BBC's Andrew Neil Disgusts British Muslims and All Others Who Value Good Journalism

On 5 March 2014, the Research Director from the well-known human rights and advocacy group, CAGE appeared on BBC’s ‘This Week’ programme (the Show) hosted by the controversial Andrew Neil with resident commentators and former MPs, Alan Johnson and Michael Portillo. The show turned out to be another regrettable episode highlighting what is becoming a common feature of the mob mentality on the show attacking their guests like a pack of wild wolves when they happen to be Muslim as seen earlier this year with the journalist, Nabila Ramdani and now with Asim Qureshi.

The discussion was meant to be about the connection between the ill-conceived War on Terror, the security apparatus and the radicalisation of Muslims. Instead, when Mr Neil was unable to debate Mr Qureshi’s convincing arguments, he sought to open up irrelevant topics using straw man tactics. One such irrelevant point he sought to open up was on the much respected Scholar of Islam, Dr Haitham al-Haddad, where he lied, fabricated and wholly misrepresented Dr Haddad’s views where he said the following:

“he (Dr Haddad) believes in the following: FGM is not only acceptable, it is obligatory; you should not question a man’s right to hit his wife; that non-Muslim prisoners should be taken as slaves; Jews are descendants from pigs; death by stoning is of for adultery and homosexuality is a crime against humanity”

When ignorant men such as Mr Neil make fabricated comments as those above, we often ask ourselves, where they are obtaining this incorrect information from and whether there are serious competence issues with the research department of organisations such as the BBC. Enter Maryam Namazie from the hate extremist group, ‘Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain’ (CEMB). On Wednesday, 4 March 2015, the show’s ‘BBC This Week’ twitter account tweeted about the show making it clear that Mr Qureshi was due to be on the Show. Seeing this, the much maligned and discredited CEMB began tweeting a number messages the following day to the Show’s twitter account feeding them with hate filled misinformation about Mr Qureshi and CAGE (see picture inset). In response to these messages, Mr Neil tweeted a message to CEMB saying: “Feel free to send more of the same”. Of course, CEMB continued to send more information. In one of these messages, they say: “(Mr Qureshi) works closely with preachers – pay particular attention to Haddad on pg 33 of this report and his views (with link provided)”.

Surprise, surprise, at page 33 of the report provided, every comment Mr Neil made concerning Dr Haddad’s alleged views were referenced therein, verbatim!

This is the shocking state of journalism we are seeing today when it comes to reporting on the Muslim community, no verification of information is needed, any drivel will do. What compounds this further is the taking of information from a group who have are well-known for their hatred for Islam and Muslims. It’s akin to David Cameron to provide a character reference on Ed Miliband in for his election campaign – i.e. you cannot expect to be provided with any objective opinion. In this instance, the CEMB is headed by the Islamophobe, Maryam Namzie. Namazie has made a number of discriminatory and hate filled comment about Muslims and Islam such as:

“if Islamism is not Islam, well then people who’re telling me that Islam is something else should in fact tell the Islamists”.

Her writings use the terms interchangeably, criticising any defence of any part of Islam and her deeply held emotional state of utter hatred for Islam as a religion is no more being sidestepped but being openly declared. An educated mind can engage in a critical analysis of the parts of Islam it does not find agreeable but if a complete irrational broad brush of the religion of nearly 2 billion people as being evil and deserving of abolition is not considered phobic then nothing ever will.

She believes that “religion should come with a health warning like cigarettes: “religion kills’” however, Islam is singled out as being even more perverse. According to her, Islam and Shariah are an, “insult to humanity” and Islam needs to be “forced into running soup kitchens”. She further states that,

“there is a distinction to be made between religions in general and Islam in particular, but for no other reasons than that it is the ideology behind a far-Right regressive political movement…”


Conversely, she is lauded by the far-right, terrorist-inspiring Robert Spencer who is banned from the UK.

The credibility of the BBC and Andrew Neil, who’s racist and Islamophobic history, (which will soon be released on here), has sunk to new depths. It’s time to rip your TV licence and stop funding this circus.

In the meantime, further information on Namazie and CEMB can be found here and here.

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Email: yahyasnow@yahoo.co.uk