Alasdair Palmer’s column in The Sunday Telegraph on the whole Undercover Mosque business is essential reading. Undercover Mosque was the Channel 4 programme which revealed the extremism that was being preached inside a Mosque in Birmingham. Rather than examine that, the West Midlands Police decided to investigate the programme makers. It ended up referring the programme to Ofcom; claiming that it had “misrepresented” the preachers featured in the programme and had “undermined community cohesion”. This, worryingly, suggested that West Midlands Police wanted to set itself up as some sort of censor, controlling what could and could not be said in public.
The programme makers had, though, behaved entirely properly. West Midlands police has had to pay out a significant sum to charity to settle a libel suit from the programme makers who, understandably, objected to the charge that they had distorted anything. Yet, it appears that West Midland Police will take no action against those responsible for this sorry episode.
As Palmer writes, this whole affair has been revealing of the mindset that prevails in much of the establishment when it comes to radical Islam: Melanie Phillips is right that the matter should not end here. West Midlands Police owe the public, who will pick up the bill for the libel suit, an explanation of how precisely events unfolded. Also, an officer must take responsibility for this gross waste of police resources.
“His denial is very widely shared – which is why [Anil Patani, the Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police] remains in his job, and why he won’t even be disciplined. The alarming truth is that much of Government policy towards radical Islam is based on Mr Patani’s delusion: if we pretend that radical Islamic preachers do not exist but are rather a creation of Islamophobic journalists, they will just go away. That sort of denial is extremely dangerous.”
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