B(athetic)
B(iased)
C(rooked)
Abbas Zaidi
From 5 to 15 October last year the BBC conducted what
it called the Mori national survey of British Asians. The
details of the survey were aired on 28 October. The focus
of the survey was to ask British Asians whether or not
"the Muslim extremist groups based in the UK should
be outlawed". The survey claimed that 61 percent of
the respondents said that the extremist Muslim groups
should be banned. As a reaction to the survey, Mr Inayat
Bunglawala, Secretary of Media Committee, The Muslim
Council of Britain, sent two questions to the BBC:
1.)Why not ask a similar question about Hindu and Sikh
extremist groups? Hindu mobs led by the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad massacred over two thousand Muslims in the
Indian state of Gujarat in March 2002. The VHP has many
branches in the UK and openly raises funds in many Hindu
temples and shops for its anti-Muslim campaign in India.
2.)How can an extremist organisation be defined? Is an
extremist organisation one that breaks the law or merely
one whose views and rhetoric the BBC may find
distasteful, but it acts within the law?
Mr Owen Bentley of BBC Asian Network responded to Mr
Bunglawala. He said that the reason a similar question
was not asked about extremist groups from other faith
communities was "because the poll was commissioned
in a particular news environment. At a time of rising
tension over Iraq and the Bali bombing and in the long
shadow of 9/11 the news focus was on Muslim
groups".The deception and duplicity of the BBC via
Mr Bentley is too obvious to be ignored. As Mr Bunglawala
rightly puts: What have the Muslims and the Muslim groups
in the UK got to do with the Bali bombing?
The BBC has no answers to these questions. One might ask
the BBC: If news environment is what necessitates a
survey, can there be, journalistically speaking, a more
ideal news environment than the one created by Ariel
Sharon since he took over?
In the past two years, Israel has killed more than 2000
Palestinians, ranging from infants to the elderly of both
sexes. By average, each day, for the past two years,
roughly 3 Palestinians have been killed by the Israelis.
And yet that has not created a news environment in which
the BBC could ask whether or not the UK should close down
Israeli embassy in London. Will the BBC conduct a survey
of the London-based diplomats on whether or not regarding
George Bush as a possible psychiatric case for repeatedly
calling Sharon, a war criminal and pathological killer, a
"man of peace"?
The pro-West dictatorship in Algeria has been
assassinating its opponents, and the West-friendly Saudi
fiefdom has been treating non-Wahabi Muslims like vermin.
And yet no "particular news environment" has
been created! Why not ask the Christian Brits whether or
not Roman Catholicism be outlawed given the active
involvement of the white Belgian Catholic clergy in the
multiple Rwanda-Burundi massacres that have cost more
than half a million lives? Why not ask the white Brits
about whether or not to break off with the United States
diplomatically which has been the main source of the IRA
funding.
The "rising tension" over Iraq is a
"particular" news environment, though the war
has not taken place so far. What about the war in
Chechnya in which Russia has been carrying out massacre
after massacre? Besides, is it journalistically, or
otherwise, honest to ask Hindus and other non-Muslim
British of Asian origins regarding "extremist"
Muslim groups?
Will the BBC ask the British nationals of Palestinian
origin regarding whether or not the supporters of the
Likud Party be outlawed? How about asking the British
Arabs on whether or not Ariel Sharon be tried as a war
criminal in the Hague. How will the Likud supporters
react to these questions, and what answer will the BBC
give them?
(Abbas Zaidi writes for
The Nation, Lahore. His writings have appeared,
amongst others, in Exquisite Corpse, The
Salisbury Review, and Southern Oceanic Review.)
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