will change the ideology of someone who's so Allah-soaked that he's willing to give his life in order to take those of others? That's a pretty unfaltering commitment.

Strikes me as just another way of seeming to be doing something instead of stopping kowtowing to religionists now, and imposing that clichéd "zero tolerance" of dubious activities. If religion didn't automatically and seemingly without exception receive such a good government ear and were not treated with such unwarranted reverence, what people do in its name might be treated with more suspicion by the public at large.

Instead, when journalism comes good for a change and creates something like Undercover Mosque, the police decide that's racist and seek to prosecute the programme makers. In that case, fortunately, the police were left with egg on their silly faces and had to issue a grovelling apology.

Testing the "no-go" areas

Much as I find Stephen "Birdshit" Green of Christian Voice a pain in the arse, I hope he further exposes West Midlands police for the prattish plods they are showing themselves to be at the moment by upholding religious privilege.

West Midlands Police, you may remember, showed their appeasement credentials when they tried to take on Channel 4 for their excellent and revealing Undercover Mosque documentary, and were then forced to apologise.

Since then there's been the ejection of a pair of Christian preachers from a Birmingham suburb by the same police force in the guise of one of their Muslim community support officers, because it was a predominantly Muslim area.

The last time I checked I thought Brum was a place for British people of whatever religion (or none) and any visitors to this country who happen to be there, not an area that belongs to Muslims. Perhaps I've been wrong all along.

Anyway, off they went, these two American preachers, with their tails between their legs. I might think them nutters, but they have a right to leaflet, just as you or I do. And I support their right to do so – even if they're spitting bile against gay people or other minorities. Provided they're not directly inciting violence or barring minorities from services that are rightfully theirs, they have every right to say that their chosen belief system believes this and that.

The UK's Daily Telegraph said on Monday:

The evangelists say they were threatened with arrest for committing a "hate crime" and were told they risked being beaten up if they returned. The incident will fuel fears that "no-go areas" for Christians are emerging in British towns and cities . . .

These guys, Arthur Cunningham, 48, and Joseph Abraham, 65, both full-time evangelical ministers, have now launched a legal action against West Midlands Police, claiming the officer infringed their right to profess their religion.

It happened at Alum Rock, an area that has a disproportionate number of Muslims living in it, to the east of Birmingham city centre. Cunningham tells the paper that the police community support officer (PCSO) said they "were in a Muslim area and were not allowed to spread our Christian message". He continued, "He said we were committing a hate crime by telling the youths to leave Islam and said that he was going to take us to the police station."

The paper doesn't tell us that the uppity prat of a PCSO was a Muslim, but he's named by Christian Voice and others (including the Daily Mail), as Naeem Naguthney.

The paper concludes:

The ministers claim he also advised them not to return to the area. As he walked away, the PCSO said: "You have been warned. If you come back here and get beaten up, well you have been warned."

West Midlands Police, who refused to apologise, said the incident had been "fully investigated" and the officer would be given training in understanding hate crime and communication.

Now, Christian Voice are getting in on the act. Members will be gathering at Alum Rock on 14 June at 10 a.m. Green says in a press release that, although West Midlands Police have said the officer would be given training, Naguthney had "summoned two other officers, one of whom, a full constable, is said to have told the preachers not to return to the area, [so] an anti-Christian attitude could be prevalent in the force."

Green would say that. He's a rabid Christian of the frothing born-again variety. What is more likely is not so much an anti-Christian attitude as an appeasing-Muslims attitude.

No doubt there'll be a fair smattering of media at Alum Rock on 14 June.

We humbly apologise . . .

"We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release."

Let's just read that again, just for the hell of it, displayed this time:

We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release.

Fun, isn't it? That's the grovelling apology, now available on their website, from West Midlands Police, who wrongly accused Channel 4 of a bit of fancy editing in order to make a documentary more hateful towards Muslims. As you'll see from yesterday's Pink Triangle entry, "Let’s hear it for Channel 4", West Midlands Police's complaint against the makers of the documentary Undercover Mosque failed, but they left the offending press release on their website. So Channel 4 went for the jugular, resulting in a judgment that has meant a fine and the apology.

"[W]e were wrong to make these allegations," says the press release. Furthermore, the programme "had accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context".

The National Secular Society's now calling for a public inquiry into the role of West Midlans Police and the Crown Prosecution Service in the whole silly charade.

OK, just one more time:

We accept, without reservation, the conclusions of Ofcom and apologise to the programme makers for the damage and distress caused by our original press release.

On this one at least, the score is: common sense 1, PC brigade (pun only half intended) 0.