‘Range of Muslim views absent from British media’

Friday, 21 November 2008 17:08

Dorothy Byrne, head of Channel 4 news and current affairs, at a session on the representation of Islam in the British media at the News Xchange 2008 conference said that the British media doesn’t represent the breadth of Muslims views in the UK and that its making sweeping generalizations on Islam was ‘not at all helpful’.

Byrne said that the media’s use of a few individuals and organisations didn’t do justice to the variety of views held by British Muslims or the ethnic diversity of Muslims in Britain.

Byrne argues that the MCB was, according to a C4 poll, representative of only 11% of the British Muslim population. There is no mention of the representativeness of other Muslim organisations used by the media to represent Muslim opinion, for example, the Sufi Muslim Council or the Quilliam Foundation.

The figure on the relevance of the MCB as representative of British Muslim opinion is misleading since the MCB doesn’t claim to represent British Muslims at all. The MCB is an umbrella body of Muslim organisations in the UK and has always clearly stated that it speaks only for those that are affiliated to it.

Furthermore, the figure quoted can only really be appreciated in comparative perspective. Though the MCB is backed by 11%, is this figure greater or lesser than the numbers that back the other organisations?

And on issues that have galvanized Muslims in recent years, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, anti Muslim prejudice and discrimination and anti terror legislation, the MCB has shown itself to be much closer to the views of British Muslims than some of the other organisations the media uses.

ENGAGE was created in part to address the paucity of Muslim voices in the media recognizing that our democracy is all the poorer for the lack of such voices. ENGAGE is working to increase the number of Muslims writing, speaking and participating in the institutions and forums that shape our public debates and our political and social lives so that British Muslim opinion is both more adequately and more fairly represented.

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wendy mann

|2008-11-23 18:55:53

and yet channel 4 has actively contributed to the demonisation and misrepresentation of muslims and islam.

in fact if one understands the nature of their broadcasts it would appear that neo conservatives best represent muslims .

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