There was a brilliant bit of investigative reporting on Channel 4 a couple of weeks ago, Dispatches - Undercover Mosque.
The truly astonishing thing is the lack of reaction there has been since the broadcast. It is sensational material - I cannot recommend a viewing highly enough - and yet, nothing in the papers, nothing in the news, no comments from MP's. Nowt.
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You Tube - Undercover Mosque
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Documentary Exposes Radical Muslim Rhetoric
Interview with Daniel Pipes
Fox News: Hannity & Colmes
February 1, 2007
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Dispatches - Undercover Mosque
Channel 4
Broadcast: Monday 15 January
A Dispatches reporter attends mosques run by organisations whose public faces are presented as moderate and finds preachers condemning integration into British society, condemning democracy and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers.
Prime Minister Tony Blair recently described tolerance as 'what makes Britain Britain' but in this extensive investigation Dispatches reveals how a message of hatred and segregation is being spread throughout the UK and examines how it is influenced by the religious establishment of Saudi Arabia.
Dispatches has investigated a number of mosques run by high profile national organisations that claim to be dedicated to moderation and dialogue with other faiths. But an undercover reporter joined worshippers to find a message of religious bigotry and extremism being preached.
He captures chilling sermons in which Saudi-trained preachers proclaim the supremacy of Islam, preach hatred for non-Muslims and for Muslims who do not follow their extreme beliefs - and predict a coming jihad. "An army of Muslims will arise," announces one preacher. Another preacher said British Muslims must "dismantle" British democracy - they must "live like a state within a state" until they are "strong enough to take over."
The investigation reveals Saudi Arabian universities are recruiting young Western Muslims to train them in their extreme theology, then sending them back to the West to spread the word. And the Dispatches reporter discovers that British Muslims can ask for fatwas, religious rulings, direct from the top religious leader in Saudi Arabia, the Grand Mufti.
Saudi-trained preachers are also promoted in DVDs and books on sale at religious centres and sermons broadcast on websites. These publications and webcasts disseminate beliefs about women such as: "Allah has created the woman deficient, her intellect is incomplete", and girls: "By the age of 10 if she doesn't wear hijab, we hit her," and there's an extreme hostility towards homosexuals.
The investigation reveals that the influence of Saudi Arabian Islam, Wahabism, extends beyond the walls of some mosques to influential organisations that advise the British government on inter-community relations and prevention of terrorism.
The Dispatches reporter attends talks at mosques run by key organisations whose public faces are presented as moderate and mainstream - and finds preachers condemning the idea of integration into British society, condemning British democracy as un-Islamic and praising the Taliban for killing British soldiers.
Undercover Mosque features interviews with moderate British Muslim figures who are speaking out against the influence of Saudi Arabia's extreme brand of Islam, which is seeking to overturn Islamic traditions of diversity and peaceful co-existence: "We are losing our children to extremists," says Haras Rafiq of the Sufi Muslim Council. Dr Al Alawi of the Islamic Heritage Foundation also warns: "If this continues, you will have extremist mosques in every corner of the UK. You will not have moderate Muslims walking on our streets anymore."
2 comments:
Bring on the prosecution. If the program makers have distorted, they deserve to have it exposed. I'm glad people are finally talking about this doc.
When did the police start collaring television?
Andrew Anthony
Observer Comment
Sunday August 12, 2007
Channel 4's controversial documentary Undercover Mosque was great investigative journalism. That the CPS thought it incited racial hatred beggars belief
Last week, the press, radio and TV news all focused, in the wake of the Queen's fake flounce and the fraudulent phoneline sagas, on yet another story of televisual deception. The culprit was said to be a Channel 4 Dispatches documentary, Undercover Mosque, which was broadcast in January.
The programme 'completely distorted' the meaning of the Islamic clerics and speakers featured in its investigation. This was the message repeated across the media. Both Sky News and the BBC referred to earlier TV scandals, implying that Dispatches was guilty of the kind of dubious practices now associated with unscrupulous game shows. It was no surprise that the allegation received such widespread attention because it was made by no lesser authorities than the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service.
In what appeared to be an unprecedented move, the two bodies issued a joint statement condemning Undercover Mosque and announcing that the West Midlands Police had referred the documentary to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom. Furthermore, the statement made clear that the police had asked the CPS to look at bringing a prosecution against the programme makers for stirring up racial hatred. Only a regrettable shortfall in evidence stood in the way of criminal charges.
Quite a story, then. The only problem is that the real story should have been about the alarmingly censorial and quite possibly libellous attack on investigative journalism. No matter, on Radio 4's PM programme, it was Dispatches' commissioning editor Kevin Sutcliffe who was subjected to a grilling, while Abu Usamah, one of the subjects of the documentary, was portrayed as a harmless victim. Usamah was 'totally appalled', he said, that Channel 4 had misrepresented his efforts to foster multicultural harmony.
Usamah was not asked to cite any examples of misrepresentation. Nor was he confronted with the recordings of his sermons broadcast in the documentary. Now that would have made for a compelling piece of radio. For here is Usamah spreading his message of inter-communal respect and understanding, as captured in Undercover Mosque: 'No one loves the kuffaar! Not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffaar. Whether those kuffaar are from the UK or from the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!'
'Kuffaar' is a derogatory term for non-Muslims. The police and CPS suggest that comments like these were taken 'out of context'. I've read extended transcripts of Usamah's quotes and I'm satisfied that they were perfectly 'in context'. But let's ask what conceivable context could make these quotes acceptable or reasonable? Was he rehearsing a stage play? Was it a workshop on conflict resolution? Or perhaps it was the same context in which a spokesman from those other righteous humanitarians, the BNP, might attempt to aid community relations by repeatedly stating that his followers 'hate Muslims'.
Yes, you can well imagine their excuses if they got caught at it: 'No, we don't really hate Muslims, we just want them to leave the country.' Except no one in the media swallows it, much less gives them air time.
But then, as CPS lawyer Bethan David observed, Undercover Mosque had been 'heavily edited'. She 'considered' 56 hours of footage and yet, instead of producing a two-day Warholian extravaganza of non-events and incidental conversation, Channel 4 deviously reduced it to a one-hour documentary.
For those of you who may have gained the impression that the CPS is suffering under a mountainous workload, it's reassuring to see that one of its lawyers has a spare two weeks to spend watching film out-takes and also time to branch out into TV criticism. As a novice to the game, she may not have realised that this is how documentaries work. You shoot a lot of footage and concentrate in the final edit on your core story.
In this case, it was the hatred being preached in the supposedly moderate Green Lane mosque in Birmingham. And there was no shortage of material, much of it available on DVDs sold openly at mosques around the country. Nevertheless, the producers of Undercover Mosque offered a right of reply to Usamah and the other preachers. All in all, it was an exemplary piece of investigative journalism. And as far as anyone knows, none of those featured in the film made official complaints.
So why have the police taken up their case? Here we have to look at how the West Midlands force first became involved. They initially gained a court order to review Channel 4's footage with the aim of prosecuting the Islamic clerics for incitement. Channel 4's concern was only to expose the extremist attitudes demonstrated by some supposedly moderate preachers. It never thought there was a criminal case.
And it was proven right. This left the police and CPS with an expensive and time-consuming operation and no prosecutions, much less convictions. It also left them with a number of angry local community leaders able to complain of discrimination and intimidation. It's worth remembering that the West Midlands police force is sufficiently sensitive to community relations that before one anti-terrorist operation, they first informed Dr Mohammed Naseem, who believes the 7/7 bombings may have been a British security services plot.
How then to regain the trust of the 'community'? In Bethan David's words: 'The CPS has demonstrated that it will not hesitate to prosecute those responsible for criminal incitement. But in this case, we have been dealing with a heavily edited television programme, apparently taking out of context aspects of speeches that in their totality could never provide a realistic prospect of any convictions.'
The suggestion seemed to be that if the programme could not produce material with 'a realistic prospect of any convictions', although that was never its purpose, then it should not have been broadcast. It's a zero-sum game. If the filmed can't be nicked, then it has to be the film-makers. The assistant chief constable (security and cohesion) of West Midlands, Anil Patani, also appears to have followed this line of thinking. In a letter to Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan, Patani wrote: 'It is clear that Undercover Mosque had an impact in the community and the cohesion within it.' And someone has to pay for that undefined impact. 'We hate the kuffaar' is not a statement best designed for community cohesion, but whose fault is that - Abu Usamah's for saying it or Channel 4's for recording him? Patani seems inclined to the latter view.
'The priority for the West Midland Police,' said Patani in the joint statement, 'has been to investigate the documentary and it's [sic] making with as much rigour as the extremism the programme sought to portray.' Such a richly illiterate sentence perfectly captures the police's pig-headed, irresponsible and sloppy handling of the whole affair. Since issuing the statement, both the CPS and police have refused to explain themselves or provide any evidence to support their allegations, apparently drawing their ideas on bureaucratic accountability from the works of Kafka.
Dispatches boasts an impressive history of tackling Islamic extremism. In Kill or Be Killed, it filmed Abu Hamza lecturing young Muslims on how to bring down a plane at Heathrow, when the rest of the media were still treating him as a caricature. And Trouble at the Mosque showed how young men armed with baseball bats took over Luton mosque. Dorothy Byrne, who commissioned these programmes, recently asked Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair why the police did nothing about these cases. Blair replied that the police had sent files to the CPS, but they decided to take no action. Perhaps they were too busy referring TV programmes to Ofcom.
Stirring up racial hatred - not the medium
By Charles Moore
Telegraph Comment
11/08/2007
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. 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?
Mosque Dispatches was fair and accurate
Saturday August 11, 2007
Guardian Letters
In response to Mohammed Shafiq (Letters, August 10): neither the West Midlands police nor the Crown Prosecution Service have produced any evidence whatsoever to support their extraordinary and damaging allegations of unfairness made against Dispatches: Undercover Mosque. I am very confident of successfully defending this charge against the programme should the police decide to provide Ofcom with any evidence.
The highly offensive comments made in the programme speak for themselves - the speakers concerned were clearly shown making abhorrent and extreme comments in mainstream Islamic institutions. Many of these speeches were made in DVDs and in internet broadcasts which Channel 4 had no involvement in producing and which our journalists found available in the community.
Undercover Mosque allowed these comments to be seen in their proper context. All the speakers featured in the film were offered the opportunity to respond and their response was reflected in the programme. None of them denied making these comments and none of the individual speakers have to date complained of unfair treatment to Ofcom.
Channel 4 was fully aware of the considerable sensitivities surrounding the subject matter of this; however, I believe there was clearly an important public interest in exposing the unpleasant and even offensive views that were being preached in the name of Islam in some British mosques. This view was shared by the moderate Muslims interviewed in the programme who were appalled by the footage.
Kevin Sutcliffe
Deputy head of news and current affairs, Channel 4, and editor of Dispatches
Our police & the CPS should be ashamed.
Dispatches: Undercover Mosque - wrong target
Telegraph Comment
15/05/2008
In January last year, an investigation by Channel 4's Dispatches programme claimed to have discovered "an ideology of bigotry and intolerance" being preached at several mosques in Birmingham.
Among the comments made by imams during the film, Undercover Mosque, were: "Take that homosexual man and throw him off the mountain", and "We hate the kuffar" (a derogatory term for non-Muslims). West Midlands constabulary investigated but the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) concluded there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges for a breach of public order.
Astonishingly, the police then asked the CPS to consider whether a prosecution could be brought against Channel 4 for broadcasting a programme including material likely to stir up racial hatred. When that was ruled out, the police and the CPS reported the programme makers to Ofcom, the TV regulator, alleging "complete distortion" in the way the programme had been edited.
Undercover Mosque became embroiled in the wider "fake TV" controversy before Ofcom concluded it was "a legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest".
Now, because they refused to withdraw their allegations, the police and the CPS - in other words, the taxpayer - have been required to pay a six-figure sum in libel damages to compensate Dispatches. It is a welcome vindication for Channel 4 at the conclusion of a very sorry episode.
The police maintained that the documentary "had an impact in the community and the cohesion within it". But the real damage is being caused by the separatist political ideology preached by extremists. It is not for the police to traduce those seeking to expose it on the spurious grounds of maintaining community harmony.
We trust there will be no further attempts to close down legitimate journalistic investigation in order to appease those who perpetuate division in our society.
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Channel 4 wins Muslim 'preachers of hate' case
Telegraph
15/05/2008
Police and prosecutors have paid out a six-figure sum for wrongly claiming a television exposé of Islamist extremists was faked.
The Crown Prosecution Service and West Midlands Police will apologise "unreservedly" at a High Court hearing today for libelling Channel 4's Dispatches programme Undercover Mosque.
Legal sources said they will pay £50,000 damages and £50,000 costs for falsely claiming the documentary was "misleading" and would stir up racial hatred.
The documentary, screened last year, showed "preachers of hate" making remarks alleged to be homophobic, anti-Semitic and sexist.
Police were called in to investigate the clerics, but after six months dropped the inquiry and turned on Channel 4, asking prosecutors whether they could be charged for stirring up racial hatred.
The CPS then issued a joint statement claiming the programme had distorted the views of the clerics by misleading editing. They also said it risked undermining "community cohesion''.
Ofcom, the television regulator, rejected the complaints, triggering an avalanche of criticism of the police handling of the case and their pursuit of Muslim extremists.
West Midlands Police and the CPS refused to withdraw their remarks, leading Channel 4 to sue for libel.
Police and the CPS will accept at court that they were wrong and that there was "no evidence that the broadcaster or programme makers had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity".
Television chiefs attacked the authorities for trying to "publicly rubbish them" and said they had been right for exposing the "abhorrent and extreme comments of fundamentalist preachers".
Kevin Sutcliffe, the deputy head of current affairs at Channel 4, who oversees Dispatches, said: "This is a total vindication of the programme team in exposing extreme views being preached in mainstream British mosques.
"The programme's findings were clearly a matter of important public interest.
"The authorities should be doing all they can to encourage investigations like this, not attempting to publicly rubbish them for reasons they have never properly explained."
Julian Bellamy, the head of Channel 4, added: "It was clearly vital to us that an important piece of journalism and the reputation of its makers was not undermined by these unjustified allegations."
The damages will be donated to a charity for the families of journalists killed while on assignment.
In its report last year, Ofcom said that "each and every quote was justified by the narrative of the programme and put fully in context".
One cleric in Birmingham said the killer of a British Muslim soldier in Afghanistan was a "hero of Islam''.
Other comments from individuals included that "Allah created the woman deficient", that homosexuals should be thrown off mountains and that young girls should be hit if they do not wear hijab.
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