MAIL ONLINE: Britain's leading Islamic TV channel has regularly broadcast demeaning material about women and promoted extremist groups, it was alleged yesterday.
Programmes on the Islam Channel have told women they should not refuse to have sex with their husbands or leave home without their permission, an inquiry by the Islamic think-tank the Quilliam Foundation found.
Women who wear perfume in public have been labelled prostitutes.
The channel has regularly acted as a propaganda platform for Hizb ut-Tahrir, the fundamentalist organisation that Tony Blair wanted to ban after the 2005 London bombings. It has also promoted hate preachers, a report said.
And, the inquiry by the Islamic think tank the Quilliam Foundation found, its broadcasts are also trying to sow hatred between different Muslim groups by promoting a single strand of hardline theology.
The Islam Channel, launched in 2004, is the most watched satellite channel aimed at a Muslim audience and the think tank is now calling for an investigation by regulator Ofcom.
Report author Talal Rajab said: 'Unfortunately during the three month period that we monitored its output, it repeatedly promoted bigoted and reactionary views towards women, non-Muslims and other Muslims who follow different versions of Islam.
'Although the channel does not directly call for terrorist violence, it clearly helps to create an atmosphere in which religiously-sanctioned intolerance and even hatred might be seen as acceptable.'
One programme featured remarks instructing women that 'the idea that a woman, even if married, can refuse relations with her husband because of individual choice was part of the Western culture.'
It was necessary for 'maintaining a strong marriage' that a woman should submit to a man, viewers were told.
Under English law, a husband who forces his wife to have sex is guilty of rape. >>> Steve Doughty | Thursday, March 25, 2010
