Peter Oborne's programme

Monday, 7th July 2008

It left me slightly dissatisfied, to be honest. He was absolutely right to expose the unbelievably shoddy reporting of pseudo-incidents such as the alleged Islamist attack on the soldiers' home in Datchet. (I wrote about that case on my old blog.) And I had to agree with MP Shahid Malik's claim that Muslims are "the Jews of Europe", in so far as it's become acceptable for certain newspapers and commentators to shower them with abuse. (As I've said before, I know what it's like to have a thug banging on the front door and ranting on about me being "one of Bin Laden's lot".)

But given that it ran for an hour, the programme ought to have worked harder at teasing out some of the nuances - to examine, for instance, how much responsibility Muslim organisations bear for the poor public image of their faith, and whether they should have done more to win the public's confidence in the wake of 7/7. One or two of the statistics looked wobbly too. Is anyone surprised that "only" 50% of Britons have a Muslim friend? (I wasn't taking notes. but 'm pretty sure that was the figure given.)

One last minor complaint: "It Shouldn't Happen to a Muslim" was a terrible title.