Dispatches (UK TV documentary)

[Viet Minh]

To be fair, I've not even finished watching this yet, but its ridiculous! This has been billed all week as 'uncovering preaching of hate, and violence in schools') So far one Imam kicked some kid, I say 'kicked' as that's what they called it, it was little more than a nudge, and wouldn't have bruised a butterfly.

Next the the contentious issue of 'preaching of hate', they had undercover filming of a lecture to secondary school pupils at an Islamic faith school, and one of the pupils (the commentary said he was practising for being an Imam) made an admittedly shocking comment about Hindus. But bear in mind this is an Islamic Faith school; I'm 100% against Faith-based schooling but if its an Islamic school then by rights they should be entitled to teach about Islam. This includes some aspects of mixing with Kaffirs (non-Muslims, which incidentally is not a racial term, Islam is not a race, and non-Islam is not a race either). This student had crossed the line by insulting other religions, but bear in mind he was a student not a teacher, and this was the 'highlight' of a full months undercover filming as far as I know. I was born a Protestant, and went to a Catholic school, and heard far worse, as no doubt everyone has in state schools. The next bit was some kids in the Mosque playing after hours, and there was some swearing and someone got hit, but not hurt. I used to volunteer for the Church of Scotland who had a drop-in centre for refugees, by those standards we should have been shut down long ago! :mellow:

Still I'm looking forward to the 'moral outrage' expressed on stormfront if anyone can find a thread :D

[ComradeMan]

To be fair, I've not even finished watching this yet, but its ridiculous! This has been billed all week as 'uncovering preaching of hate, and violence in schools') So far one Imam kicked some kid, I say 'kicked' as that's what they called it, it was little more than a nudge, and wouldn't have bruised a butterfly.

Next the the contentious issue of 'preaching of hate', they had undercover filming of a lecture to secondary school pupils at an Islamic faith school, and one of the pupils (the commentary said he was practising for being an Imam) made an admittedly shocking comment about Hindus. But bear in mind this is an Islamic Faith school; I'm 100% against Faith-based schooling but if its an Islamic school then by rights they should be entitled to teach about Islam. This includes some aspects of mixing with Kaffirs (non-Muslims, which incidentally is not a racial term, Islam is not a race, and non-Islam is not a race either). This student had crossed the line by insulting other religions, but bear in mind he was a student not a teacher, and this was the 'highlight' of a full months undercover filming as far as I know. I was born a Protestant, and went to a Catholic school, and heard far worse, as no doubt everyone has in state schools. The next bit was some kids in the Mosque playing after hours, and there was some swearing and someone got hit, but not hurt. I used to volunteer for the Church of Scotland who had a drop-in centre for refugees, by those standards we should have been shut down long ago! :mellow:

Still I'm looking forward to the 'moral outrage' expressed on stormfront if anyone can find a thread :D


I have no doubt that in the current climate of "islamophobia" it's very easy to pick on an Islamic school and find every instance of dubious behaviour and turn it into a major issue.

On the other hand "kuffir" is a derogatory term and there's no way of getting around it. If Jewish members here were referring to everyone else as heathens or "goyim" all the time or Christian members were referring to others as "heathens" it would not be taken in the spirit of acceptance and tollerance, would it?

The trouble with Islam in the West is that most of the Westerners commenting on it don't have a clue what they are talking about. There is no "one" monolithic "Islam" to start with. Secondly, mosques and Islamic schools very often have affiliations to certain groups in the Islamic world- it depends what "school" of Islam we are dealing with. In Saudi Arabia, the big friend of the US, the schoolbooks were accused of being filled with hatred, intollerance and anti-semitism. There is no getting around the issue that some areas of Islam are downright reactionary and it's useless to form apologetics. At the same time it's silly to create hysteria about Islam as if the armies of Saladin were poised to overrun Europe!

I really wish the progressive Islamic world would speak out more and stand up for Islam at times, instead of letting every nutcase wannabe and self-styled "imam" in Europe create problems for the Islamic community at large.

[Viet Minh]

I have no doubt that in the current climate of "islamophobia" it's very easy to pick on an Islamic school and find every instance of dubious behaviour and turn it into a major issue.

On the other hand "kuffir" is a derogatory term and there's no way of getting around it. If Jewish members here were referring to everyone else as heathens or "goyim" all the time or Christian members were referring to others as "heathens" it would not be taken in the spirit of acceptance and tollerance, would it?

The trouble with Islam in the West is that most of the Westerners commenting on it don't have a clue what they are talking about. There is no "one" monolithic "Islam" to start with. Secondly, mosques and Islamic schools very often have affiliations to certain groups in the Islamic world- it depends what "school" of Islam we are dealing with. In Saudi Arabia, the big friend of the US, the schoolbooks were accused of being filled with hatred, intollerance and anti-semitism. There is no getting around the issue that some areas of Islam are downright reactionary and it's useless to form apologetics. At the same time it's silly to create hysteria about Islam as if the armies of Saladin were poised to overrun Europe!

I really wish the progressive Islamic world would speak out more and stand up for Islam at times, instead of letting every nutcase wannabe and self-styled "imam" in Europe create problems for the Islamic community at large.

The concept of the 'Kaffir' is central to Islamic faith though, I don't agree with it but thats the religious right, to talk about such things. In Sunday school they told us not to swear, you can probably guess how much fucking attention I paid to that! :lol:

There are plenty of people speaking out for Islam, but they are perhaps speaking to the wrong people, ie those who are determined to hate them regardless. It is my belief that almost a completely different sect of political Islam is developing, the 'jihadist', 'extremist', 'Islamist' or whatever imagintaive word we are using these days. Most mainstream muslims would agree that violence is not acceptable under any circumstances in Islam. The mainstream must now fight an ideological battle with this new wave, and to be fair a lot of them are but we never hear about it.

[hatzel]

Well, when it comes to talking about the kuffar, I guess it helps to know what we're talking about. My understanding is that you can't be a kaffir through ignorance (but that might be over-simplifying it a bit), plus there's the whole dhimmi...situation...so it might be a bit too much to cut the world into black-and-white, Muslims and kuffar and nothing else. Though I would presume that one could argue that 'ignorant' non-Muslims fall under kufrul-l'raadh, which I believe might be the mainstream opinion. Can't guarantee anything, though, and I'm sure that there are plenty of progressive Muslims today who would claim that a kaffir has to actively refuse Islam, being fully aware of it. I dunno...this isn't really the topic of discussion...

I don't know what they say about the kuffar on the show / in the schools. I've heard rumours that a lot of unfavourable stuff goes down, but I'm still certain that it's mainly because they're Muslims. There are no doubt a few Catholic schools knocking about with people talking about the 'filthy heathens' and all that stuff. Hence, I'd have to know the context. Although kaffir can be used as an offensive term, so can heathen, but both can also be the proper word for it. So if this was 'don't be hanging around with those filthy kuffar!', then I might raise an issue with it. As it is, I'll agree that it's a lot of hype about a very marginalised issue, perhaps trying to portray it as the mainstream. Sensationalism and nothing else. I know that personal experience isn't worth much, but I have a great many friends who are observant Muslims, men with beards and women with headscarves, mainly from the Turkish community, and none of them have ever known any of the supposed hatred that racists try to tarnish them with. Instead, they're very vocal in opposing any of these minority views which come up now and then amongst radicalised Muslims today. Of course the issue is that we don't hear about it. Or, I hear about it, given the nature of my activity, but I don't think there are many racist Muslim-haters sitting down and discussing this stuff with Muslims. More, they're probably just shouting at them, 'take off your headscarf, terrorist!' :(

That isn't to say that we should sweep it under the carpet and ignore it, of course not. If one in a thousand people do or say horrible things, than one in a thousand too many, but we shouldn't let people start thinking it's one in a thousand who don't act like this. There are plenty of EDL:ers and others who like to claim, 'clearly the non-radical Muslims aren't doing enough, aren't speaking up, they must be in on it'. They must have selective hearing, though, if they're not hearing that...