Up Is Down, Good Is Evil . . .

When did the police start collaring television?
The documentary, Undercover Mosque, stirred the pot a bit when it aired recently in the UK. Intolerant! Racist!, part of the usual hue and cry was raised by You Know Who. So loud was the screeching that the West Midlands Police and Crown Prosecution Service opened a criminal investigation.

[...] In what appeared to be an unprecedented move, the two bodies issued a joint statement condemning Undercover Mosque and announcing that the West Midlands Police had referred the documentary to the broadcasting regulator, Ofcom. Furthermore, the statement made clear that the police had asked the CPS to look at bringing a prosecution against the programme makers for stirring up racial hatred. Only a regrettable shortfall in evidence stood in the way of criminal charges.

Funny thing, that little requirement about having sufficient evidence.

Quite a story, then. The only problem is that the 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.

We-l-l-l-l, Radio 4 happens to be the anti-anything-that's good BBC.

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 [a white supremacist group. ed.], might attempt to aid community relations by repeatedly stating that his followers 'hate Muslims'.

Yes, you can well imagine their excuses if they got caught at it: 'No, we don't really hate Muslims, we just want them to leave the country.' Except no one in the media swallows it, much less gives them air time.

But then, as CPS lawyer Bethan David observed, Undercover Mosque had been 'heavily edited'. She 'considered' 56 hours of footage and yet, instead of producing a two-day Warholian extravaganza of non-events and incidental conversation, Channel 4 deviously reduced it to a one-hour documentary.

Hmm. Is Ms. David a 'trufer' in disguise?

For those of you who may have gained the impression that the CPS is suffering under a mountainous workload, it's reassuring to see that one of its lawyers has a spare two weeks to spend watching film out-takes and also time to branch out into TV criticism. As a novice to the game, she may not have realised that this is how documentaries work. You shoot a lot of footage and concentrate in the final edit on your core story.

[...]

In the comments section, we found a nifty observation made by another filmaker.

When I was making a documentary in 1997-8 about the three monotheistic faiths in the little square mile of NW8, (the brainchild of the late Desmond Wilcox) I filmed happily at the local synagogue and churches, but could never get a repsonse from the Central Mosque after endless letters over the space of almost a year. Finally my cameraman, a Muslim who worshipped there, got permission. No sooner had he done this than he came to my house one afternoon to plead with me not to appear at the mosque because 'the crazies' (his words) went there on Fridays and would kill me. I was incredulous. Here I had lived in peace in my nice neighbourhood of sleepy, leafy St John's Wood for decades, and suddenly somebody from Yemen or Pakistan or wherever wanted to kill me in my own backyard. My cameraman explained 'It is because they found out you are from the Jewish, and you are American.' This was 1998 --- remember - Clinton was President, there was relative calm in Israel and there had been no Iraq War, no Abu Ghraib, no Guantanamo to cause 'rage' amongst young men in our mosques. This good man pleaded with me not to appear at the mosque because he said an 'international incident' would occur, like WPC Yvonne Fletcher in 1984 being shot outside the Libyan embassy. So I stayed home. I had never stayed away from one of my own productions in my life. Recently I mentioned this appalling and frightening incident, a genuine threat on my life, to Inayat Bungalwala of the Muslim Council. He chuckled and said dismissively,'Nobody at the Central Mosque would ever threaten anyone.'

[...]

There's more.