DM Digital Fined £105,000 over Speech that Condoned Murder for Blasphemy

THE GUARDIAN: Ofcom says Islamic scholar's remarks were 'likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or to lead to disorder'

A British TV channel has been fined £105,000 after it aired a live lecture by an Islamic scholar who allegedly advocated killing people who insult the prophet Muhammad.

Manchester-based station DM Digital, which describes itself as Britain's most-watched Asian channel, broadcast the one-hour programme in Urdu in October 2011.

The Islamic scholar can be heard telling his audience: "I hail those who made this law [Pakistan's blasphemy law] which states that one who insults the Prophet deserves to be killed – such a person should be eliminated."

Ofcom's English-language translation of his lecture suggest he also told viewers: "If someone takes a step in the love of the Prophet, then this is not terrorism." » | Josh Halliday | Friday, July 05, 2013

Egypt's Islamic TV Extends Reach with New Languages
REUTERS: Egypt's al-Azhar's satellite channel that seeks to promote moderate Islam launched four language services to extend its reach to millions of Muslims worldwide, its designers said on Sunday.

Al-Azhar, one of the oldest seats of Sunni Islamic learning, will target viewers in English, French, Urdu, and Pashto besides its now running Arabic programs, in a renewed effort to further U.S. President Barak Obama's call for greater religious tolerance.

The station was launched to coincide with Obama's visit to Cairo in mid-2009 and his call for better ties between the Muslim world and the United States.

Al-Azhar, whose head is appointed by the state, has traditionally supported the Egyptian government in its campaign against Islamic militants, such as a group that launched an insurgency in Egypt in the 1990s
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"There is a wide open market for religious moderation on the airwaves," said Sheikh Khaled El Gendy, Azhar religious scholar and one of the channel's content developers.

"We are competing with voices of intolerance for the attention and loyalty of young people," Gendy, who hosts a live call-in program for viewers struggling with the interpretation of Islam to seek guidance, said. >>> Dina Zayed, Cairo | Sunday, June 06, 2010

New Dark Age Alert! Islamic TV Show ‘Backed Marital Rape’ and Promotes Extremist Groups, Claims Muslim Think Tank
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

Moderate Islam Takes to the Airwaves
THE MEDIA LINE: A new channel is paving the way for a new generation of Islamic TV.

[Cairo, Egypt] The man on the television appears enraged, talking fast, yelling and demanding Muslims to follow the “right path of faith.” Not too far, at a nearby table, two young Egyptian girls, shrouded in their colorful hijabs – headscarves - watch the white clad sheikh speak. They turn to each other and their glances say it all: this is not what they are looking for in Islamic television.

The café, with its Islamic preachers blaring on most Fridays and often at other times during the week, have become more commonplace in an Egypt growing progressively more conservative by the day, but there are many who are fighting against this current, especially young veiled women.

Heba is a 22-year-old recent college graduate who studied media. She has worn the veil since she was 18-years-old, but these diatribes of elderly preachers is too much, she says, highlighting the growing gulf that exists in Egypt.

“I just don’t like how angry they sound and how judgmental they have become,” she told The Media Line, asking the waiter to change the channel. Her friend Sara nodded in agreement.

Both are part of the growing trend among 20-something Egyptian women looking for a more restrained approach to Islamic television. >>> Joseph Mayton | Monday, September 28, 2009