Thread: A Question of Question Time

Originally Posted by Monty417

QT appeared to have been engineered to humiliate Griffin. That is my considered opinion, but it made him out to be a victim and the English have a habit of supporting the underdog.

If the comments on the BBC's 'have your say' are anything to go by then your assessment here is spot on.

I only caught the show earlier this evening on BBCi player but was pretty dismayed by what I saw.

The program was rigged as a kangaroo court from the outset and never looked likely to evolve into anything more interesting than a 'we all hate the BNP' circle-jerk.

Straw was frankly pathetic and just couldnt wait to deploy the NuLab tactic of cheap political point scoring. (and I really did enjoy watching him taken down a peg or two by Griffin highlighting his old man as having a LMF).

Warsi was ineffectual and seemed evasive when questioned on civil partnerships (why would that be?).

Greer exceeded my expectations by not referencing Obama Beach every time she spoke,but her repost to Griffins 'Maori' comment had me wondering exactly what she was was supposed to be bringing to the table.(Apart from the obvious).

Huhne came across as a typically lightweight LibDem useful idiot who looked ridiculous as he berated Straw on the governments projected immigration intake.....and then was asked why did his party support the governments stance in the first place.

And then we had Griffin who looked browbeaten from the start (his body language said it all).Hounded,hectored and shouted down from the off,he played the martyr well,and with good reason too in this case.When he did get a chance to talk about immigration he spoke in the sort of direct and impassioned manner that will strike real cords with the BNP demographic.

Searching through all the fallout from the show online I find it incredible that the likes of Peter Hain ect think they got one up on the BNP and Griffin last night.The overwhelming consensus seems to be that Griffin was simply bullied for an hour.

As far as the point of this thread goes I feel that if QT is the flagship political television show in the UK then we realy are a nation of halfwits.Is this really the best the BBC can do?
The QT format certainly has its merits but needs a serious revamp.There is simply not enough time to have any sort of meaningful debate on a show that has five panelists with so many questions taken from the audience.A reduction of panelists might also help to cut out the level of white noise generated on the show.

Politico's are never pressed on issues in a sustained manner and invariably resort to soundbite politics.As this is the case I would like to see
the show extended or limited to two insightful questions per episode.I want to finish watching a show with the feeling that I have actually seen a debate rather than an extended party political broadcast.

And I would also like to see Dimbleby replaced as I think he simply too lightweight to deal with the sort of politico we are saddled with these days.
Andrew Neil would IMHO make a much better chairman if HARDtalk is anything to go by.

Basically QT totally failed to meaningfully explore the immigration question and Griffin,for me,came out of it with the most.
We British never like to see a person bullied and when you start to feel sorry for a member of the BNP you know that something is seriously wrong.

Originally Posted by insert-coin-here

Originally Posted by Monty417

QT appeared to have been engineered to humiliate Griffin. That is my considered opinion, but it made him out to be a victim and the English have a habit of supporting the underdog.

The QT format certainly has its merits but needs a serious revamp.There is simply not enough time to have any sort of meaningful debate on a show that has five panelists with so many questions taken from the audience.A reduction of panelists might also help to cut out the level of white noise generated on the show.

Politico's are never pressed on issues in a sustained manner and invariably resort to soundbite politics.

Here's a radical idea. How about we get an old building, call it 'The Mother of All Parliaments' and perhaps elected, educated representatives could have debates. Perhaps they could actually represent people called 'Constituents' and have debates that actually represent 'Their Constituents' hopes and fears. Or we could just abdicate responsibility to an unelected board of gravytrainers in europe.
I only have one question.
How can I board this mythical gravy train?

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

To many people Islam seems like a racist and religiously intolerant creed:

I think that this is a very important question Steve, and for that reason I would like to try and answer your queries about Islam one by one, but in the interests of time, I will only look at one angle, which is that of people leaving Islam.

This is a complicated question which needs a complicated answer - which is not the kind of thing that our media is good at.

I should explain that I am not really qualified to do this: I am not a Muslim and I am not trained in the science of the Quran and the hadith. However, I have lived and studied in Muslim countries, and been taught by Islamic scholars, as well as having endless discussions with a lot of Muslims, ranging from former mujahideen to people who were Muslim in name only.

I have tried to limit my answers to Muslims living in the UK so that is the country we're concerned about at present.

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

Can Muslims convert to other religions without fear of violence?

Can Muslims renounce Islam without fear of violence?

In my view, the practical, realistic answer to these two questions as of 2009 is 'probably not'. Even though we live in a democratic, mostly secular society, some Muslim communities in the UK are still governed by local traditions and a old-fashioned interpretation of the Islamic rule on apostasy. IMHO a convert would risk suffering violence from his or her family or from others nearby.

This is a problem; and we can't simply wish it away or deny it, as some of the liberal press would do. But - and this is a big big but - in reality, the most public, well-known (to Muslims, not to the media) preachers and scholars have stated that people should not attack someone simply because they leave Islam.

Why do we have this paradox? Well, the traditional penalty for leaving Islam was death. The reason why is that, in the early days of Islam, to renounce Islam was equivalent to treason. If someone renounced Islam, it meant that they had gone over to Muhammad's enemies in Mecca. In effect, this was like capital punishment for treason, just like British law until recently.

But it is more complicated than that, in fact a lot more complicated. The difficulty for non-Muslims in understanding this is that the sharia does not always explicitly fix penalties like the Criminal Justice Act. The Quran does not state that people who leave Islam should be put to death, so we have to rely on the Prophet Muhammad's statements and later legal rulings.

There are wide disagreements about these issues - in fact, it would be easy to find scholars throughout the Muslim world who emphatically state that there is no death penalty for leaving Islam; it is equally easy to find others who advocate whole-heartedly. When they argue, they argue in lawyers' language with extensive quotations from the Quran and earlier legal rulings. This can be hard for outsiders, and easpecially non-Muslims, to understand.

However, what is important to us is not necessarily the fine detail of the legal arguments. It is how British Muslims live their lives on a day-to-day basis. Therefore, the view of the scholars that I have heard most often in the UK - whether in person, on respected Islamic TV, radio and internet outlets - is that, if someone decides to stop being Muslim, it is recognised as a personal choice rather than as an intention to commit treason as in the early days of Islam. Therefore when people leave Islam nowadays, it is not because they intend to join the enemy army - and therefore, leaving Islam should not be punished with violence.

I should say that because of the power of Saudi money, there are many Saudi-published texts still in circulation in the UK. These sometimes give the opposite view - that people leaving Islam should be put to death. However, there is a widespread view that the Saudi form of Islam is incorrect, and even heretical. I have spoken to a lot of young people who advocate the need to train British Muslim scholars to answer these issues, since solutions which might apply in Saudi are not necessarily right for British Muslims.

To give you an idea of how Muslims debate these questions among themselves, I have added a link to Islamonline on apostasy. A lot of traditional scholars dislike people phoning into Islamic TV or radio or asking questions on the internet since they think each case has to be considered very carefully, taking into account centuries of legal judgments, but the fact is that this is how many British Muslims get their information. Any scholar who has a dial-in fatwa session on Peace TV or The Islam Channel gets inundated with calls. The website www.islamonline.net is a very popular version of this phenomenon online.

However, in my view, it is possible that Muslim opinion 'on the ground' has not caught up with the scholars. Apostasy is unthinkable for many Muslims, and would be a source of undying shame for most families. Therefore, it would not be surprising if a Muslim convert tried to get as far away from his or her family as possible. In my view, this is a matter of education - which is best done by Muslim preachers and scholars, since they have the moral authority that the media and the government do not.

It is worth pointing out that the numbers of people leaving Islam in the UK is very small. This may be because Islam is simply a more successful (or is the best!) religion. However it is also possible that 'Islam' has become a badge of identity for some 2nd or 3rd generation Britons without any real engagement with the faith. This is particularly the case since 9/11, when the endless questioning of Islam in the media and in the non-Muslim communities has understandably led many to reaffirm their Islamic identity as a kind of defensive instinct.

The one anomalous exception in my experience is the large Iranian diaspora, based on the Westernised middle and upper classes who fled the 1979 Revolution. Having been exposed to an especially virulent form of political Islam, a very small but noisy minority of the Iranian community in exile tends to criticise much of the traditional teaching of Islam and some have left the faith altogether. Generally living in more affluent and more secular circles than other Muslims, they don't seem to have suffered any reprisals (though I could be wrong about this).

I told you it was complicated.

Originally Posted by hairyarse2

Originally Posted by insert-coin-here

Originally Posted by Monty417

QT appeared to have been engineered to humiliate Griffin. That is my considered opinion, but it made him out to be a victim and the English have a habit of supporting the underdog.

The QT format certainly has its merits but needs a serious revamp.There is simply not enough time to have any sort of meaningful debate on a show that has five panelists with so many questions taken from the audience.A reduction of panelists might also help to cut out the level of white noise generated on the show.

Politico's are never pressed on issues in a sustained manner and invariably resort to soundbite politics.

Here's a radical idea. How about we get an old building, call it 'The Mother of All Parliaments' and perhaps elected, educated representatives could have debates. Perhaps they could actually represent people called 'Constituents' and have debates that actually represent 'Their Constituents' hopes and fears. Or we could just abdicate responsibility to an unelected board of gravytrainers in europe.
I only have one question.
How can I board this mythical gravy train?

Here is our 'mother of all parliments' in all its glory.....

Perhaps we can send this as an instruction video to the Afghan parliment as a heads up to what they can look forward to once we have finished dying to deliver 'democracy' to them.

Originally Posted by Markintime

Originally Posted by All_I_Want

Originally Posted by Markintime

Originally Posted by KGB_resident

Originally Posted by Markintime

If we were being really simplistic, there are 60 million people in the UK and 1 million of them voted for Griffin. Therefore a representative audience of 120 people should have 2 Griffin supporters, it looked like there were between 10 and 15 of them so, in fact, he was over-represented and not ambushed by a pre-selected and hostile audience.

As a mathematician I dare to correct you. BNP had 6.2% on elections to the Europarliament. So as

120*6.2/100=7.44

then no less than 7 BNP supporters should be present.

There were 10-15 supporters so they were over represented then.

Why 10-15, do you KNOW how many there was or are you just guessing?

Why not 6-10 or 15-20?

Did you count them?

What was your estimate then?

(I tried to count the number of people clapping when Griffin had finished speaking, not accurate as there is a very small time frame but I honestly believe the number I quoted as being a fair estimate.)

Well I don't.

Your error margin is 50% of your lowest figure, this to me implies a guess, and as you have stated you only base your figures on the amount of people you thought (if you knew you would give a figure) you saw clapping. Do you not think maybe some of the neutrals may have clapped some of the things he said?

I don't have an estimate as I cannot see how we could possibly even estimate it. However the questions were most definitely nearly all posed to try and make Griffin look a fool.

To chuck this in (and I realise this is very selective reporting)

Clickety click

There could be trouble ahead....?

Thanks for that Yellow Devil – a brilliant post and you certainly know what you’re talking about. I think the long-term key here is we’re just going to have to keep on talking and trying to establish some kind of middle ground and mutual respect. The strange thing is I actually don’t think the current political mainstream tactics (bury your head in the sand and pretend there isn’t a growing problem) are helping things; I think Muslims are feeling patronised and ordinary people are feeling alienated and made to feel like racist outcasts – so maybe more robust honesty and knockabout debate would establish a mutual rapport?

Funnily enough it was Griffin himself who touched on one of the more admirable traits of Islam when he mentioned its fairer and superior (IMHO) banking system, where innocents aren’t bled dry if they fall behind on their payments. One thing that I admire in Islam is its willingness to forgive genuine mistakes e g. if you were a white guy working in an office and foolishly got involved in a fight and convicted of assault, you’d likely be instantly fired and booted out, no matter how unlucky the circumstances. But in an Islamic business they’d all sit round as mature men of the world and probably forgive the guy, if he was genuinely contrite and sorry. They’d say ‘our brother has made a mistake and let’s forgive him, not destroy him further’, whereas in my culture they’d just drop you like a stone. The Army would forgive you too, so I guess that’s a bit like Islam in a way!

Anyway, if I were a Muslim I’d feel a bit aggrieved at all these pompous and self-righteous careerists like Straw claiming to speak for me and my community, when in reality all’s he speaks for is himself. Look at his actions in Iraq, and then call him to account for his deeds, not words. Funnily enough it was Griffin too who said we should stop trying to de-Islamify the Middle East and pointed out that the Conservatives would speedily launch a misbegotten war with Iran, if the American’s beckoned.

I tell you mate but it’s strange; when honest but forthright people (even those whom are diametrically opposed) speak plainly and truthfully, we make a lot more peaceful progress, build a mutual rapport and get to the real issues quicker and more effectively. And when the slippery tongued politicos start waffling on nothing gets done and we all end up disliking each other even more – because nobody respects anybody who can’t speak their own truth or be honest enough to answer a straight question.

According to the News tonight, 22% of people asked would consider voting for the BNP now.

As far as Griffen is concerned, it's job done. It's frightning to think how much oif an impact he might have made had he been a more polished speaker. Because, let's face it, with the exception of Greer, the rest of the panel looked like a second-rate student debating society.

Originally Posted by doc80905

To chuck this in (and I realise this is very selective reporting)

Clickety click

There could be trouble ahead....?

As you say, it depends on how you spin it. Torygraph has gone for the 'boost for Griffin' angle.

You could, alternatively, note that support is 3%, which is a grand upsurge of zero percent since the last poll for the Torygraph. Or, since they got 6% of the vote in the EU elections, you could say (at a push) that their support has halved.

On top of that, the percentage of people who said they had a positive view of the BNP when YouGov did their last poll was 11%. Now it's 9%.

And of the one-in-four (actually, since it's 22%, it isn't one in four) who might, shock, horror, support the BNP, 15% answered it was possible that they might - just as it's possible that I might find myself in the 2012 Olympics team (but really very unlikely), and it was only the remaining 7% who said that they would probably or definitely consider voting - not would probably or definitely cast their vote - for the BNP. Which sounds like we might be talking about the disillusioned Labour supporters who wish to cast a protest vote next time round, a factor noted here by arrsers across the political spectrum.

The actual headline is 'QT appearance does frankly bu&&er all to make BNP more electable and 66% of public say Griffin is an utter chopper', [cynicism] but where's the story in that? [\cynicism]

Originally Posted by insert-coin-here

Here is our 'mother of all parliments' in all its glory.....

Perhaps we can send this as an instruction video to the Afghan parliment as a heads up to what they can look forward to once we have finished dying to deliver 'democracy' to them.

Everyone is blogging about ....

... Question Time and the BNP. I'm not going to.

Much wiser to focus on how we clean up Westminster, tackle uncontrolled immigration and restore meaning to politics. Do that, and I think fewer folk would vote BNP in the first place.

Posted on 23 October 2009 by Douglas Carswell

http://www.talkcarswell.com/


Just had a quick scan through his Blog and it is very 'Right On'
No mention of The EU though, and how its directives force us to have an open border policy. I'll have a closer look in the morning.
I live in a very predominately labour strong hold, the Tories did not even bother contesting the last two local elections, bnp were second, if I want to register a protest vote, who do you reckon I should vote for?


Edied once for clarity.

Originally Posted by Monty417

QT appeared to have been engineered to humiliate Griffin. That is my considered opinion, but it made him out to be a victim and the English have a habit of supporting the underdog.

He is used to speaking at closed BNP meetings, where his weird take on history and anthropology are never questioned. If he rarely exposes himself to public scrutiny, then what does he expect?

The English also know a bumbling fcukwit when they see one.

Originally Posted by Steven_McLaughlin

Yellow Devil, I hope you’re right my friend, I really do, otherwise this beautiful country of ours isn’t going to be a particularly pleasant place to live in, in the years to come.

[...]

We work as ESOL teachers so we see it from all angles. The funny thing is the Turkish immigrant lads are very cheeky and full of fun, desperate to fit in and learn the British ways, but the resident born and bred local Muslims are often rude and downright hostile to anybody but one of their own.

I don’t know what the hell the answer is, but Jesus Christ man it worries me – it really does. There’s something incredibly powerful and potent about Islam that makes all other lifestyles seem puny, pathetic and weak. I’ve got a lot of sympathy for young Muslims because I can see how the religion can grab you for life – like a drug almost. One of my all-time hero’s is Richard Dawkins (a GIANT!) and he’s said in many interviews, that as a scientist and humanitarian, the only thing that gives him sleepless nights is the spread of Islam.

It’s a powerful, powerful thing, but what are we to do about it? How can we bring them round to reason? God I hope we can find a way…

Just seen your further email Steve (took me two hours to reply to the first one ). I'm sure you're right about where you live - I know London much better and I think conditions may be a lot different. But I was trying to suggest that the media haven't picked up on the huge debate within Islam in Britain about exactly the same issues. Like all political/religious debates there are massive differences of opinion - Muslims are just as inclined to fudging, hypocrisy, misunderstandings and hysteria as the rest of us.

The question for us as outsiders is how we deal with it. The answer is - I don't know. But I think I know what we should not do. Repeated insults and attacks on Islam drive Muslims further into a corner, make them less open to dialogue and more inclined to drastic solutions.

Now - and it's getting complicated again - a Muslim as you know may perceive an 'insult' to Islam where none was intended. A traditional scholar would say that he or she should show proper 'good manners' (a very important idea in Islam) and respond carefully and correctly to challenge that insult but without anger or violence. Attacking the Danish embassy or even losing your temper because of some cartoons is profoundly un-Islamic behaviour.

However, we know that not all Muslims in this country or elsewhere can live up to these high ideals. Is it sensible therefore - or good manners on our part - to insult Islam deliberately when we know what the reaction will be? Probably not. However, we should - just like you did in asking these important questions - not hesitate to ask about those aspects of Islam which appear strange or even barbaric to us. It is vital that we ask these questions and not hide them, ignore them or prevaricate - just as mainstream politicians often do. Inevitably some Muslims, whether due to pride or misunderstanding, will take offence - just as some of us would if anyone challenged some of our most basic beliefs.

Nonetheless, I believe if we ask those questions in an understanding and non-judgmental way, we will get the answers. The answers may be incomplete, contradictory and confusing because of the sheer number of Muslim voices - there is no Muslim Pope, there is no Muslim Archbishop of Canterbury who can provide a quick fix.

In among those Muslim voices are the ones that will prevail during the next 50 years. In my view - and this of course is coming from a white, middle-class Protestant living in the South of England - it is more likely that ultimately a more moderate strand of Islam will come out top. But this is not necessarily the voice that we expect. Let us be clear - the vast majority of British Muslims currently believe that: homosexuality is a sin; that Muslim women should not marry non-Muslim men; and that leaving Islam, if not punishable by death, is nonetheless an extremely serious and shameful event. All of these matters are subject to qualification and quite often (and surprisingly) people will live in a way quite different from what their religion dictates. But it is there.

Does this mean the end of Britain as we know it? I don't think so, and that's largely because it seems that an 'indigenous' (!) form of Islam is developing in Britain which is not like Islam in Pakistan or Bangladesh or Turkey. It may take years to reach fruition but it is already clear to me that when you meet a French Muslim they talk about Islam in a peculiarly French way - for example, French Muslims tend not to get upset about the headscarf ban in schools, which is a catastrophe according to British Muslims. Why? Because French Muslims, living in France, have partly picked up the idea that the state is secular and so it seems right to them that state schools should not allow religious clothing.

Similarly in Britain a lot - not all of course - of younger Muslims are talking about Islam in a very British way. It's very distinct if you meet Muslims from Egypt or Syria.

So what might British Islam look like in 20 years' time? Well, one possibility is that it will start to develop its own tradition of scholarship, so that British Muslim scholars will be able to argue with their counterparts in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, interpreting Islam in accordance with British realities not Middle Eastern hypotheticals.

It is possible that Islam will continue to be a vehicle for political aspirations. Islam is often how Muslims talk politics - it provides an extraordinarily powerful language of liberation and hope. I think that you have seen something of that power when you talk about the magnetism of Islam. Very often it is a perspective that non-Muslims don't understand - and which Muslims don't always explain very well.

From our point of view, the crucial fact is that the vast majority of Islamic activism takes place in a very familiar framework - legal protest and engagement in a parliamentary democracy. Activists' groups will campaign alongside traditional British political organisations like trade unions and political parties. This is not just a marriage of convenience - they genuinely have interests in common. Muslim activists will lobby MPs; they were heavily involved in the creation of a new political party (Respect).

Now you and I and most right-thinking people will think the SWP, Tony Benn and George Galloway are bonkers, but the fact that this is the main route that the activists followed in 2001-2003 must be cause for hope. They are joining the British political debate as fully-fledged members of a democracy. They are articulating their Islam 'Britishly' and their Britishness 'Islamically' - there is no contradiction between the two.

Another possibility is that over time, British Muslims will become secular. This is happening already in parts of France, where mixed marriage is common - there was talk in the French papers a while ago of couples sharing 'bacon couscous', which clearly represents an accomodation with the underlying secular traditions of the country. Likewise in the UK some Muslims celebrate the end of Ramadan by going on a massive drinking binge after one month off the booze (this may actually be more common than we think).

However - I would say - don't expect Muslims to stop being Muslim. France has its own context and we have ours. The French tend to force their ideas on their citizens - we don't do that here because, as an earlier poster said, the British don't like being told what to do. The UK has seen a huge revival of interest in Islam, and the foreign-policy issues in the Middle East and debates in the British media encorage people to defend rather than give up their faith.

But - and this is where being British comes in - Muslims in the UK have started describing their Islam in British terms. They talk about human rights, the rights of women, democracy, the need for tolerance, seeking parallels in both traditions and describing how these ideas are Western and Islamic at the same time. You can find precedents for all of these concepts in the Quran and in the very earliest Muslim communities - centuries before the West thought it had discovered them. Now if we can find common ground with the Muslims on these basic ideas - which are universal in my view to all mankind - then we can work together.

There was a scholar once, centuries ago, who said that Islam is like water in a coloured glass. You hold it up to the light and in a red glass, the water appears to be red. In a blue glass, the water looks blue. But it's still the same water, and still the same Islam - but it can be articulated and accommodate itself to different cultures and countries.

Look at the Kenyans, the Malaysians or the Chinese. Not one of peoples was originally Muslim but now you can meet Muslims from each of these countries - and they are all completely different. Do they stop being Kenyan, Malaysian or Chinese? In the same way, the Muslims are becoming British. One day, if we hold that glass up to the light, it may just turn out to be red, white and blue.

Originally Posted by Booty

Originally Posted by Monty417

QT appeared to have been engineered to humiliate Griffin. That is my considered opinion, but it made him out to be a victim and the English have a habit of supporting the underdog.

He is used to speaking at closed BNP meetings, where his weird take on history and anthropology are never questioned. If he rarely exposes himself to public scrutiny, then what does he expect?

The English also know a bumbling fcukwit when they see one.

Really?

Could you throw a bit of light on the last twelve years of Labour misrule then please?

Question Time, and not just last night's, is a load of w4nk.

The BBC continuity announcer should say "And now on BBC1, and hour of that ridiculuous old ponce Dimbleby interrupting people for the purposes of self-aggrandisement"

Last nights farce was a massive early Christmas present for the other members of the panel - no debate on war, MP expenses not being repaid, Fag Mandelson fcuking up the Royal Mail or owt else.

The politicos and the BBC tried to stitch up mouth-breather Griffin, and it backfired on them.



And Jack Straw is a lisping cnut.

Originally Posted by Booty

The English also know a bumbling fcukwit when they see one.

As a Scotsman, I take great delight delight in reminding you that 'The English' as you call them elected a bumbling Scottish fcukwit Bliar for three terms in government.

Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland

What about the outrageous immigration policies nulab have had which have led to the rise of the risible BNP?

New Labour has much to answer for.