A Muslim activist group with links to the Muslim Brotherhood has
asked the British government to restrict the way the British media
reports about Muslims and Islam.
The effort to silence criticism of Islam comes amid an ongoing public inquiry into British press standards following a phone-hacking scandal involving the News of the World and other British newspapers.


The Leveson Inquiry,
established by British Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2011, is
currently considering how to increase government oversight of the
British media.
But in a move that many worry will result in government regulation of
the Internet, Lord Justice Leveson, a British judge who serves as
Chairman of the inquiry, now says he wants to include Internet bloggers into any system of press regulation that he proposes.
Observers say the Leveson Inquiry's effort to regulate blogging,
combined with the Muslim attempt to ban negative reporting about Islam,
poses a clear threat to free speech in Britain.
Appearing before the Leveson Inquiry on January 24, Muslim activist Inayat Bunglawala
said the amount of negative stories about Muslims in Britain is
"demonizing" Islam and fuelling a "false narrative." He called on the
government to do all it can to "ensure a fairer portrayal, a more
balanced portrayal of the faith of Islam" in the British media.
In a separate written submission,
Bunglawala complained about the "enormous impact of coverage that is
proven to be inaccurate, inflammatory, prejudicial and detrimental" to
the representation of Islam in Britain.
He continued: "British Muslims as a social group collectively suffer
from poor media practices, whether this be the excessive attention
granted to fringe Muslim groups, like Muslims Against Crusades, by the
media or poor fact-checking prior to publication. Improving media
practices and media responsibility on portraying and reporting fairly on
Islam and British Muslims, without bias or discrimination or intent to
incite anti-Muslim prejudice, is an urgent concern."
His solution: The British media needs a "more robust system of
self-regulation…one which mandates the right…to challenge
misrepresentations, inaccuracies and false reporting."
Lord Justice Leveson expressed sympathy for Bunglawala's plea and
said that any government regulation of the British media would have to
extend to the Internet and include blogs, so as to ensure a "level playing field" between print and online media.
Lord Hunt, the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission,
a self-regulatory body which deals with complaints about the editorial
content of newspapers and magazines, recently said he is looking into
the idea of regulating bloggers and online publications. According to
him, "at the moment, it [the Internet] is like the Wild West out there.
We need to appoint a sheriff."
Lord Hunt would invite bloggers on current affairs to voluntarily
agree to regulation. They would receive a seal-of-approval rating that
they would lose if complaints against them were repeatedly upheld.
This plan would please Muslim activists such as Bunglawala, who say
they are offended by Islamophobia but have no problems purveying
anti-Semitic rhetoric about Jews, Zionists, Jewish power and the "Tribe of Judah."
Bunglawala, who says he represents mainstream moderate Muslim opinion, is a director of the Muslim Council of Britain,
a self-appointed umbrella group that is closely linked to the Muslim
Brotherhood. He strongly objects to the use of the phrase "Islamic
terrorism" and has described Osama bin Laden as a "freedom fighter for
hundreds of Muslims in Britain."
Bunglawala said the blind Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, was "courageous"
and living out his "calling on Muslims to fulfill their duty to Allah
and to fight against oppression and oppressors everywhere."
In 2010, Bunglawala published an article in the Guardian newspaper entitled, "If We Care about Free Speech, Let these Muslim Speakers In,"
in which he urged the British government to "demonstrate its commitment
to liberal values" by allowing two Muslim "hate preachers" to enter the
United Kingdom.
The late Christopher Hitchens
described Bunglawala this way: "A preposterous and sinister individual
named Inayat Bunglawala, assistant secretary general of the Muslim
Council of Britain and a man with a public record of support for Osama
bin Laden, was made a convener of Blair's task force on extremism
despite his stated belief that the BBC and the rest of the media are
'Zionist controlled.'"
As for the BBC, it already self-regulates
when it comes to reporting on Islam. Consider a recent 700-word article
on the proliferation of honor-based violence in Britain, in which the
BBC failed to mention the words "Muslim," "Islamic" or "Islam" even
once.
A poll of Muslims in Britain
found little support for freedom of speech. Nearly 80% of Muslims in
Britain said that the publishers of the Danish cartoons depicting the
Muslim Mohammed should be prosecuted; 68% said that those who insult
Islam should be prosecuted; and 62% of Muslims in Britain disagree that
freedom of speech should be allowed if it insults and offends religious
groups.
Meanwhile, the European Union
has offered to host the next meeting of the so-called Istanbul Process,
an aggressive effort by Muslim countries to make it an international
crime to criticize Islam.
The Istanbul Process -- its explicit aim is to enshrine in
international law a global ban on all critical scrutiny of Islam and/or
Islamic Sharia law -- is being spearheaded by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), a bloc of 57 Muslim countries.
Based in Saudi Arabia, the OIC has long pressed the European Union
and the United States to impose limits on free speech and expression
about Islam.
But the OIC has now redoubled its efforts and is engaged in a
determined diplomatic offensive to persuade Western democracies to
implement United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) Resolution 16/18,
which calls on all countries to combat "intolerance, negative
stereotyping and stigmatization of … religion and belief." (Analysis of
the OIC's war on free speech can be found here and here.)
Resolution 16/18, which was adopted at HRC headquarters in Geneva in
March 2011, and was recently backed by Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton at the most recent Istanbul Process Conference in Washington in
December, is widely viewed as a significant step forward in OIC efforts
to advance the international legal concept of defaming Islam.http://www.stonegateinstitute.org/2822/british-muslims-negative-reporting-islam