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Dispatches 'Undercover Mosque' debate
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DATELINE: 12/11/07
The Dispatches documentary 'Undercover Mosque' , broadcast on Channel 4 in January, featured footage appearing to show British Imams advocating violence. The West Midlands police investigated the programme's allegations - and asked the Crown Prosecution Service to prosecute. The CPS decided there was insufficient evidence and a complaint about the programme has been made to Ofcom by the police. CPBF writers take up the story
This is serious 'Undercover Mosque' raises important questions for broadcasters, writes Patricia Holland.
"Allah created women deficient" declared an Imam to an all male congregation of worshippers. "From the age of ten she must wear a hijab. If she doesn't wear a hijab we hit her." In this age of international media, miniature cameras and instantaneous communication, we viewers of UK television are familiar with the sight of shrouded women being beaten by men with sticks because of some offence against "morality". The particular images I have in mind come from a BBC video diary series called Langan Behind the Lines. Journalist Sean Langan filmed secretly in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan in the innocent days of spring 2001, before the attack on the twin towers initiated the "War on Terror". The style of Langan's reporting was much decried by an older generation of current affairs producers, but television modes were changing rapidly.
Even programmes with this sort of serious content did not have to be presented with solemnity, and new ways of reaching a wider audience were welcomed by many viewers, not just schedulers. Six years later the situation has hardened. The rhetorical battle between the Bushite promotion of "freedom" and "Western values", which went along with the attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, and the language of radical Islam has intensified. "Undercover Mosque" was a programme about that fundamentalist rhetoric. Using Langan-like undercover techniques it recorded the inflammatory preachings of several radical Imams, and revealed their links with Saudi Arabian Wahhabist teachers. This was hate speech with a vengeance. As well as promoting the beating of unfortunate young girls, the worshippers were encouraged to "take the homosexual man and throw him off the mountain" and to promote a total Islamic state in which unbelievers could be killed. Muslim children should not be allowed to go to non-Islamic schools and 'Muslims and non-Muslims cannot co-exist'.
All of those filmed, when asked to comment for the programme, stated that they respected the laws of the UK, promoted peaceful relations with the multi-faith community and claimed that their words had been taken out of context. These responses are included in the programme. But so is the context. The speeches of several of those featured in the programme are available as DVDs from bookshops and bookstalls associated with the mosques.
Extracts from these DVDs, and from fundamentalist websites were, if anything, more inflammatory than the speeches filmed undercover. The inflammatory rhetoric is internationalised, consistent and widely available.
So was Dispatches, one of the most respected current affairs series, chasing audiences by over-dramatising the programme, using an undercover reporter when it was not strictly necessary and editing together the most shocking statements to create an impression of fake dramatics?
Most importantly, should the series have refrained from making these criticisms, on the grounds that they may increase Islamophobia? These have been the grounds of a public debate, conducted against the background of an internationalised media; a fear of terrorism which is local as well as global; escalating domestic security and surveillance which disproportionately targets people who look as if they may be muslim; extensive and detailed reporting of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan on both the UK and Arab media.
Above all there is the extraordinary way in which religion has reasserted itself in the politics of the early 21st century. As the activities of the West Midlands Police have shown, investigating both those features in the programme, and Channel Four itself for incitement to racial hatred, this debate is about more than a television programme. But even - or perhaps especially - against this background, it would be a great pity if series like Dispatches were deterred from exposing misogyny and bigotry wherever it is found, especially when it is preached by men in positions of prestige and influence.
Put it into context 'Undercover Mosque' was dangerously Islamophobic, argues David Crouch
The run-up to the invasion of Iraq was a dark time for British journalism, which was browbeaten and bamboozled into taking seriously the Government's case for war. In years to come, journalists will look back with the same sense of unease on our role in maintaining another, related, lie - the notion that the "War on Terror" is precisely that, a War on Terror, without the quotation marks. The War on Terror holds that we are fighting terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan. These terrorists are Muslims. It is their religion that motivates them; it is the root cause of their violence. The terrorists aren't just terrorists, they are Islamic terrorists. Moreover, Muslims in the west are overwhelmingly recent immigrants and are almost exclusively dark-skinned. Criticism of Islam segues effortlessly with prejudice against black immigrants. "Niggers out" no longer wins many votes, but Muslim-bashing presses the same political buttons. Islam is a twice-convenient scapegoat for resistance. Any discussion of Islam today is therefore a discussion about war and about racism.
When the BBC's Gavin Hewitt rode into Baghdad with the US army, he witnessed this at first hand: "The Iraqis were either 'hajis' or 'rag-heads'. I heard the captain talking to a young soldier. 'Don't look at them as humans,' he said, 'look at them as vermin'." Yet most senior journalists live lives far removed from these realities. They unleash their faux-liberal tirades against Islam in complete isolation from the context of the "War on Terror". Therefore I am pessimistic that many editors or op-ed writers will find their consciences pricked by the fact that West Midlands police and the Crown Prosecution Service have rumbled Channel 4's documentary. "The splicing together of extracts from longer speeches appears to have completely distorted what the speakers were saying," the CPP wrote in its complaint to Ofcom. Yet the response in the media pages has been mainly snobbish ridicule - Plod knows nothing about our precious art, he should keep his nose out of our business.
I have no faith in the police or Ofcom to punish the injustice of "Undercover Mosque". But I enjoy intensely the irony that a police investigation, backed by the BNP, into Muslim incitement to hatred should have boomeranged on Channel 4.
The warning signs were there early on. The day after "Undercover Mosque" was broadcast, the judge at the trial of the July 21 bomb plotters told the jury they should "ignore it completely" because: "It's a very good example of why you should close your mind completely to the media." A few days later the Press Gazette's Zoe Smith noted how it had "the feel of a cheap Fox News report" and was "patronising in the extreme" towards women. In a brilliant put-down, she wrote: "Some Christians hate gays and some Jews hate Arabs, but broadcasters don't feel the need to make hour-long programmes insinuating that entire religions are to be mistrusted." This is the nub of Islamophobia.
"Undercover Mosque" used crude dramatic techniques to construct an even cruder message that, however "moderate" Muslims claim to be, the extremists are pulling the strings: "Our investigation has uncovered religious bigotry and intolerance spreading from the Saudi religious establishment through major, mainstream British organisations."
Of course it uncovered nothing of the sort. It pointed a camera at some people of whom it clearly had very little understanding, and extrapolated from some carefully chosen phrases which it clearly understood even less to draw irresponsible and scaremongering conclusions about black immigrants on whose co-religionists our state is waging a very bloody war. When journalists at the Daily Star a year ago refused to publish a page of inflammatory filth about Muslims, they struck a powerful blow against Islamophobia. Channel 4 should study their example.
What's wrong with exposing bigotry? 'Undercover Mosque' was a perfectly legitimate exposé, says Tim Gopsill.
Let's say a handful of Hindu "fundamentalists" in India were caught on camera raging against Muslims, calling on followers to burn down their mosques and slaughter them in the street - which has happened of course. It might be protested that these BJP bigots were not representative of Hindus as a whole. But it's hard to believe that many people would accuse a TV programme in which such remarks were broadcast of smearing the whole Hindu community, in effect, of racism; indeed, there must be a suspicion that some of those who have condemned "Undercover Mosque" would applaud and commend it for a BAFTA. What's the difference?
It seems to be that since all Muslims are supposedly being made to bear the blame for terrorism, any exposure of the obnoxious opinions on democracy, on Jews, Christians, women, gays or whoever held by some jihadi preachers is a smear on every Muslim in Britain. There is no difference of principle between this argument and the Zionist claim that any criticism of Israel is a smear on all Jews. It will be said - I have heard it - that Jews in Britain are white, prosperous and fairly influential, while Muslims are generally dark-skinned, poor and marginalised. This may be a coherent political distinction but it is not a justification for blocking journalistic enquiry into tendencies within Islam.
Perhaps the Express and the Star, and sometimes the Mail and the Sun, like to demonise Muslims. But to accuse all the media of perpetual Islamophobia is ridiculous - a smear in itself - and especially "Undercover Mosque", which was quite an informative programme. If the stream of bigotry on offer was quoted "out of context", it would be instructive to know the context in which phrases like "all Jews are pigs" are not objectionable, or worth reporting.
The programme was edited. All programmes are edited, to select the most telling evidence for the story. It would be a curious programme that was not. What matters is that there is a degree of balance - and there was. The Islamic organisations concerned had the chance to put their case. The critical commentary was not by security "experts" or politicians, but by other Muslims, who seemed to be trying to tell us something. Earlier this year the press got excited about Brick Lane in east London, where Islamic "community leaders" were agitating against the filming of Monica Ali's novel. (Germaine Greer jumped on board, which should have been a clue.)
The film company took fright and moved the filming elsewhere, but, as Monica Ali herself has written, it was a stunt: a small number of self-appointed reactionaries were milking the story, organising protest rallies attended by more journalists than Bengalis. The wacky hook-waving antics of Abu Hamza in Finsbury Park were a gift to the press - which encouraged them, to say the least. But these were instances of publicity-seekers acting up for the cameras, while those in "Undercover Mosque" were the real thing. They were preaching, for God's sake. And I'd have thought that journalists who do want to resist the hype of the "War on Terror" ought to be exposing the corrosive influence of Saudi Arabia on British politics, security policy, trade - and religion.
Wahhabi Islam is a fascistic tendency; what can be wrong with exposing bigotry? At any rate, the ball is now in the Ofcom "court". The regulator is expected to rule on the complaint that originated with West Midlands police some time in November. It seems improbable that Ofcom will find against it, but if it does, I would hope the CPBF could defend the programme-makers.
Last modified: Monday, November 12, 2007
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Channel Four Dispatches - 'Undercover Mosque'
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