B(athetic) - B(iased) - C(rooked)
by Abbas Zaidi
From 5 to 15 October
last month 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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