Evidence of extremism in mosques 'fabricated'

[Thom]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2226704,00.html




Martin Hodgson
Thursday December 13, 2007
The Guardian

A rightwing thinktank which claimed to have uncovered extremist literature on sale at dozens of British mosques was last night accused of basing a report on fabricated evidence.

The report by Policy Exchange alleged that books condoning violent jihad and encouraging hatred of Christians, Jews and gays were being sold in a quarter of the 100 mosques visited.

But BBC2's Newsnight said examination of receipts provided by the researchers to verify their purchases showed some had been written by the same person - even though they purported to come from different mosques.

Several receipts also misspelled the names or addresses of the mosques where the books were supposedly sold.

The report, the Hijacking of British Islam, was based on the work of four teams of two researchers each who visited 100 mosques. They claimed to have found the controversial material in bookshops attached to 25 mosques, including one at Regent's Park, London, and others in Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Oxford and High Wycombe.

Published on the eve of a state visit by Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, the report prompted front page news stories. Tory leader David Cameron pledged to raise the revelations with King Abdullah, because much of the literature was said to have been sourced from Saudi Arabia.

According to the report, one book, which said that there can be "no brotherhood" between Muslims and non-Muslims, was bought at the Leyton mosque in east London.

But the address on a receipt provided by the researchers was found to be that of an unrelated bookshop next door.

A spokesman for the mosque, Dr Usama Hasan, said: "It has nothing to do with us. It is totally inaccurate and misleading information. It is completely false. In fact, we are considering taking legal action over this because it has the potential to damage the good name of our mosque."

Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Policy Exchange produced a report that was given a lot of publicity, and Newsnight deserve credit for exposing the incredibly shoddy and dubious methodology that Policy Exchange have resorted to. It would seem that Policy Exchange had already decided what they wanted to say about mosques and just went out to find or should I say invent the evidence to justify their prejudices."

Policy Exchange's research director, Dean Godson, insisted it stood by the report "100%". He said the thinktank had checked its evidence thoroughly and the allegations did not challenge the substance of the study - that such extremist literature was being widely sold.

"We are standing by our report and the Muslim researchers that helped compile it," he added.

The researchers were unavailable for comment because they were all on a religious retreat in Mauritania, Policy Exchange told Newsnight.


Yet another reason to distrust the media I guess, as well as the type of think-tanks that publish this kind of stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if the retractions and news of this get far less attention than the original uproar about it. You can definatly see how prejudice rears its head from false information, not just in this case but for any topic.

Who and how to trust for information is a very tricky dialemma and a easy trap to fall into believing something just because it fits your world view and what you want to believe.

[2Sheds_Jackson]

But why would you expect the BBC's "investigation" of Policy Exchange's report to be any more accurate?

All the BBC is doing here - unless there are details that have been omitted - is snatching conclusions out of thin air. For example - they are evidently taking Dr Hasan's word that the bookstore next to the mosque is "unrelated". Did they verify this? Did the BBC actually go out and purchase items to see if the names and addresses on the receipts are indeed misspelled? If not, they're simply jumping to conclusions. And how exactly do they explain that a "think tank" is stupid enough to file fake receipts that they've simply signed themselves with the same name over and over? That would mean the Policy Exchange wasn't just dishonest, but stupid as hell too.

[Lazy Lob]

Yes, I saw Paxo last night. He had his arse kicked by Godson. Paxo looked as if he had a bad case of piles. Poor sod. p-)

The Beed did in fact go out and check (and get receipts) but only in as far as to accept some one else’s word for it. It seems Paxman et al. were looking for an excuse and you are quite right they accepted as truth what the mosques said. They didn’t apply the same criteria to the mosques as they did to PE. This alone shows the BBC are probably even worse than PE. But this is standard BBC practice. They say they are unbiased but nothing could be further from the truth. They wouldn’t be spoon fed PE’s report but they are quite happy to take one up the arse from the village elders who run these mosques.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2007/12/disastrous__misjudgement.html#commentsanchor Barron's blog. (Paxman's "boss")

http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/ Policy Echange website.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/player/nol/newsid_7140000/newsid_7142200/7142296.stm?bw=bb&mp=wm&news=1&nol_storyid=7142296&bbcws=1 Watch this one first.


PE has some explaining to do (the forensics at first glance are compelling) but the BBC is being a bit underhand about the whole thing. There’s more going on here than meets the eye.

[Paddy51]

There’s more going on here than meets the eye.

I have been following this with interest and I would agree with LazyLob. Something not right here but impossible to be more precise at the moment. :roll:

[Kilgor]

Remember this little incident ???



Channel 4 vindicated over Undercover Mosque

By Duncan Hooper and agencies
Last Updated: 2:32am GMT 21/11/2007

Channel 4 has been vindicated by the media watchdog Ofcom after police complained about an investigative programme that exposed extremism in British mosques.

West Midland's police had faced criticism for targeting the producers of the show rather than the controversial preachers depicted in it.

Ofcom added fuel to that debate by praising Undercover Mosque as a "legitimate investigation, uncovering matters of important public interest."
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The watchdog added: "Ofcom found no evidence that the broadcaster had misled the audience or that the programme was likely to encourage or incite criminal activity.

"On the evidence (including untransmitted footage and scripts), Ofcom found that the broadcaster had accurately represented the material it had gathered and dealt with the subject matter responsibly and in context."

Police claimed that the Dispatches programme had misrepresented the views of Muslim preachers and clerics with misleading editing.

Following today's ruling, the Channel 4 called the police's actions "perverse" and said they had, in some people's eyes, given "legitimacy to people preaching a message of hate".

The programme featured undercover recordings from speakers alleged to be homophobic, anti-Semitic, sexist and condemnatory of non-Muslims.

Excerpts from preachers and teachers included "Allah created the woman deficient" and "by the age of ten, it becomes an obligation on us to force her (young girls) to wear hijab and if she doesn't wear hijab, we hit her".

Other statements included "take that homo****** and throw him off the mountain" and "whoever changes his religion from Al Islam to anything else - kill him in the Islamic state".

Police initially launched an investigation into whether criminal offences had been committed at the mosques and other organisations featured in the programme.

They then said that it considered offences may have been committed by those involved in the production and broadcast of the programme, specifically in stirring up racial hatred.

After the Crown Prosecution Service advised that the prospect of conviction was unlikely, police referred Undercover Mosque to Ofcom, complaining that intense editing had misrepresented those featured in the programme.

Ofcom also rejected the 364 viewers' complaints it received after the programme was broadcast, which it said appeared to be part of a campaign.


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/19/nofcom219.xml

[Lazy Lob]

Remember this little incident ???........

A very grave incident indeed. It may have been swept under the carpet. ACC Anil Patani and Bethan David as far as I know still have their jobs. Checks and balances have gone out the window.

[Lazy Lob]

From the Telegraph


Newsnight told a small story over a big one

By Charles Moore
Last Updated: 9:01am GMT 15/12/2007

It is a weakness, no doubt, in a journalist, but I normally do not watch Newsnight, the BBC's "flagship" current affairs programme.

The programme's strange menu of preachy reports followed by all-in wrestling with Jeremy Paxman, does not, for me, round off the day pleasantly. I'd rather be in bed.

On Wednesday, however, I had to watch it. I am the chairman of the centre-Right think-tank Policy Exchange, and Policy Exchange was coming under Newsnight's attack.

On a day when the world's central banks were combining to rescue the global banking system, and when Gordon Brown was trying to think of a way of signing away Britain's independence in Lisbon without cameras, there were big things for the programme to lead on.

Instead, it presented a huge, 17-minute package about Policy Exchange.

Although Newsnight's portentousness was unjustified, the allegations did look serious. It should be said at once that they need proper investigation. But when you know the background, you come to see how very different this story is from the way Newsnight told it.

This is what happened.

Over the summer, Policy Exchange produced the most comprehensive report so far on the extent to which extremist literature is available in British mosques and Islamic institutions. It is called The Hijacking of British Islam.

Muslim undercover researchers visited nearly 100 mosques. In 26 of them, they found extremist material - titles such as Women Who Deserve to Go to Hell (for answering their husbands back), virulent insults of Jews and homo******s, puritanical attacks on moderate Muslims, calls for the complete rejection of Western society etc.

It was a big story, and as I shall make clear, none of Newsnight's claims this week has diminished its dimensions.

The report made the front page of many newspapers, including this one. It was extensively covered everywhere - everywhere except for the entire national output of the BBC.

This was because of Newsnight. Thinking that such a report was a serious public issue that could advance well under the "flagship's" full mast and sail, Policy Exchange had originally offered it to Newsnight exclusively.

Newsnight's people were enthusiastic, but on the late afternoon of the intended broadcast, they suddenly changed their tune.

Policy Exchange had offered them many of the receipts it had collected from mosques as evidence of purchase; now they said that they had shown the receipts to mosques and that there were doubts about the authenticity of one or two of them.

Given that the report was being published that night, the obvious thing for Newsnight to do was to broadcast Policy Exchange's findings at once, allowing the mosques to have their say about the receipts.

There was no need for Newsnight to claim "ownership" of the report. Instead, the editor, Peter Barron, decided to run nothing. His decision meant the Policy Exchange report was not touched by the BBC at all.

Mr Barron had already been in trouble for his editorial judgment.

In the summer, the BBC apologised for a Newsnight programme in which a reporter's encounters with Gordon Brown's press officer had been presented in reverse sequence, in order to make Mr Brown's team look intolerant.

Mr Barron's judgment of the Policy Exchange report came under attack from colleagues: his flawed methodology - the original decision not to broadcast - had lost the entire corporation an important story.

Mr Barron decided to try to prove himself right. In the private sector, there is something called "vanity publishing", where people pay for their own works to be published.

Mr Barron's vanity broadcasting was, of course, at the expense of the licence-fee payer. He put the crew of the flagship on to investigating Policy Exchange's receipts. For six weeks, they turned on the staff of Policy Exchange, who had come to them in good faith in the first place, and treated them like criminals.

The receipts that Policy Exchange had lent to them were impounded, and copies were distributed to others without permission.

They were subjected to complicated forensic tests. One of these, allegedly the most damning, was completed over a week before Wednesday's broadcast, but withheld from Policy Exchange.

Although there was no screaming news urgency about the item, a courier carrying the test results sat outside the offices of Policy Exchange's lawyers on Wednesday evening with the message that the think-tank could see the results only if it agreed, before seeing them, that it would go on air that night to answer Newsnight's charges.

On the programme, Jeremy Paxman, who admitted off-air that he had not seen the film before it was broadcast, attacked Policy Exchange's research director, Dean Godson, for refusing to let Newsnight speak to the researchers who had collected the receipts. This was not so: Mr Barron himself had spoken to two of them.

Poor Paxo, who these days has the air of a once-marvellous old Grand National horse who should no longer be entered for the race, had not been properly briefed.

He accused Policy Exchange itself, which the Newsnight report had not done, of fabricating receipts. Strange the mixture of fierce accusation and casual sloppiness.

Newsnight was very excited about the results of a study of receipts by a forensic document analyst that seemed to suggest forgery.

It did not tell viewers that its expert wrote: "The relatively limited amount of writing available for comparison has prevented me from expressing any definite opinion." She did not study any of the writing in Arabic, though it appeared on two of the three receipts she investigated.

Of course, any allegations about receipts are, in principle, a serious matter for a think-tank.

Policy Exchange bases its work on evidence, and so its evidence must be sound. The BBC did not give the think-tank the chance to investigate its complicated allegations properly. Policy Exchange will now do so.

But the real oddity of all this is that the actual contents of the report have been validated.

Extremist literature was available in the mosques, and in some cases still is. The mosques could not dissociate themselves from the literature and, in most cases, did not even try to: they jumped on the receipts instead.

One mosque insisted that the next-door bookshop selling extreme stuff had nothing to do with it, yet the extremist books in question which the shop sells are by a former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia (author of a famous essay in which he literally asserted that the Earth is flat) who was a founding sponsor of the mosque!

I don't blame Newsnight for reporting questions about receipts, though I deplore their methods. I do blame them for trying to kill the much, much bigger story about the hate that is being preached in our country.

Policy Exchange researches all sorts of public policy - police reform, school choice, housing, as well as on Islamist extremism. Next week comes its big report on improving philanthropy. I find it repellent that the might of the BBC is deployed to threaten and bully a charity in this way.

More important, however, is the fate of Muslims in this country.

It is not often realised that the British citizens most persecuted by Islamist extremism are Muslims themselves.

The researchers that Policy Exchange used to find the extreme literature were all Muslims - no one else could pass unnoticed in a potentially hostile environment.

Because their safety was and is threatened, the think-tank protects their anonymity. On air, Newsnight revealed where some of them were.

Yesterday an Islamist website repeated this and called for supporters to help hunt them down. The BBC has unintentionally exposed them to the risk of harm.

What these brave Muslims undeniably found was evidence of widespread, obnoxious material that is a risk to decent Muslims and to British social order.

The BBC chose, in effect, to side with their extreme opponents and to cover up the report, because of an obsession about a few pieces of paper.

[Mr.Flint]

You going to love this:


The Hunt for 8 Sufi Zio-Con Frauds
Friday, 14 December 2007
You would have to be sitting in a darkened room repeating the name of Allah since 7/7 to be unaware that the new front against Muslims by the Government is being led by Sufi cults.
It’s an old Russian trick, they used Sufi sects to pacify the Mujahadeen who were fighting for their freedom from occupation. These Sufi cults taught them to forget the world and be content sitting in darkened rooms repeating the name of Allah over and over and over again. The British used it in India too, creating groups who focused on every minor ritual and repeated the words ‘no politics’ over and over and over again…anyone guess who they are?
The Sufi Muslim council are the recognisable face of the new Government appointed cults. However there are many Sufi groups operating throughout Britain doing work to pacify the Muslim mind.
Recently these individuals belonging to these undercover cults took one step too far. They teamed up with Policy Exchange a pro Israel right wing, neo conservative think tank, which has gone out of its way to dig dirt on the Muslim community.
One of its attacks led to front page news and headlines across the UK when it claimed that a quarter of all mosques sold ‘hate literature’.
However as we have been reporting on this website, Newsnight uncovered that these Sufi researchers had in fact forged the receipts to prove the case.
These Sufi researchers then fled the country to Mauritania for what the Zio-Con think tank called ‘religious purification’!
MPAC now wants to find out exactly who these Sufis are, who are working for the Zio-Con think tank. There were 8 Sufis who worked for them, and all apparently have gone abroad to hide while the storm is raging. They worked, according to Policy Exchange for over a year on the project, so some Muslim out there must have come into contact with them.
Who are they, what are their backgrounds … MPACUK will dig deeper and expose every last detail of the Sufis who tried to destroy their own community.
If you know who they are – please write in and we will expose these men and women for all the Muslim community to see. Write in now and let us do what the incompetent idiots in the Mosque should be doing, protecting our community.
Please call us on 0870 760 5594 or email in confidence to info@mpacuk.org (info@mpacuk.org)
the source is rather obvious http://www.mpacuk.org/content/view/4245/34/#form

not just Zionists, but also Conservative, and Sufi! Oh the Horror! rofl

perhaps give em a call? out your annoying neighbor as a Zio-Con Sufi!p-)