In biased Britain, hate speech by Muslims is OK. But reporting it on television isn't.
MPs have accused West Midlands Police of seeking to undermine freedom of speech by making a "perverse" complaint about a Channel 4 programme that exposed extremism in a British mosque. Police claimed that the Dispatches programme "Undercover Mosque" misrepresented the views of Muslim preachers and clerics. The programme featured undercover recordings of speakers expressing homophobic, anti-Semitic and sexist views, and condemning non-Muslims.
One preacher was heard to say "By the age of 10, it becomes an obligation on us to force her [young girls] to wear hijab, and if she doesn't wear hijab, we hit her." Another said "Take that homosexual and throw him off the mountain", and "Whoever changes his religion from Al Islam to anything else - kill him in the Islamic state".
Abu Usamah of 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?"
And apparently in the minds of the West Midlands Police it was: they rejected calls to take action against the preachers for stirring up racial hatred, and themselves made a complaint against the film-makers, accusing them of "undermining community relations".
But Ofcom, the media watchdog, threw out their complaint. It found that the programme had "accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context. "Undercover Mosque" was a legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest."
David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: "Once they [the police] were clear that no criminal offence had been committed, it was, in my view, a serious misjudgment to continue to pursue the editorial team and risked impeding freedom of speech. The Dispatches programme raised matters of wide public interest, touching on security and community relations. The documentary handled inherently sensitive issues in a responsible manner. Having been advised by the Crown Prosecution Service that no criminal charges should be brought, there was no cause for a police complaint to Ofcom."
It'll come as no surprise to readers of Grumpy Old Sod that there has been widespread condemnation of the police force's pro-Muslim attitude. John Ray of Eye on Britain wrote "I guess the British police will now have to stick to executing innocent Brazilian electricians and prosecuting people who defend themselves against home-invaders."
Times readers can always be relied on for some perceptive comment. Matt from Leeds emailed the newspaper with an excellent suggestion: "Maybe people living in the West Midlands should seriously think about going into a police station and reporting these preachers as committing a crime. I would like to think that people would come from a cross section of Britain's multicultural society, including Muslims. Maybe the pressure of a number of people reporting the crime will motivate West Midlands Police to take the correct action next time."
Matt is right, of course. We all wring our hands and wax indignant, but how many of us actually get off our bums and do something about it? Reporting a crime to the police isn't exactly rocket science …
Meanwhile in the Torygraph, Marco Giannangeli reports an interesting development. An MP (a Labour MP, what's more) is calling for controls to prevent Muslims from marrying their own family members.
Ann Cryer, MP for Keighley, said that marriages between cousins should be banned after research showed alarming rates in defective births among Asian communities in Britain. The report revealed that while the Pakistani community only produced 3.4% of the nation's babies, it accounted for 30% of all births with recessive disorders.
"We address problems of smoking, drinking, obesity and we say it's a public health issue, therefore we have to get involved with persuading people to adopt a different lifestyle," Ann Cryer told BBC2's Newsnight programme, "I think this should be applied to the Asian community. They must look outside the family for husbands and wives for their young people."
It is estimated that more than 55 per cent of British Pakistanis are married to first cousins, resulting in an increasing rate of genetic defects and high rates of infant mortality. The likelihood of unrelated couples having the same variant genes that cause recessive disorders are estimated to be 100-1. Between first cousins, the odds increase to as much as one in eight. In Bradford, more than three quarters of all Pakistani marriages are believed to be between first cousins. The city's Royal Infirmary Hospital has identified more than 140 different recessive disorders among local children, compared with the usual 20-30.
The findings were expected to be condemned by the Asian community, in which many see the tradition of marriages between first cousins as culturally fundamental. "You have an understanding, you have the same family history," said Neila Butt, who has had two children with her husband, Farooq, her first cousin. "It's just a nicer emotional feel."
Oh well, so long as it feels nice …
The GOS says: It's tempting to make all sorts of smart-alec comments, like "jolly good, let them get on with it, in a couple of generations they'll have bred themselves into extinction", or "this Muslim inbreeding produces 100% of children with a major defect - being Muslim".
But we won't.
West Midlands Police might not like it.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2007 The GOS
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