THE NEIL REPORT
STATEMENT BY THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS
For the BBC impartiality is a legal requirement.
BBC journalists will report the facts first, understand and explain their context, provide professional judgements where appropriate, but never promote their own personal opinions.
We will make our journalistic judgments for sound editorial reasons, not as the result of improper political or commercial pressure, or personal prejudice.
“At the moment every newspaper is desperately seeking an Islam expert, who then becomes the mouthpiece for the entire set of issues and is always asked to proclaim the ‘official’ opinions from the lectern.” Hilal Sezgin.
The BBC itself seeks out those Muslims it thinks will be best suited to provide an image of Islam that non-Muslims will charmed by and gulled into a complacent acceptance of an ever increasing Muslim influence upon their lives….and see it as beneficial or at least not harmful to them.
I have already mentioned the first episode of the BBC’s ‘One to One’ programme in which the BBC gives us an entirely one sided view of Islam…presented by a Muslim and only talking to Muslims.
It is outright propaganda designed to assuage your doubts and fears about Islam….to persuade you that it is essentially harmless. However a close look at the programmes and the Muslims who are interviewed and their beliefs should raise more questions about Islam and its increasing influence than it answers. The presenter, Razia Iqbal, as seen before, doesn’t seem too friendly towards Western culture.
In the second programme she talks to Hilal Sezgin, whom Iqbal calls ‘Turkish’ rather than German in the interview……
Razia Iqbal talks to Hilal Sezgin
Razia Iqbal explores what it means to be a Muslim in modern Europe. Here she talks to the German writer and journalist, Hilal Sezgin, at her small farm just outside Hamburg.
It’s a fascinating interview….enlightening but paradoxically sabotages the BBC narrative about Islam…because, despite Sezgin calling herself a Muslim, and Iqbal obviously going along with that, Sezgin is not Muslim.
That’s a bit of a bombshell (a surprise to her too no doubt) of which more later.
First let’s hear what she has to say about Islamophobia….
Firstly she claims integration is not a one way street, the majority culture has to compromise as well….really? Isn’t it more often that Muslims come here and demand we change our lives to suit them…but refuse to compromise theirs at all?
She claims that no one cares about non-Muslims being homophobic or people not being feminists or being creationists, but are solely critical of Muslims who are homophobic, or anti-feminist or who believe in Creationism.
So the Church of England isn’t under enormous pressure about gay marriage, or everyone loves Germaine Greer , or Richard Dawkins doesn’t constantly assault belief in creationism from all walks of life?
She claims the ‘infamous’ Thilo Sarrazin and the majority in Europe who support his views are Islamophobic and therefore prejudiced and racist….Islamophobia is everywhere, spreading throughout Europe as shown in every day violence, racism and now in politics.
Though in the village she lives in she has never faced any prejudice.
Ironically perhaps, it turns out that ‘Muslim’ Sezgin is the only ‘islamophobe’ in the village.
But still she insists that anyone who criticises Islam is prejudiced and racist.
OK, say we go along with that premise…what does that make Hilal Sezgin?
As I stated earlier, Sezgin cannot be considered a Muslim, why? Listen to what she said…but first know that the Koran is the inviolate word of God, unchangeable and final. The Koran cannot be changed or ‘re-interpreted’…therefore Islam cannot be reformed….there is only one Islam….no polytheistic worship and no sects.
In the interview Sezgin tells us that she has her ‘own version of Islam’….Liberal, unorthodox and progressive.
So she has invented her own ‘Islam’ then…..so breaking two cardinal rules of Islam…do not change the Koran and do not form a sect…she’s a ‘Splitter’.
Who am I to judge though….what do her fellow ‘orthodox’ Muslims think? Not much apparently….‘Suddenly‘ she tells us, ‘she didn’t want to be part of the German Muslim community because they rejected her and pushed her out for her views on Islam.’
The very fact that she has felt the need to produce her own version of Islam tells you immediately that she believes that something is wrong with Islam….she has become a critic of Islam…so is she herself now one of the Islamophobes, a prejudiced racist?
Just how critical is she? Quite it seems…not only has she got her own version of Islam but she has rewritten the Koran, that Unchangeable Word of God……
‘Together with the Egyptian reform theologian Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid, she recently presented in the book “Mohammed und die Zeichen Gottes” (“Mohammed and the Signs of God”) a modern interpretation of the Koran.’
That is not all…she is a member of ‘The Liberal Islamic Federation’ …The movements include among other things a new interpretation of the Koran and the exegesis of the Qur’an, criticism of traditional beliefs and partly a rejection of Hadith .
The ‘Hadith’? What might that be? Only the Prophet Muhammad’s own interpretation of the Koran….and therefore taken as the one true interpretation…as he would know if anyone did, wouldn’t he? As he made it all up.
So she rejects Muhammad’s Islam. But she’s not Islamophobic?
Ironically she supports, entirely unintentionally, the ‘Islamophobes’ arguments….that Islam needs to be changed…..it can’t be of course…which creates a problem…one which the BBC absolutely refuses to discuss or allow onto the air.
Even Sezgin agrees that a deeper knowledge of Islam is needed……
‘Sezgin laments the lack of alternate viewpoints in this media discourse, which sometimes fails to demonstrate the most basic background knowledge or any inkling of farsightedness.
Whether due to ignorance, blanket judgments or the wrong choice of imagery – a one-sided picture of Islam has dominated the media ever since 9/11. And journalist Hilal Sezgin thinks that competent colleagues and commentators are in short supply in this field.
“The 11th of September inevitably prompted people to ask themselves: for god’s sake, what kind of religion is this that I belong to? Is there something about Islam I’ve totally misunderstood?”, Sezgin wondered after the horrific terrorist attack.’
Of course she thinks she is saying Islam has been misreported and it is lack of education that makes people ‘Islamophobic’……I would suggest the opposite…it is the lack of insight into the true nature of Islam that allows the Great and the Good of the Establishment to continue to bury their heads in the sand about the dangers of Islam to Western, secular, democracies and chatter on about it being the ‘religion of peace’.
Remember how often the BBC regales us with tales of the glories of the Islamic Golden Age of Science…what does Sezgin and crew think?:
‘Liberal Muslims tend to skepticism about the possibilities of the Islamisation of modern knowledge (for example, with regard to Islamic finance , Islamic philosophy and Islamic science in general).
Liberal Muslims consider attempts to establish Islamic forms of science as a political move often conservative Muslims.’
So the BBC’s position is essentially a political one to raise the profile of Islam.
Sezgin is by any definition not a Muslim…it is disingenuous of the BBC to present her as a stereotypical Muslim, one whom we should all look to as an example of the true character of the Muslim community growing around us.
That’s not to knock her views…in fact they are exactly what is required…however as said….her views mean she is not a Muslim….and so cannot be at all representative of Islam or Muslims.
You may also want to look at Hanif Qadir from the first programme in more detail…here is a previous post on him.
Now you can believe or not what he has to say about his decision not to fight in Afghanistan…however…2002, when he was there…the fighting was basically over, the Taliban were on the retreat to Pakistan…relatively few Americans were in Afghanistan….mostly Special Forces…the fighting was done by Northern Alliance Afghans….also note how Qadir continually attacks the West and America…claiming the US was just bombing Afghanistan back to the stone age….and seeing US troops standing over the bodies of women and children in an arrogant manner.
He suggests that it is right that Muslims feel anger, frustration and marginalization….but wrong that they become radicalised…..he admits Muslims say one thing to the media… ‘Islam is the religion of peace’…but say completely different things at home.
Personally I never trust these ‘reformed’ jihadists…..they may have decided not to use an AK47 or RPG but still ‘evangelise’ for the religion and seek to increase its influence and growth.
As an FBI agent said in “Muslim Mafia” …. ‘CAIR and the other Muslim Brotherhood front groups differ from al-Qaida in that, while all share the same goals, they use different methods to achieve them.
“The only difference between the guys in the suits and the guys with the AK-47s is timing and tactics,” the official explained.’
Gerry Adams gave up the bullet for the ballot….but note that he said The Struggle will continue…he remained committed to the same cause that he spent years terrorizing NI for but now seeks to accomplish it by democratic means.
In many ways that is the more dangerous and successful method…because most people do not see the danger creeping up on them until it is too late.
Hitler of course was also elected…and supported by the Great and the Good.
