Again, The BBC Shows Its Bias & Its Bankruptcy

Donnison makes light of real concerns

What a wretched leftist propaganda machine the BBC is. 

Notice how it has reported the not unreasonable view of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott that Islam needs a reform movement.

Mr Abbott writes, inter alia, in the Sydney Daily Telegraph and sister papers today:

'Round  the world, terrorists screaming out Allah-u-Akbar are killing decent people going about their daily lives....

Dealing with terrorism and the Islamist fanaticism that inspires it is the great challenge of our time.

Obviously there needs to be a very strong security response at home and abroad....

The security response is necessary but it’s not sufficient. There also needs to be a concerted “hearts and minds” campaign against the versions of Islam that make excuses for terrorists.

Although most Muslims utterly reject terrorism, some are all too ready to justify “death to the infidel”....

Demonising Islam generally or all Muslims could bring on the “clash of civilisations” that academic Samuel Huntington feared two decades back and make “Islam’s bloody borders” even more dangerous. But we can’t remain in denial about the massive problem within Islam.

Islam never had its own version of the Reformation and the Enlightenment or a consequent acceptance of pluralism and the separation of church and state.

Fortunately there are numerous Muslim leaders who think their faith needs to modernise from the kill-or-be-killed milieu of the Prophet Mohammed.

It’s also time Australians stopped being apologetic about the values that have made our country as free, fair and prosperous as any on Earth....

Islam needs to delegitimise the urge to “behead all those who insult the Prophet” but only Muslims can do this. That’s why everyone interested in a safer world should be reaching out to “live and let live” Muslims and encouraging them to reclaim their faith from the zealots.

In Australia that means talking to decent people who happen to be Muslim as well as to “official” Muslims inclined to see “Islamophobia” in any criticism....

It’s also time Australians stopped being apologetic about the values that have made our country as free, fair and prosperous as any on Earth.

Where hate preaching is not illegal it should at least be thoroughly answered point-by-point with a very robust defence of human rights and responsibilities.

It’s not culturally insensitive to demand loyalty to Australia and respect for Western civilisation. Cultures are not all equal. We should be ready to proclaim the clear superiority of our culture to one that justifies killing people in the name of God.'

Not offensive or over-the-top, is it?  At least, not to rational people.

But look at the BBC's report. That item is less a report on what Mr Abbott has said as what lefty and Muslim critics have declared in response to what he has said.  It's reminiscent of BBC reports on and from the Middle East, when the Israeli case ("Israel says") is put last, after the views of Palestinian Arab spokespeople and any UN official/leftwing activist who might happen to be on hand.

Then there are the snide, derogatory references to Mr Abbott's "letter" (in fact, it's an op-ed article) having appeared  "in News Corps tabloids" (that's the Murdoch stable, which also happens to carry the syndicated column of Australia's most-read columnist, the conservative Andrew Bolt, who is of course anathema to the Left, for lots of reasons including his pro-Israel stance.)

"Tabloids".  That's a way of saying that the newspapers in question are populist pieces of trash fit only to wrap fish 'n chips, not the highbrow newspapers (The Guardian, Ha'aretz, the Israel-bashing Fairfax press) that Al Beeb reporters and intellectuals of the left choose as their daily fare.  (Yes, I'm being sarcastic when I say "intellectuals"; after all, that term hardly describes the Bowens and the Donnisons and the Knells, does it?)

Note, too, the gratuitous reference to Mr Abbott having once been intended for the Roman Catholic priesthood.  The BBC, like its Aussie counterpart the ABC, which it resembles so much in pet causes and ideology, rarely wastes an opportunity to depict the Roman Catholic Church in a bad light (allegations of priests behaving badly are, as it were, a godsend to it).  I suspect that the gratuitous reference to Mr Abbott's religion is a snide way of implying that he's some kind of Christian fanatic and that when it comes to having a go at Islam, well, he would, wouldn't he? For of course religion is there to be poked fun at by the Left, unless that religion is, well, the one that needs reforming.

There's no byline given for the report, but presumably it's by the BBC's snide and snotty Jon Donnison, who when he can be bothered to tear himself away from tweeting schoolboyish semi-smut and other trivia, does occasionally report from the Land Down Under, though rarely with any degree of profundity.  He seems to have left his reporting hat in the West Bank or Gaza, when all is said and done, and coming to the Antipodes is all a bit of a (no pun intended) come down.  At least, that's how his characteristically superficial reports strike me.

How utterly loathsome, too, is Australia's embattled Opposition leader Bill Shorten in implying that Islam is above criticism.  Why, in its attitude to women alone it proves itself culturally inferior to and at odds with Western values.

Bill should look at this video, of a secular Iranian woman being disrespectfully treated at a talk she is giving at a constituent college of London University, to see just how contemptuous of women Western Islamists are.

Better still, he and his fellow Lefties (those decrying Abbott's article is Greens leader Richard Di Natale) should read Professor Phyllis Chesler's latest article here

How desperately Shorten, who's doing very badly in opinion polls, must need the "Muslim vote".

How utterly hypocritical the Greens are.

But Malcolm Turnbull's not much better.

Incidentally, concerning Australian politicians and Islam, readers may be interested in my latest Elder of Ziyon article (which illuminates the reference in the image above to the Mufti) here