Andrew Anthony says what needed to be said about the ludicrous efforts by the West Midlands Police and the Crown Prosecution Service to rubbish Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary Undercover Mosque:
[T]he real story should have been about the alarmingly censorial and quite possibly libellous attack on investigative journalism. No matter, on Radio 4’s PM programme, it was Dispatches’ commissioning editor Kevin Sutcliffe who was subjected to a grilling, while Abu Usamah, one of the subjects of the documentary, was portrayed as a harmless victim. Usamah was ‘totally appalled’, he said, that Channel 4 had misrepresented his efforts to foster multicultural harmony.
Usamah was not asked to cite any examples of misrepresentation. Nor was he confronted with the recordings of his sermons broadcast in the documentary. Now that would have made for a compelling piece of radio. For here is Usamah spreading his message of inter-communal respect and understanding, as captured in Undercover Mosque: ‘No one loves the kuffaar! Not a single person here from the Muslims loves the kuffaar. Whether those kuffaar are from the UK or from the US. We love the people of Islam and we hate the people of kuffaar. We hate the kuffaar!’
‘Kuffaar’ is a derogatory term for non-Muslims. The police and CPS suggest that comments like these were taken ‘out of context’. I’ve read extended transcripts of Usamah’s quotes and I’m satisfied that they were perfectly ‘in context’. But let’s ask what conceivable context could make these quotes acceptable or reasonable? Was he rehearsing a stage play? Was it a workshop on conflict resolution? Or perhaps it was the same context in which a spokesman from those other righteous humanitarians, the BNP, might attempt to aid community relations by repeatedly stating that his followers ‘hate Muslims’.
It’s worth reading the whole piece.
Mick Hartley 
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