For years the Biff, Chip and Kipper books have been a staple of the primary school child’s literary diet – with sprogs across the country following the magical adventures of the three siblings and their friends.
But perhaps no longer. The mop-topped trio has come under fire this week after the children were accused of Islamophobia by readers on social media.
The accusations have focused on a page in the book The Blue Eye, which shows the group arriving in a strange town which looks to be in the Middle East, which the character Biff describes as ‘unfriendly’.
This has led to accusations that the children were depicting Muslims as being ‘scary’ more generally.
While readers may note that we’re quite some way from Biff burning a copy of the Quran or drawing the prophet Muhammed with a bomb on his turban, his transgression has been enough for publisher OUP to take the book out of print. And to ensure young readers are shielded from his bigotry, OUP is now destroying the books entirely, with errant copies to be pulped by the publisher. ‘A small number of copies may still remain in the supply chain’, the OUP lamented.
All of this will be familiar ground to those used to Britain’s deranged culture wars, and it’s no surprise that certain publications have joined in the book bashing. But why is the national broadcaster getting in on the biblioclasm?
In a write-up of the row, the BBC has suggested that the book has been withdrawn because it has ‘attracted criticism for describing people wearing turbans and a niqab as unfriendly.’
In a stab at balance, the publicly-funded body pointed out that ‘Some have described it as “inappropriate”, while others said it was an example of Islamophobia.’
But Mr S can’t help but notice that some rather vital context appears to have been missing from the BBC’s coverage. As the Telegraph reports, after the children rescue the princess from the unfriendly town:
They make it safely to her kingdom, where the people also wear turbans and the women wear hijabs, and where everyone is friendly and welcoming.
In other words Biff, Chip, Kipper and Wilf appear to have no animus towards people who wear Islamic dress and have simply stumbled on a town that isn’t particularly friendly.
Mr S has long suspected that the books would end up in the firing line – Kipper’s uncanny resemblance to Boris Johnson is a bit suspect after all – but is it too much to ask that the national broadcaster represents both sides of the story?
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