The argument between 120 MPs and the BBC wasn’t one between right and wrong. It was a dispute between two wrongs, two facets of political correctness.
The MPs wanted the BBC to drop the term ‘Islamic State’ because the organisation in question is neither Islamic nor a state.
Lord Hall, BBC director-general, refused, saying that an alternative term was ‘pejorative’, and its use would therefore clash with the imperative to “preserve the BBC impartiality”, for which this broadcaster is widely known within its own headquarters.
The debaters have started off on the wrong foot. They don’t seem to realise that the different hymns they are singing are printed on the same sheet.
The politically correct line, preached with equal fervour by both parties, is that Islamic terrorism has nothing to do with Islam.
It just might be that, in addition to the job requirement of toeing the PC line, the Tory MP Rehman Chishti, who led the 120, may have a personal interest in trying to dissociate Islamic terrorism from the religion that so clearly inspires it.
Mr Chishti himself is living proof that not all Muslims go about shooting up Tunisian beaches, cutting off people’s heads or munching on human livers. But it’s a fallacy to extrapolate that, contrary to what they say, those who do such things don’t believe they’re inspired by Islam.
It’s a common mistake not to take villains at their word. In fact, evil men are more trustworthy than good ones. Driven by a satanic force, they’re free of self-doubt, which is why they don’t mind committing their thoughts to paper.
Marx and Engels drew the blueprint of such frankness by lighting up the paths for their Bolshevik and Nazi apostles to follow. One can find it all in Marx’s and Engels’s writings: concentration camps, genocide, democide, the party state, destruction of the family, robbing people of their property – the lot.
The two villains didn’t get the chance to act on their prescriptions, but others did. And they too said in advance what they were going to do.
Lenin honestly wrote that he planned to impose on Russia the dictatorship of a small cadre of ‘professional revolutionaries’ and proceed to annihilate whole classes, professions and religions. No one took him seriously – and yet he did just that.
Hitler’s Mein Kampf described in detail how he planned to combine the solution to the Jewish problem with a conquest of territories east of Germany. Exactly the same effect here: those good Westerners took Hitler’s rants for the same journalistic hyperbole they themselves practised. Surely not, old boy, what? Oh yes.
In the same spirit, Western scribes, themselves mostly socialist, refused to hear the second word in the name of the Nazi party. Yet they called themselves National Socialists because that’s precisely what they were. In fact, the Nazi economic Four-Year Plan is barely distinguishable from Stalin’s Five-Year Plans or indeed Roosevelt’s New Deal.
Similarly, those AK-wielding Muslims honestly declare they do nothing that’s not prescribed by the Koran. Their aim, they explain, is to create a global caliphate by incremental steps, of which the first is to demoralise the West by displays of inhuman cruelty.
By refusing to take them at their word, our media, spearheaded by the BBC, mislead the public. This creates troubled waters in which our spivocratic politicians can then fish, building a duped consensus.
This makes the media aiders and abettors of the crimes Islam is committing, which are only a foretaste of those it’s planning to commit on a vaster scale. So much for the ‘Islamic’ in Isis.
As to the ‘State’ in the same designation, to Muslims a state isn’t always, and never merely, a physical and legal entity. It’s largely a metaphysical concept, uniting, or supposed to unite, all Muslims at a spiritual level. Isis has a good claim to be doing just that.
Any way you look at it, the term ‘Islamic State’ is valid. In a facetious mood, one can also suggest that the urge to kill infidels is a natural Islamic state of mind, thus adding another dimension to the designation.
As to using “pejorative” terms, Dave referred to Isis as “a poisonous death cult”, but he only said so because he propagates, and his audience accepts, the lie that Isis and Islam are unrelated. I wouldn’t use this description as a terminological alternative to Isis, but not because it’s pejorative but because it’s emotionally coloured and imprecise.
And claiming that the BBC is impartial is akin to saying that jackals are vegetarian, snakes walk upright, and Dave Cameron is a conservative.
Just a few years ago Lord Hall’s predecessor Mark Thomson admitted the BBC was guilty of a “massive Left-wing bias”. This was like the leader of a jackal pack admitting to a carnivore bias among his followers.
The BBC unfailingly comes out on the side of every dim-witted leftie cause you can name. About 95 per cent of its staff vote Labour or LibDem, which laudable uniformity isn’t achieved by accident. The corporation runs appointment advertisements exclusively in The Guardian, our leftmost broadsheet.
By insisting on being impartial to Isis, the BBC thus breaks its fine tradition of indulging in leftie propaganda unrestricted by the Royal Charter under which this broadcaster is incorporated.
But never mind the Charter – this stance isn’t only politically motivated but also profoundly immoral. Supporting good against evil isn’t partiality; it’s the fundamental duty of every moral person.
Lord Hall and Mr Chishti should kiss and make up. They must realise they are saying the same thing in different words. What they won’t realise until it’s too late is that every word they utter is a potential nail in the West’s coffin.