The Muslim News - MCB media successes

Issue 161, Friday 27 September 2002 - 14 Rajab 1423

MCB media successes

By Inayat Bunglawala

The media committee of the Muslim Council of Britain have been able to notch up some significant achievements over the past few months, reports its Secretary, Inayat Bunglawala.
At the end of May, the media committee wrote to the BBC to protest about their use of the phrase “Islamic terrorists” to describe Kashmiri freedom fighters in their news reports.
The MCB pointed that the use of the term “Islamic terrorists” was unacceptable and grossly distorted what is a long-standing struggle by the Kashmiri people to gain control of their own destiny. We received a reply from Stephen Whittle, the Controller of Editorial Policy at the BBC who apologised and said that, “It is not our policy to describe Kashmiri separatists in this way and that has been made clear. It was an isolated incident and will not be repeated.”
In June, the media committee helped the London Central Mosque organise a seminar on “The West and Islam in the Media” with ISESCO (Islamic Scientific, Educational and Cultural Organisation), the OIC’s equivalent body to UNESCO. The MCB Secretary-General, Iqbal Sacranie, also signed a Protocol of Understanding with ISESCO which he said, “extended the opportunity of furthering greater understanding and deepening cultural co-operation between Britain and the Islamic World.”
We contacted the BBC again in July to insist that the BBC describe the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gazah as “illegal”. The media committee pointed out that it was imperative that the BBC reported about this in a factually and historically accurate manner because a recent poll had astoundingly found that the majority of Britons wrongly believed that it was Arabs who were illegally occupying Israeli land rather than vice versa. Once again, Stephen Whittle wrote back to agree that in the instance we cited it should have been made clear that these Jewish settlements were “illegal under international law.” He also ordered the BBC Online story we cited to be corrected without delay.
On July 23, the media committee wrote to Konemann Publishers about a serious error in their glossy new hardback book, Islam: Art and Architecture which had just been translated from the original German. On page 27 of the aforementioned book there appeared a 17th Century Ottoman miniature depicting the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) and his companion Abu Bakr (ra) hiding in a cave during the famous Hijrah from Makkah to Madinah.
The caption to the photo, however, read: “Muhammad and Abu Bakr in Hell”. Konemann Publishers wrote back to the MCB to apologise for the error and said that this was most likely due to confusion in the translation between the German words hohle and holle. Whereas the former meant “cave”, the latter meant “hell”. They added that they were now including an errata slip with each copy pointing out the mistake.
The media committee received a very large number of complaints from British Muslims about a story which appeared in an article entitled “Britain’s Boom Town” in the Sunday Times magazine on July 28. The author of the article said that there was an area of Birmingham which was described by the locals as “Allah’s arse”. We immediately wrote to the editor of the magazine, Robin Morgan, who apologised immediately to the MCB for having overlooked the offensive phrase. He added that: “We will be exercising extra vigilance in future to ensure we do not offend our valued Muslim readers.”
Several of our Muslim correspondents were unhappy with the Daily Mail and the Daily Express continued use of the antiquated spelling “Moslem” in their stories. We wrote to the editors of both newspapers in July and urged them not to unnecessarily antagonise their many thousands of Muslim readers in this way. The Editor of the Daily Express, Chris Williams, agreed with the contents of our letter and actioned the change right away.

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