There's Songs of Praise for the Christians every Sunday. There are special messages from the head Rabbi for Passover and Yom Kippur.
There’s Songs of Praise for the Christians every Sunday. There are special messages from the chief Rabbi for Passover and Yom Kippur.
So why not have prayers for Ramadan?
Channel 4 will screen a three minute chant by Hassen Rasool, a prayer call leader, from the start of Ramadan next Tuesday. Thereafter it will mark the first prayer of each day at 3am before resuming it’s regular schedule.
It will, however, interrupt this schedule for 20 seconds at four other prayer times during the day for the 30 days of Ramadan.
In other words, if you’re watching Channel 4 at 3am your programming will be interrupted for three minutes. Later in the day, you will also lose just over a minute of television.
I can see how that could be quite upsetting.
Some perspective is needed, though.
According to the front page of today’s Sun, the actions of Channel 4 in choosing to broadcast Ramadan could “inflame tension”.
In other words, there are people who are so angry they are going to lose around four minutes of television a day that the peace may be compromised.
And as if the Sun actually wanted to inflame community tensions, the paper follows this by quoting an obnoxious Islamist by the name of Abu Zakariyya – of the Islamic Emergency Defence Group – who wants to see Sharia Law in Britain.
You’d think the Sun was implying that all Muslims who will take part in Ramadan prayers want Sharia Law or something.
In the end Channel 4’s decision is down to a mixture of two things.
Firstly, like the Sun it actually wants to “provoke” the wrong sorts of people for the purposes of publicity, much like when it made the atrocious decision to broadcast an ‘alternative message by the Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – although in the case of the latter it would have been wrong not to be provoked.
There’s also a detectable strain of Islamophilia amongst some half-baked progressives, which Channel 4 seems to epitomise. In polite company Christianity can be cursed to the skies, yet criticism of Islam comes with a risk attached – you may be branded Islamophobic; the implication being that you suffer in some way from colour prejudice.
As George Orwell put it in Notes on Nationalism:
“Almost any English intellectual would be scandalised by the claim that the white races are superior to the coloured, whereas the opposite claim would seem to him unexceptionable even if he disagreed with it.”
Personally I would like to see a lot less religion on television. But that doesn’t mean I’m the sort of person who is going to be “provoked” by four minutes of Muslim prayer each day for a single week. You should probably worry about anyone who is.
29 Responses to “What sort of person would three minutes of Muslim prayer at 3am ‘provoke’?”
Tommy's friend
No it wasn’t, it was established by various means over 2000 years. Islam has not and is alien to this island.
Alex Ross
“foisted”…as in imposed???? Really??
I live in an area of NW London with a substantial Muslim population and Islam has never been “foisted” upon me. Being an atheist is not really that much of a struggle. As for the “marxist philosophies”, are you talking about the two rather forlorn and despondent looking peddlers of the Socialist Worker than stand on Kilburn High Road on a Saturday morning? I’m pretty sure they are not really responsible for much, as much as they’d like to think they were.
Alex Ross
Just like reasoned debate is alien to your racist skull eh!
Tommy's friend
Ooh goody, insults!
You traitorous scumbag.
Bitethehand
“In other words, if you’re watching Channel 4 at 3am your programming will be interrupted for three minutes. Later in the day, you will also lose just over a minute of television.
I can see how that could be quite upsetting.”
But not as upsetting as having to work with someone fasting for 16 hours a day or more.
There’s lots of medical evidence about the damage to both the body and mind a month of fasting causes. And with the latter, not just the mind of the faster, but more significantly those who are obliged to work with and live with him or her.
Anyone who deprives themself of food and drink for sixteen hours a day cannot perform in the same way as they would when eating and drinking normally.
The human body has an evolutionary mechanism that tells it when to eat and drink. Ignoring the signals it provides whether by over or under eating and drinking is abuse, from which both the individual and those around them suffer.
And when this practice is required of children, as teachers report it is, the results are quite devastating.