Islam Channel promotes ‘Wahhabi' attitudes: Quilliam

OFCOM, the UK's communication watchdog is to investigate the satellite broadcaster The Islam Channel following a report by the Quilliam Foundation which claims it gives a platform to a strict and intolerant form of Wahhabism.

The report, titled Re-Programming British Muslims. A Study of the Islam Channel, found that programmes often promoted sexist attitudes toward women, decried non-Wahhabi Muslims as heretical, actively discouraged Muslims from interacting with non-Muslims or participating in ‘non-Muslim activities,’ and hosted extremist groups or speakers.

Broadcast in English, the channel is watched by some 59% of British Muslims and is the premier Islamic satellite channel in the UK.  It targets English-speaking Muslims and beams programmes to 132 countries from central London.

Now OFCOM have told Lapido Media they will undertake their own investigation. ‘This report raises some serious allegations. We will investigate where our rules may have been broken.

They fined the channel £30,000 in 2007 for unbalanced reporting and failure to differentiate between news and opinion.

The report was produced by Talal Rajab, Research Fellow at the Quilliam Foundation and presented at a round table at the Quilliam offices on 21 April.  It claims that the Islam Channel’s news programmes typically emphasize conflict between the ‘Muslim’ and ‘non-Muslim’ world, to the point of neglecting even news stories that have significance for British Muslims, such as the Chilcot inquiry or the death of an alleged al-Qaeda leader.

Talk shows on the channel, says the report, gave platform to groups such as Hizb ut-Tahrir, the recently banned extremist group that aspires to create a totalitarian and expansionist caliphate.

It also allocated airtime to extremist speakers such as Anwar al-Awlaki, a prominent pro-al-Qaeda preacher, and Abu Usama at-Thahabi, an imam who has sanctioned violence against homosexuals and non-Muslims and claimed women are of ‘deficient’ intellect.

In championing ‘Muslim morality,’ the Islam Channel has advocated segregation of the sexes, return to the ‘complete’ hijab of head to toe covering, and husbands’ total right over their wives person. It advises Muslims to avoid contact with unbelievers, or even Muslims of the ‘wrong’ kind, such as Shia and Sufi Muslims.

Besides exacerbating the issue of integration by demonizing and exaggerating the West’s ‘corrupting influences’, the Islam Channel takes a semi-isolationist stance, bordering on religious xenophobia.

The report states: ‘During a particular episode of ‘Muslimah Dilemma’ it is argued that interaction between young Muslims and non-Muslims may be detrimental to ‘Islamic values’ and should be limited or properly supervised by parents, even in schools. (Programming British Muslims. A study of the Islam Channel. P37)

Terry Ascott, founder of Sat7, an OFCOM-licenced satellite TV station broadcasting Arab-made Christian programmes across the Middle East, said: ‘Dozens of Arabic channels broadcasting from this region carry this kind of material, negatively infecting the attitudes of tens of millions of viewers from Casablanca to Bahrain.’

The problem is highlighted in the recent United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Report ‘Arab Human Development’ which lists negative attitudes as major contributors to what they call the social, political and economic ‘backwardness’ of the ‘Arab World’.

Ascott added that Ofcom only seemed to act if there were complaints against a Channel's content, especially in the case of foreign language channels.'

SAT-7 counters this with daily programmes for women and children that introduce Christ’s teaching on justice for the poor and vulnerable, especially women, which lies behind much social reform around the world.