'PANDERING TO ISLAMAPHOBIA': ISLAM AND THE CREEPING SHADOW OF CENSORSHIP

If you want an example of the subtle censorship currently operating in the UK when it comes to issues related to Islam, today the BBC offered up a text book example. A man currently placed under government restrictions, the rather sinister and Orwellian terrorism prevention and investigation measures (TPim) notice,[1] escaped by donning a burqa. On BBC news this morning he was reported to have escaped wearing ‘women’s clothes.’ If I said that one of my male friends had taken to dressing up as a woman you would not, I imagine, picture him donning a burqa. A burqa only constituting women’s clothes in medieval theocracies like Saudi Arabia; in western countries burqa's are still, thankfully, comparatively rare.

This mischievous misinformation was undoubtedly adopted for fear that referencing the use of the burqa might ‘pander to Islamaphobia.’ The burqa being controversial the BBC sought to alter the facts. Of course it was stupid and the BBC could not possibly hope to maintain this fiction, and indeed as the day has gone on the truth has come out and the BBC line has had to reflect te truth.[2]

This little example of censorship is of course hardly shattering and I suppose that many people will think it does not really matter. I think it does; for the simple reason that censorship, playing around with the truth within any news agency is always corrosive. Just where this kind of thinking leads is best described in an extremely concerning  article in Standpoint http://standpointmag.co.uk/features-online-only-nahla-mahmoud-anne-marie-walters-the-price-paid-for-criticising-islam-fourthought

It requires no further comment from me, I merely signpost it.


[1] These restrictions replaced the even more sinister and Orwellian Labour ‘Control-Orders.’
[2] Respecting the burqa , I suppose I need to do some throat clearing, I loath it and all the ignorance, misogyny and medieval nonsense that it stands for but I am a committed libertarian and would not ban it, excepting those instances were it is essential to see someone’s face.


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