Channel 4: The Quran and Dispatches documentaries
August 3rd, 2008Channel 4 recently broadcast two very different documentaries about Islam. Dispatches: “It shouldn’t happen to a Muslim” is a brilliant documentary about how the media has abused their position and published pure lies and have misinformed the public about the Muslims of the UK. It is a real eye opener and I highly recommend everyone to watch it. It’s on Youtube: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eanrFTm6E9Y
On the other hand the other documentary promotes Islamaphobia and division in Islam. It’s a “Mockumentary” in that it’s purpose is to insult and mock the Muslims and the religion of Islam. It is unbelievably biased, highly inaccurate and poorly researched. When a program is simply called “The Quran” you expect it to be about the Quran but Channel 4 have sunk to an all-time low by making it a program that insults Islam and the Muslims. The title is a misnomer.
“The Quran” goes through many different and controversial subjects that have only a slight reference in the Quran but are effectively independent of it. They go through a gazillion incorrect notions and false understandings, misinterpreting the verses of the Quran and hadiths as they go along. They go through historical strife and where the Muslims across the world are at today - divided, poor and struggling - no thanks to western influence.
The 2 hour documentary was a very fragmented program - you could just tell the people who made it had chatted informally with a few “Muslims” (including some extremists and sectarians) and anti-Islamists here and there, done a few Google searches and then decided to make a documentary that managed to fit in all the controversial issues of Islam into the allotted time. It was a geniuinly poor effort. It wasn’t even slightly fair or impartial and it was factually wrong in numerous places.
First, they tried to dig a blade into the divisions of the sects of Islam by producing lies about arguments and the differences between the Shias and the Sunnis. They made the false claim that the Shia accuse the Sunnis of modifying the Quran (tahreef) and taking out the virtues of Ali (AS) from it!! Such a statement is so wrong it’s mind blowing how they could say that! As any educated Muslim knows, the Muslims, whether they are Sunni, Shia, Sufi or whatever, all believe in the same unaltered Quran as was revealed to the Prophet (SAW) and they certainly do not go around accusing the other groups of changing the Quran!
They completely misrepresented the concept of tawassul as a purely Shia practise which is a lie. Most Muslims: Sunni, Shia and Sufis believe in tawassul and accept it as part of Islam, but there is disagreement amongst the Muslims about its exact application however the majority of disagreements are because of lack of understanding of the other party and in recent times, the influence of some groups that completely reject tawassul has caused greater division. Effectively, the tawassul of all the Muslim groups is the same thing no matter if they are Sunni, Shia or Sufi. But yet the show went on a roll and said the Muslims are “fundamentally divided over the issue of tawassul”. Here is a horrendous, highly offensive quote from the film:
“The God the Sunni worship may not be described in human language, nor represented in any art form, for that would be blasphemous. Yet sometimes the human heart yearns for more. For a faith you can touch and feel, for drama, for music, for ceremony, for great stories of sacrifice, pain, martyrdom and salvation and for someone to pray to who has human form Shia Islam answers these needs … But the Qur’an makes it so clear that your prayer should only be directed to God.”
In another scene, having explained the apparent tenets of Shia Islam, the programme asked: “But do these specific beliefs have any substance in the Qur’an? The answer is no.” This is so biased and incorrect that it’s like they got the information about tawassul from a total idiot… an Oxford “intellectual” called Taj Hargey who basically called all Muslims kafirs.
But that wasn’t all. They interviewed several Muslim “scholars”, and here is what these scholars basically said:
One person claimed the Injeel, the book sent to Jesus, was the New Testament of today (a part of the bible), which it is NOT; The modern day bible (NT) was written by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and a few others. But the “scholar” Ajmal Maroor didn’t know this basic fact. In fact, this very person defended the documentary in a later interview!
They had a woman who also claimed to be a “scholar” and she represented the resistant feminists in the Muslim world in that she did not wear a hijab, claiming it is not a part of Islam. This is the typical response we hear from people in denial of their faith and who do not follow the Quran and Sunnah. But yet they had this woman on their panel of notable scholars. This woman does not represent but a very, very small number of Muslims.
Another “scholar” was promoting terrorism and saying the September 11th attack were justified and killing civilians is permissible, which, it is NOT! This Palestinian “scholar” thinks that killing civilians is acceptable in Islam as he justifies it when you can’t get to the soldiers because “they are killing our children”. Pffft.
Finally, leaving the worst till last (how could it get any worse you might be wondering?), they had a “scholar” from Egypt who advocated female circumcision, female genital mutilation! This is not an Islamic practise but this fool tried to make it out that it was! Anyway, while this guy is talking, an appalling video showing the genital mutilation of an African girl of about 10 or 12 with the girl being held down on the floor by two hijab-wearing women. Whilst this poor child screams in pain and begs for mercy, these women rummage under her skirt with a blade. The video ends with the girl’s mother slapping her and accusing her of lying when she said it hurt. The documentary states that 97% of girls in Egypt are circumcised. I seriously doubt that’s true! Anyway, the Egyptian “scholar” claims that Egypt’s women are honorable and chaste and that western women are whores and unchaste because they haven’t been circumcised. Not only is this an grievous insult to normal women across the world, it is an insult to every Muslim woman outside of Egypt and who has not been circumcised. Why on earth did they get such a mad man to appear on the show except to show Islam in a horrible light.
Later on in the documentary they try to shake the foundation that the Quran is perfect, unaltered. They interview a shadowed figure and his assistant about a Yemeni Quran found not long after the death of the Prophet (SAW), perhaps 30 years? This Quran lacks dots and other diacritics so the words in it can have several meanings since a change in a single accent of a word can change the meaning of a word. He goes through a few things he thinks are different between todays Quran and the Yemeni Quran. Any simple Muslim can laugh this off because they differences are based on his opinion claiming that certain words’ meanings stem from the Aramaic origins of the meaning. He says that the Quran mentions grapes instead of Houris which is a well known common joke on the internet that the infidels try to mock the Muslims with. Any Muslim that has read the Quran through (specifically surah 55) knows full well that the houris are not grapes. Further more, whatever claims he makes are pathetic since he is looking at pure text without the context of hadith. A very high number of the revealed verses of the Quran are accompanied by hadiths that explain and clarrify their meaning. His claims of a slightly different interpretation of what happened when the mother of Jesus (PBUH) gave birth to him was also faulty if we put it up against hadith. Even without hadith or diacritics in text, the words were preserved by the huffadh (hundereds of people who learnt the whole Quran by heart). All in all, a faithful, educated Muslim knows that the text of the Quran has been preserved and is perfect and had there been any differences then the different sects of Islam would have different Qurans and there would be many version but yet there is only one version of the Quran in existance from the very beginning of Islam.
It is a real shame that people will defend this program and call it a break-through. It received high ratings from many newspapers (4/5 Metro) and they actually believed what it said! It has left many Muslims angry. In future we wish to see fairer and accurate programs that weren’t researched and made by people who don’t know anything about Islam and we hope they don’t interview extremists, mad men, ignorants or liberals to represent the Muslims.
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