Islamabad: The governments of Pakistan, Turkey and Malaysia will launch a BBC type English television channel to highlight the issues of Muslims and fight Islamophobia in the West, according to media reports.
The channel proposal was discussed at a meeting between Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Pakistan premier Imran Khan on the sidelines of the 74th United Nations General Assembly in New York last week.
Taking to Twitter, the prime minister shed further light on the project saying the English language TV Channel will be like BBC which will highlight the issues faced by the Muslim world.
“We felt that many reports about Islam and Muslims were inaccurate, and do not portray what Islam preaches. They label Muslims as terrorists for example, and the world accepts it as the truth when Islam is not a violent religion,” Mahathir said.
“We feel there must be an effort to explain what Islam is so that there is no confusion and it won’t be accused of being a religion that promotes terrorism,” the Malaysian prime minister said.
He said the effort will be spearheaded by the information departments of the three countries without giving the possible date of the channel’s launch.
Under the joint venture, web series and films will be produced to spread knowledge on Islamic history, the News International quoted Khan as saying.
“Mis-perceptions which bring people together against Muslims would be corrected; issue of blasphemy would be properly contextualised; series and films would be produced on Muslim history to educate/inform our own people and the world; Muslims would be given a dedicated media presence,” Khan said.
Speaking of hatred towards Muslims in his address to the UNGA, Khan said Islamophobia had grown apace after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
“There are 1.3 billion Muslims in the world. It is creating a division, he said. “Muslim women wearing Hijab has become an issue in some countries. It started after the 9/11 [attacks].”
He maintained that terrorism had nothing to do with any religion. He said Muslims were being marginalised in Europe.
“We all know marginalisation leads to radicalism,” he said, adding that, “We must address this issue. No religion preaches radicalism.”
Also read: Being a Muslim was never fun in India. State agencies have been misused to target community
If an ex-muslim voice didn’t convince you, I am going let a fellow woman journalist’s story explain what it meant to be prosecuted for thought crimes. In 2006, Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci wrote in The Force of Reason that Europe is already “a colony of islam and Italy an outpost of that province, a stronghold of that colony…In each one of our cities there is a second city, a state within the state, a government within the government. A muslim city, a city ruled by the koran. an islamic expansionism’s stage. The expansionism that no one has ever managed to overcome. No one. Not even the armies of Napoleon.” She suggested that we should study “the stories of burned convents and monasteries, of the profaned churches, of the raped nuns, of the Christian or Jewish women abducted to be locked away in their harems…(and) the crucifixions of Cordoba, the hangings of Granada, the beheadings of Toledo and Barcelona, of Seville and Zamora.”
For her interview with Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s revolutionary leader, she agreed to wear a rob-like chador over her blouse and skirt—then tore off the chador in the ayatollah’s presence to show him what she thought of islam’s oppression of women. muslim pressure groups mounted an intensive effort to silence her by filing multiple law suits against her and the Swiss courts did their best to bully her into submission. At one time, the Swiss government petitioned the Italian government to extradite Fallaci so that she could stand trial. Why Switzerland? “Switzerland (is) where the sons of al Lah are now more numerous and more arrogant than at Mecca,” she explained. “And where in 1995 the Article 261b of the Criminal Code was written for their benefit. (The article allows a muslim immigrant to win any ideological or private lawsuit by invoking religious racism and racial discrimination.)”
islamist groups also sued Fallaci in the French courts, and an Italian judge indicted her on charges of Xenophobia—an indictment that, because of European Union arrest warrant regulations, made the entire continent of Europe unsafe for her. She fled to United States and in late 2006, she returned to her hometown of Florence, Italy, a few days before passing away due to cancer.
Oriana Fallaci story illustrates what those who speak the truth about political islam are up against. The islamists will use the laws and courts of nations to destroy anyone who speaks up—and the courts will eagerly assist in the destruction of the truth tellers.
Sources: 1. Oriana Fallaci, The Force of Reason, Random House, 2006, 25, 35-37. 2. The Third Jihad by Michael Youssef, Tyndale House Publishers, 2019.
I am going to let an ex-muslim woman Hirsi Ali, who once embraced everything islam stood for, including jihad and the desire to see Sharia law obeyed everywhere by everyone illuminate what “islamophobia” means: Here it goes,
‘When India-born British journalist Tunku Varadarajan interviewed Hirsi Ali in 2017 for the Wall Street Journal, he reflected, “I am talking to a woman with multiple fatwas on her head, someone who has a greater chance of meeting a violent end than anyone I’ve met.” Paradoxically, the harshest criticism she receives comes from the secular left. She explains:
For expressing the idea that islamic violence is rooted not in social, economic, or political conditions—or even in theological error—but rather in the FOUNDATIONAL TEXTS of islam itself, I have been denounced as a bigot and an “islamophobe.” I have been silenced, shunned, and shamed. In effect, I have been deemed to be a heretic, not just by muslims—for whom I am already an apostate—but by some Western liberals as well, whose multicultural sensibilities are offended by such “insensitive” pronouncements…
Today, it seems, speaking the truth about islam is a crime. “Hate speech” is the modern term for heresy. And in the present atmosphere, anything that makes muslims feel uncomfortable is branded as “Hate.”
The writer-filmmaker Theo van Gogh who collaborated with Hirsi Ali in 2004 for a ten-minute film called “Submission” was shot dead eight times with a handgun, then stabbed and nearly beheaded. The attacker also pinned a note to van Gogh’s body containing death threats against Hirsi Ali.
Sources:
1. Tunku Varadarajan, “Ayaan hirsi Ali, islam’s Most Eloquent Apostate,” Wall Street Journal, April 7, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/ayaan-hirsi-ali-islams-most-eloquent-apostate-1491590469
2. Hirsi Ali, Heretic, 3
Evelyn Beatrice Hall crafted a statement, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” Good times!
Hypothetically, if the present government institutes legal implications associated with thoughts, words and actions that may be construed as “Modi—phobia”, “BJP—Phobia”, “Hinduvata—Phobia” or “Hindutvawadi—Phobia”, then what will the pseudo liberals write about…
High time to,
Hope these Channels will support the liberation struggle of the Palestinian and Kashmiri people and Highlight past and present atrocities Kashmir.
You left out Uyghurs and Hui muslims of China; Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Shias, Ahmadis, Mohajirs, and Baluchis of Pakistan; Jews and Christians of Saudi Arabia and the Middle-East…Oh! wait..they were already “Cleansed” by peaceful islam, so they don’t matter anymore. Strike them from memory!