A ban on minarets may seem racist to the BBC, says Rod Liddle, but in fact we should applaud any small battle won in the people’s war against the growing ‘Islamification’ of Europe
Here’s a very short and simple pre-Christmas quiz to get you into the swing of Christmas quizzes, as they will soon be taking up almost every page of your morning newspapers. A few years ago, Angus Roxburgh — one of the BBC’s chief Europe correspondents, based in Brussels — wrote a book about the rise of right-wing or libertarian parties on the Continent. He was referring to the success of the late and decidedly liberal Pim Fortuyn in Holland, the strength of the Flemish nationalists Vlaams Blok in Flanders, the Front National in France and so on. Now, all you have to do is answer the following simple question, bearing in mind the requirement for Angus, as an important public service broadcaster, to be neutral and objective in all matters. The question is this: did Angus title his book a) A Cool, Detached and Objective Assessment of the Rise of Right-Wing and Libertarian Parties in Europe, or b) Preachers of Hate?
Aww, you got it straightaway, didn’t you? As a supplementary question I might ask if you think the BBC was at all worried about this and thought it a transgression of its public service remit, but I reckon you’d find that question a doddle too. Move forward seven years or so and we have the BBC’s reaction to the referendum in which 57 per cent of Swiss people voted to ban the building of any more minarets in their country. This was, according to someone called Roger Hardy, the corporation’s ‘Islamic Affairs Analyst’ an example of European ‘Islamophobia’ and sent a signal to Switzerland’s Muslims that they simply were not wanted in the country.
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