BBC EXPOSES “FABRICATED” MOSQUE REPORT

In October, the right-wing thinktank Policy Exchange published a report into the selling of “extremist literature” – including books allegedly glorifying terorism and hatred of Jews – on the premises of Britain’s leading mosques. The thinktank, which pretends to be “committed to an evidence-based approach to policy development," described its controversial report in grandiose terms as "the most comprehensive academic survey of its kind ever produced in the UK ... based on a year-long investigation by several teams of specialist researchers."

Predictably, given the Islam-obsessed, jihad-focused media environment we all now inhabit, the report dominated the headlines upon its release. “Lessons in hate found at leading mosque”, declared the front page of the Times. “Hate literature easily found at UK mosques,” proclaimed the front page of the Telegraph.

This week, however, the BBC’s flagship current affairs programme, Newsnight, accused Policy Exchange of "fabricating" its survey of mosque bookshops after an in-depth investigation of the evidence by its correspondent Richard Watson. Newsnight's editor, Peter Barron, takes up the story on his blog:

"Policy Exchange had given us the receipts to corroborate their claim that a quarter of the 100 mosques their researchers had visited were selling hate literature.

"On the planned day of broadcast our reporter Richard Watson came to me and said he had a problem. He had put the claim and shown a receipt to one of the mosques mentioned in the report - The Muslim Cultural Heritage Centre in London. They had immediately denied selling the book and said the receipt was not theirs.

"We decided to look at the rest of the receipts and quickly identified five of the 25 which looked suspicious. They appeared to have been created on a home computer, rather than printed professionally as you would expect. The printed names and addresses of some of the mosques contained simple errors and two of the receipts purportedly from different mosques appeared to have been written by the same hand. I spoke to Policy Exchange to try to clear up these discrepancies but in the end I decided not to run the report."

The actual Newsnight report which aired this week on Wednesday night – and which can be seen via Barron's blog – includes expert testimony from a forensic scientist disputing the authenticity of the receipts provided by Policy Exchange. (It is also worth watching the heated exchange afterwards between the Beeb’s rottweiler, Jeremy Paxman, and the red-faced Policy Exchange research director, Dean Godson).

The Newsnight investigation is a rare tribute to the power of public-service current-affairs broadcasting at its best and, dare I say it, the BBC at its very best. I was cheering in front of the television screen. (Let us hope and pray that Newsnight’s budget remains unaffected by BBC budget cuts).

One final point: aside from the Muslim Council of Britain’s Sir Iqbal Sacranie, few have been willing to question Policy Exchange’s undeniably Islamophobic motivations. Its director, former Times journalist Anthony Browne, has claimed in the past that “Islam really does want to conquer the world”. And not a single newspaper or broadcaster, in its coverage of the original Policy Exchange report in October, mentioned this rather pertinent quote from the ‘academic’ chosen by Policy Exchange to write their report, Dr Denis MacEoin:

“I do not hold a brief for Islam. On the contrary, I have very negative feelings about it…”

So, fraudulent evidence and Islamophobic authors. Is it any wonder why British Muslims are so disillusioned, and so disillusioned with the media in particular?