Different people have different views of R&S. I suspect a lot of the posts to which you refer are sent by bored lonely people who are too nasty to have real friends in real life. Your views (and I suspect mine) are strong enough that no matter what is said about them we retain our faith. If you are a Christian you should expect nothing less from a world which murders and has murdered Christians since the murder of Him. Peter, crucified upside down, the saints burned alive, tortured by the religion of the day - note the communist States are also guilty of murdering millions of believers such as in Russia and France after the Revolution (yes it was communism) the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the cleansing of the intellectuals in Cambodia where half the population was murdered by the evil spirit let loose there. If you are surprised by the venom directed to those who claim Christ as the only way of Salvation then you must be rather naive. Christians are persecuted across the world and no more so in Britain where any minority culture is okay but Christianity is either mocked by such programs as Father ted and the Vicar of Dibley or attacked by the bien pensants of the intellectual media. I just watched a CSI program in which one of the cast discussed his faith in God. I cannot imagine that happening in Britain where preachers are regularly hassled by the authorities. Just this morning there is another example of the State taking an attitude towards other religions where if the actions had been carried out by Christians the Christians would be in jail.
I think my point is made.
Daily telegraph
Stirring up racial hatred - not the medium
By Charles Moore
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 11/08/2007
Have your say Read comments
There are lots of stories running at the moment about how television
makes things up to suit its purposes. It was into this pattern that
prominent press reports on Thursday appeared to fit. The reports said
that the Crown Prosecution Service and the West Midlands police had
decided that a programme called Undercover Mosque, made for Dispatches
on Channel 4, had "completely distorted" the remarks of Muslim preachers
featured in the programme. The CPS and the police announced that they
were making a complaint about the programme to the television regulator,
Ofcom.
Few seemed to notice what a strange story this was. Why is it the
business of the CPS or the police to make complaints, which are nothing
to do with the law, about what appears on television? Aren't they
supposed to be fighting crime, not acting as television critics?
When you poke around a bit, the story becomes a little clearer, but no
less strange.
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After the programme appeared earlier this year, many people who watched
it were horrified by the extremism it depicted. It was, indeed,
horrifying. The programme, all of whose material was collected,
sometimes covertly, from British mosques, mainly in Birmingham, showed
film, DVDs and internet messages from Islamist sermons and speeches. One
preacher speaks of a British Muslim soldier killed by the Taliban in
Afghanistan and says: "The hero is the one who separated his head from
his shoulders." Another says that all Jews will be killed at the end of
time, and makes a snorting noise as if imitating a pig.
One pronounces that woman is "deficient" and that homosexual men should
be "thrown off the mountain", another that children should offer
themselves for Islamic martyrdom, a third that Aids was deliberately
spread in Africa by Christian missionaries who slipped it into
inoculations.
As a result of all this, people, including, I believe, local MPs, asked
the police to investigate the preachers to see if prosecutions for
crimes of racial hatred could be brought against them. C4 itself did not
ask for these investigations, but co-operated with police inquiries.
But then, on Wednesday, without any warning to Channel 4, the CPS and
the West Midlands police issued their fatwa. Not only had they
investigated, and decided, as they were entitled to do, that there were
no charges to bring against people featured in the programme: they also
announced that they had investigated the programme itself for stirring
up racial hatred.
Again, they had decided not to press charges. But, said West Midlands
police smugly, they had pursued the making of the programme "with as
much rigour as the extremism portrayed within the documentary itself".
They had concluded that comments had been "broadcast out of context" and
so they and the CPS had complained to Ofcom.
They did not acknowledge, by the way, that at several points in the
programme, the organisations and individuals concerned are given a right
of reply, or that several moderate Muslim experts explain on air why
they think the remarks shown are extreme. Do the West Midlands police
side with Islamists against moderates?
These new, self-appointed guardians of televisual editing techniques
have not detailed their accusations, so C4 cannot respond. None of us
can yet judge fully. But the preachers shown in the programme have not
claimed that they did not say the words attributed to them. That would
be difficult, since you can see and hear them speaking them. They
complain about the "context".
It is certainly true that context matters, and that the language of
religion uses terms in different ways from the language of common
speech. If, for example, you attended your first ever Christian
communion service and knew nothing about the religion, you might be
frightened by the bit when the priest holds up the wine and says "The
blood of Christ". You would be very foolish not to ask what this meant
before you rushed out to condemn it.
But there are many things quoted in the Dispatches programme which have
a plain meaning. Take the remark that Osama bin Laden is "better than a
million George Bushes … because he is a Muslim", or that "we hate the
kufaar [unbeliever]", or the one about beheading the British soldier.
One sheikh teaches, in reference to young girls, that "if she doesn't
wear the hijab, we hit her".
No doubt some wider context would deepen our precise understanding of
these words, but they are pretty damn clear, and pretty damn nasty. Do
you remember when the alleged killers of Stephen Lawrence were exposed
in undercover film making horrible jokes about racist violence? I don't
recall the police complaining to Ofcom about the lack of context there.
Let us, however, take the context point seriously. The context is,
according to many of the preachers, that they are talking not about
Britain now, but about the Islamic state that they seek. They are not,
therefore, they say, urging the breaking of existing laws.
This appears not to be true of some on the programme - for example, the
ranter who urges rejection of "the way of freedom …the way of
democracy". But even if we accept that it is true, is it reassuring? The
Islamic state envisaged by most of those featured is not an ideal,
imaginary kingdom of heaven where the lion shall lie down with the lamb.
It is, as one of the speakers explains, a concept for the here and now,
a concept of "political dominance".
According to Sayyid Mawdudi, one of the ideological fathers of all this
stuff, Islam is an "international revolutionary party". There are
branches of this ideology in many countries, of which Hamas is the best
known. They hold that all states - including Muslim ones - which do not
implement Sharia law are illegitimate.
On the programme, Sheikh Hasan, from "a major mosque in east London",
explains how this Islamic state would operate. There would be "the
chopping off the hands of the thieves", "flogging of the drunkards",
"jihad against the non-Muslims". Another speaker, trained in Riyadh and
operating from Derby, rejects the existing order - "King, Queen, House
of Commons … you have to dismantle it" and rejoices in the day when,
in Britain, "every woman will be covered". A fellow in the Green Lane
mosque in Birmingham explains the punishment coming to the apostate when
right rule is established: "Kill him in the Islamic state." Crucifixion
will be an approved method of death, he adds.
Similarly, the line about killing all the Jews at the end of the world
is not invented by the preacher who says it, though the smirk and the
noise of the pig are all his own. The words come from one of the hadith,
the traditionally accepted records of Mohammed additional to the Koran:
"Allah's apostle said, 'The Hour will not be established until you fight
with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say,
'Oh Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him'.'"
Does that context make you feel better?
I do not know whether the Dispatches programme is right in every detail.
But it clearly raises serious, important questions - about extremists in
our midst, about the way apparently moderate organisations give them
shelter, about the Saudi Arabian network that supports them.
What security agencies call "thematic analyses" show that, at present,
the problems of Islamist extremism are particularly acute, especially in
prisons and universities, in the West Midlands area.
Yet the West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service decide
that the target of their wrath should be not people who want to
undermine this country, but some journalists who want to expose them.
Are they fit to protect us?
see what I mean?