Douglas Murray Douglas Murray

Why is the BBC letting the Islamic Human Rights Commission set the agenda?

The farcically named ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ has featured here many times before. The last time was earlier this year when this Khomeinist group decided to award their ‘Islamophobe of the Year’ award to the murdered staff of Charlie Hebdo. At their ‘awards ceremony’ for this the IHRC even joked about what a shame it was that none of the staff of Charlie Hebdo were around to collect the award.

Today the IHRC has thrown a smoke grenade into the public debate by issuing ‘findings’ claiming that the UK government’s counter-extremism and counter-terrorism policies are having a ‘negative impact’ on British Muslims. The ‘work’ is the usual confection of non-research and pre-ordained ‘findings’ that you would expect from such an ideologically driven group. For instance the report is based on ‘respondents’ to IHRC questions. Not quite the same thing as a poll is it? I wonder if they chose themselves?

But why has the BBC chosen to put this non-story as a lead story on their news bulletins and on the front page of their website this morning? Under the alarming headline ‘Government policy “negatively affects” Muslims’.

Are the BBC going to go to Combat 18 for their next headline? Find out what ‘respondents’ to a few carefully pre-ordained questions from a tiny extremist group think about some aspect of government policy or other? It would be no more ridiculous than letting the IHRC set the agenda. But if one of those ideas is unthinkable, the other has once again become a disgraceful reality. Shame on the BBC for becoming a megaphone for the late Ayatollah Khomeini’s agenda.


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