The Islam Channel Further Exposed

Back in January I blogged about the Islam Channel, Britain's most-watched Muslim TV channel, and its ties to jihadist preacher Anwar al-Awlaki, as well as other unsavoury connections to radicalism.

Now, a report by the Muslim Quilliam Foundation has revealed that the channel is running programmes saying that women should not refuse their husbands' sexual advances, should not leave the house without their husbands' permission, and that if they wear makeup, they are prostitutes.

The new report notes that “Although the channel does not directly call for terrorist violence, it clearly helps to create an atmosphere in which religiously-sanctioned intolerance and even hatred might be seen as acceptable."

It is good to see the Muslims of the Quilliam Foundation actually opposing these things, but the report does not help matters when it refers to these particular teachings as "a single narrow version of Islam, [namely] Saudi Wahhabism". In fact, they are mainstream Islamic doctrine:

"If a husband calls his wife to his bed [i.e. to have sexual relation] and she refuses and causes him to sleep in anger, the angels will curse her till morning" (Sahih Muslim, v.4, b.54, no.460)

"The husband may forbid his wife to leave the home, because of the hadith related by Bayhaqi that the Prophet (Allah bless him and give him peace) said: "It is not permissible for a woman who believes in Allah and the Last Day to allow someone into her husband's house if he is opposed, or to go out if he is averse." (Reliance of the Traveller, a classic manual of Islamic law endorsed by Cairo's Al-Azhar University in 1991 as conforming "to the practise and fasith of the orthodox Sunni community")

“And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers or husbands' fathers, or their sons or their husbands' sons, or their brothers or their brothers' sons or sisters' sons, or their women, or their slaves, or male attendants who lack vigour, or children who know naught of women's nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And turn unto Allah together, O believers, in order that ye may succeed.” (Qur'an 24:31)

The article further mentions that a scholar on the "Islam Q & A" programme declared that "the majority of people in hell will be women". Again, he was simply following the example of his Prophet:

“The Prophet said: 'I was shown the Hell-fire and that the majority of its dwellers were women who were ungrateful.' It was asked, 'Do they disbelieve in Allah?' (or are they ungrateful to Allah?) He replied, 'They are ungrateful to their husbands and are ungrateful for the favors and the good (charitable deeds) done to them.'” (Bukhari v.1, b.2, no.28).

Finally, the channel "has already been found by Ofcom to have breached the broadcasting code on impartiality during elections, and for broadcasting an unbalanced programme about the ownership of Jerusalem." I've seen that one myself. It was appalling.

The famous words of Ibn Warraq seem appropriate here: "There may be moderate Muslims, but Islam itself is not moderate."