folio

My email to Eddy Mair on Radio 4’s PM programme this evening:

Can you prove to me that the huge crowds witnessed on the streets of Khartoum after Friday prayers today were because of the teddy bear insult? If you go to any Muslim city anywhere in the world after Friday prayers you will witness massive crowds. Indeed, you will witness them even outside the mosques up and down this country? Virtually every Muslim attends the Friday prayer – clearly they have to go somewhere when the prayer ends and in the absence of a teletransporter the first thing they will do is pour onto the street.

You may not care about this, you may not know about it or you may be enraged by the behaviour of Muslims, and not want to read these few short thoughts of mine. That is fine – you can simply pass over this post.

But here we are, I have been “enraged” – yes, by media hype – what hypocrites they are given that they constantly attack the government with accusations of spin. I have always defended “the media” against claims of bias: they report the news, they do not make it.

But here I sit amidst my “enraged” fellow countrymen – lambasting the Muslims, demanding that they be deported, that they deserve no respect, that their religion is barbaric and inhumane – listening to interviews on the radio and reading newspaper articles all covering this same ground, and I ask myself a question.

Why do you not know about 138 Muslim leaders and scholars from around the world reached out to Christian leaders in an open letter to the heads of all Christian churches just a month ago, emphasizing, “the future of the world depends on peace between Muslims and Christians.”

http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Common-Word/Christian-Response.html
http://www.islamicamagazine.com/Common-Word/Muslim-Response.html

Why too do you not know about the Amman Initiative which saw 170 Sunni and Shi‘a religious scholars and Muslim intellectuals from 40 countries gathering to condemn terrorism in absolute terms in July last year?

Why is it that you nothing about these? Where was the media coverage? Where the vast acreage of opinion pieces? Where the journalists demanding that Muslim’s reaction? Where?

Yes, dog bites man – not news; man bites dog – news. But some of us have to live with fallout.