West Midlands Police: Looking out for the Islamists

Police have been criticised for taking action against a television programme which exposed how some Islamic preachers use British mosques to spread a message of hatred and segregation.

Broadcasting watchdogs have cleared Channel 4 of wrongdoing over the controversial documentary about Muslim extremism.

The programme featured footage of preachers at a number of mosques, including one who praised the Taliban for murdering British soldiers.

West Midlands police rejected calls to take action against the preachers for stirring up racial hatred – and turned on the film-makers.

Three months ago, the police, backed by the Crown Prosecution Service, made a formal complaint to Ofcom, alleging that the way 50 hours of videotape had been edited was 'distorted'.

But The Mail on Sunday has been told Ofcom has backed Channel 4's claim that the film was fair and has criticised the police response.

Thinking about the actions of the police, who now seem to be firmly mired in the same morass of PC liberalism into which the rest of the public sector has already sunk, I was reminded of this quote, from the beginning of Enoch Powell's so-called "Rivers of Blood" speech:

Above all, people are disposed to mistake predicting troubles for causing troubles and even for desiring troubles: “If only,” they love to think, “if only people wouldn’t talk about it, it probably wouldn’t happen.”

Of course, we have, in the thirty-nine years since those words were spoken, gone beyond the situation Powell described. We now have a situation where problems are not just being predicted, but where they are happening, and where many of those in authority are so desperate to believe that there are no problems, that they fete the very people who are actually causing the problems (or who, indeed, are themselves the problem), while at the same time harassing and persecuting those who have the temerity to point the problems out. This would appear to be the case here: the police, confronted with a truth which, while correct in terms of being factually accurate, is not politically-correct, have chosen to take action, not against the Muslims who incited murder and terrorism, but against those who reported that they were doing so. After all, it would be so much nicer for everyone if Imams were not inciting murder in mosques, that it is simply not nice to point out that, actually, they are doing so. Because for the PC left, a designation which can now fairly be said to include at least the upper echelons of the police force, anything is better than to face the politically-incorrect, but factually accurate, truth.