Douglas Murray lays bare the BBC's willingness to protect Islam from any criticism

'The night after the Charlie Hebdo atrocities I was pre-recording a Radio 4 programme. My fellow discussant was a very nice Muslim man who works to 'de-radicalise' extremists. We agreed on nearly everything. But at some point he said that one reason Muslims shouldn't react to such cartoons is that Mohammed never objected to critics. There may be some positive things to be said about Mohammed, but I thought this was pushing things too far and mentioned just one occasion when Mohammed didn't welcome a critic. Asma bint Marwan was a female poetess who mocked the 'Prophet' and who, as a result, Mohammed had killed. It is in the texts. It is not a problem for me. But I can understand why it is a problem for decent Muslims. The moment I said this, my Muslim colleague went berserk. How dare I say this? I replied that it was in the Hadith and had a respectable chain of transmission (an important debate). He said it was a fabrication which he would not allow to stand. The upshot was that he refused to continue unless all mention of this was wiped from the recording. The BBC team agreed and I was left trying to find another way to express the same point. The broadcast had this 'offensive' fact left out. I cannot imagine another religious discussion where this would happen, but it is perfectly normal when discussing Islam.

On that occasion I chose one case, but I could have chosen many others, such as the hundreds of Jews Mohammed beheaded with his own hand. Again, that's in the mainstream Islamic sources. I haven't made it up. It used to be a problem for Muslims to rationalise, but now there are people trying to imitate such behaviour in our societies it has become a problem for all of us, and I don't see why people in the free world should have to lie about what we read in historical texts.'

I've blogged from this Douglas Murray piece before and indeed from others by him. No doubt I'll post more by him in the future too.