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| August 22, 2005 | Monday | Rajab 16, 1426 |
UK Muslims slam BBC ‘witch-hunt’ programme
LONDON, Aug 21: Britain’s largest Islamist organisation has accused the BBC of conducting a ‘witch-hunt’ against Muslims in a documentary to be broadcast on Sunday, which questions the group’s determination to tackle extremism.
The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) said the flagship ‘Panorama’ programme made unfair claims that the organization was not committed to a pledge to root out fanatics in its community in the wake of the July 7 bomb attacks in London.
The BBC said the ‘Panorama’ investigation by journalist John Ware had found that several prominent Muslims, including Mehboob Kantharia, a founding member of the MCB, believed the group was in ‘a state of denial’ about the challenge.
“We show ... even within some of the mainstream, there exists sectarianism, anti-Semitism and a powerful conviction that Christians and Jews are conspiring to undermine Islam,” the BBC said.
“Some MCB affiliates also promote the belief that Islam is a superior ideology to secular Britain.”
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary-general of the MCB, accused the programme of being deliberately misleading.
“We believe John Ware’s team has made a deeply unfair programme, using deliberately garbled quotes in an attempt to malign the MCB,” he said in a statement.
“It is unfortunate that just when Britain’s 1.6 million Muslims are beginning to make progress in terms of their political participation in the mainstream, there are those who are purposefully trying to sabotage that process.”
The MCB said Kantharia had informed them that his remarks had been taken out of context and did not refer to the group.
The BBC documentary comes a week after the Observer newspaper reported that the MCB’s leadership and some of its 400 affiliates had links with ‘extremist politics in Pakistan’.
Sacranie called the claims ‘absolutely preposterous’.—Reuters
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