A state of denial in the UK
...The PC culture in the UK has run amok in this case.The most charitable interpretation of the reaction of Anil Patani, the Assistant Chief Constable of West Midlands Police, to the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque is that he was in a state of deep denial.
The programme recorded preachers at the Green Lane Mosque in Birmingham making remarks that were not only bigoted and full of hate but also bordered on incitement to murder. Abu Usamah, one of the main preachers, was shown saying: “Osama Bin Laden, he’s better than a thousand Tony Blairs, because he’s a Muslim”; “Allah has created the woman, even if she gets a PhD, deficient. Her intellect is incomplete”; and advocating that homosexuals should be “thrown off” mountains. Mr Patani’s reaction? To refer the programme makers to the Crown Prosecution Service for inciting racial hatred.
He also referred the programme to Ofcom, the TV regulator, sending out a press release as he did so. Mr Patani’s press release claimed that “those featured in the programme had been misrepresented” and that it had “undermined community cohesion”. Those claims were blatantly false, as the Ofcom investigation itself made crystal clear. But why on earth did Mr Patani make them?
He had no authority to censor the media, nor to assess whether it had done its job properly. Channel 4 had shown Abu Usamah the relevant parts of the programme before it was broadcast: he did not deny what he had said, nor did he try to get the programme prosecuted for being “misleading”. It was only Mr Patani who took that step. It is difficult to understand how Mr Patani could have persuaded himself that the programme makers were the problem – difficult until you recognise the power of the state of denial that he was in.
No context could make Abu Usamah’s remarks anything other than bigoted and hateful, something that should have been particularly obvious to Mr Patani, who had seen all 53 hours of film that had been shot in the making of Undercover Mosque. Now he and his force have been made to grovel, as well as pay out £100,000 to settle the libel suit that Channel 4 discovered was the only way to get West Midlands Police to stop claiming Undercover Mosque had distorted the views of innocent, peace-loving preachers. But then Mr Patani is by no means the only person in authority to suffer from denial on this topic.
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What I find most interesting about the case is that it confirms my belief that the root cause of Islamic terrorism is the religious bigotry that is taught by the preachers of hate. Those who do not understand this reality are in a state of denial that could be terminal if they don't wise up. Amen.
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