By Chris Cobb
Radio host Lowell Green contravened Canadian broadcasting standards when he made "abusive and discriminatory" remarks against Muslims, the national broadcast watchdog ruled yesterday.
According to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), Mr. Green launched an "uninformed and unfair" attack when he told his CFRA audience in early December that the majority of Muslims are fanatics and extremist behaviour is symptomatic of the religion, not just a radical minority.
Mr. Green, the self-styled occupier of a mythical "Island of Sanity," had been inspired by the story of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons whose elementary class in the Sudanese capital Khartoum named a class teddy bear "Muhammad" and caused a storm of outrage across the Muslim world.
Ms. Gibbons was forced to leave the country after being threatened with imprisonment and death.
Mr. Green posed the question to listeners: "Is there something inherent in the Muslim faith that promotes violence and oppression of women?"
In response to one Muslim caller who tried to defend Islam, Mr. Green responded "baloney" and during another call told the sympathetic, but apparently non-Muslim, caller she had "abandoned common sense" and was being "silly." Read more ...
Transcript:
It is not the work of just a few radicals. If I hear one more person claiming that this is just the work of a few radicals and it’s got nothing to do with Islam or the Muslim faith, I’m going to throw up! Let’s be brutally frank, can we? Okay? Come on. Almost every act of terrorism around the world today – and there are hundreds every week – is carried out in the name of Islam. Almost every outrage, from a Saudi woman sentenced to two hundred lashes for the crime of being in a car with a man to the teddy bear incident, the Danish cartoons, more than a hundred and twenty French police injured in widespread rioting in France, all carried out in the name of? Islam. Don’t tell me this is the work of a few fanatics. Thousands marched in Khartoum demanding the British school teacher be killed. Tens of thousands protested the Danish cartoons. More than a hundred were killed in that. Thousands of mostly young Muslims rioting, burning, looting in France today. And let’s be brutally frank once again. It’s obvious -- it’s gotta be obvious -- that the terrible oppression of women seen throughout the Muslim world has widespread support. What is happening clearly is not just the work of a few fanatics. In your opinion, is much of what is happening the work of a few fanatics? Or is there something in the Muslim faith itself which promotes, which mitigates against freedom, democracy and equal rights? [...] Well, is it only the work of a few fanatics, the widespread oppression, the lack of democracy and freedom and equal rights and freedom of the press in almost every Muslim world or every Muslim country that you can think of? Seems to me that, with one exception and that would be Turkey, every Muslim nation on Earth, serious oppression against women, lack of freedom, lack of democracy and, in many cases, lack of very much equality for anybody. Read more ...
Radio host Lowell Green contravened Canadian broadcasting standards when he made "abusive and discriminatory" remarks against Muslims, the national broadcast watchdog ruled yesterday.
According to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC), Mr. Green launched an "uninformed and unfair" attack when he told his CFRA audience in early December that the majority of Muslims are fanatics and extremist behaviour is symptomatic of the religion, not just a radical minority.
Mr. Green, the self-styled occupier of a mythical "Island of Sanity," had been inspired by the story of British schoolteacher Gillian Gibbons whose elementary class in the Sudanese capital Khartoum named a class teddy bear "Muhammad" and caused a storm of outrage across the Muslim world.
Ms. Gibbons was forced to leave the country after being threatened with imprisonment and death.
Mr. Green posed the question to listeners: "Is there something inherent in the Muslim faith that promotes violence and oppression of women?"
In response to one Muslim caller who tried to defend Islam, Mr. Green responded "baloney" and during another call told the sympathetic, but apparently non-Muslim, caller she had "abandoned common sense" and was being "silly." Read more ...
Transcript:
It is not the work of just a few radicals. If I hear one more person claiming that this is just the work of a few radicals and it’s got nothing to do with Islam or the Muslim faith, I’m going to throw up! Let’s be brutally frank, can we? Okay? Come on. Almost every act of terrorism around the world today – and there are hundreds every week – is carried out in the name of Islam. Almost every outrage, from a Saudi woman sentenced to two hundred lashes for the crime of being in a car with a man to the teddy bear incident, the Danish cartoons, more than a hundred and twenty French police injured in widespread rioting in France, all carried out in the name of? Islam. Don’t tell me this is the work of a few fanatics. Thousands marched in Khartoum demanding the British school teacher be killed. Tens of thousands protested the Danish cartoons. More than a hundred were killed in that. Thousands of mostly young Muslims rioting, burning, looting in France today. And let’s be brutally frank once again. It’s obvious -- it’s gotta be obvious -- that the terrible oppression of women seen throughout the Muslim world has widespread support. What is happening clearly is not just the work of a few fanatics. In your opinion, is much of what is happening the work of a few fanatics? Or is there something in the Muslim faith itself which promotes, which mitigates against freedom, democracy and equal rights? [...] Well, is it only the work of a few fanatics, the widespread oppression, the lack of democracy and freedom and equal rights and freedom of the press in almost every Muslim world or every Muslim country that you can think of? Seems to me that, with one exception and that would be Turkey, every Muslim nation on Earth, serious oppression against women, lack of freedom, lack of democracy and, in many cases, lack of very much equality for anybody. Read more ...
Source: The Ottawa Citizen
Mr. Greens conclusions correspond with results of our polls.
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