Robert Kilroy-Silk, a TV presenter for the BBC and regular columnist for the Sunday Express, has vented ant-Arab and anti-Muslim racism in the newspaper that surpasses even his usual standards of extreme bigotry and ignorance. We must not allow him to get away with it unchallenged.
The commentaries in question, published on January 4, are entitled "We owe Arabs nothing" and "Proving not all men are equal".
Write to:
expressletters@express.co.uk
martin.townsend@express.co.uk (editor)
lorraine.heggessey@bbc.co.uk (BBC One controller)
greg.dyke@bbc.co.uk (BBC Director-General)
alison.sharman@bbc.co.uk (BBC Daytime Television controller)
malcolm.balen@bbc.co.uk (Middle East supervisor)
info@cre.gov.uk (Commission for Racial Equality)
http://www.pcc.org.uk (Press Complaints Commission)
Please Bcc your correspondence to info@arabmediawatch.com.
The commentaries are provided in full below, followed by letters written by Arab Media Watch and the Muslim Council of Britain (these may be updated if necessary):
We owe Arabs nothing
WE ARE told by some of the more hysterical critics of the war on terror that "it is destroying the Arab world". So? Should w e be worried about that? Shouldn't the destruction of the despotic, barbarous and corrupt Arab states and their replacement by democratic governments be a war aim?
After all, the Arab countries are not exactly shining examples of civilisation, are they? Few of them make much contribution to the welfare of the rest of the world.
Indeed, apart from oil - which was discovered, is produced and is paid for by the West - what do they contribute?
Can you think of anything?
Anything really useful? Anything really valuable? Something we really need, could not do without?
No, nor can I. Indeed, the Arab countries put together export less than Finland.
We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really? For liberating the Iraqis?
For subsidising the lifestyles of people in Egypt and Jordan, to name but two, for giving them vast amounts of aid? For providing them with science, medicine, technology and all the other benefits of the West? They should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States.
What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the w ay they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders?
That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, womenrepressors? I don't think the Arab states should start a debate about what is really loathsome.
But why, in any case, should we be concerned that they feel angry and loathe us? The Arab world has not exactly earned our respect, has it?
Iran is a vile, terrorist-supporting regime - part of the axis of evil. So is the Saddam Hussein-supporting Syria. So is Libya. Indeed, most of them chant support for Saddam.
That is to say they support an evil dictator who has gassed hundreds of thousands of their fellow Arabs and tortured and murdered thousands more. How can they do this and expect our respect?
Why do they imagine that only they can feel anger, call people loathsome? It is the equivalent of all the European nations coming out in support of Hitler the moment he was attacked by the US, because he was European, despite the fact that he was attempting to exterminate the Jews - and Arabs.
Moreover, the people who claim we are loathsome are currently threatening our civilian populations with chemical and biological weapons. They are promising to let suicide bombers loose in Western and American cities. They are trying to terrorise us, disrupt our lives.
And then they expect us to be careful of their sensibilities?
We have thousands of asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries living happily in this country on social security.
This shows what their own people think of the Arab regimes, doesn't it? There is not one single British asylum seeker in any Arab country.
That says it all about which country deserves the epithet loathsome.
Proving not all men are equal
THERE could be fewer starker demonstrations of the difference between Britain and the United States and the Arabs than the manner in which they treat their civilians and their dead.
While the Iraqis force their children and civilians to act as human shields, the Americans risk the lives of their soldiers to rescue Arab women stranded on the battlefields.
While the Iraqis - and the Palestinians, and the Algerians, and the Yemenis, and others - force their children and civilians to sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers to kill other children and civilians, the Americans put their lives on the line to rescue a solitary Private Jessica Lynch.
While the Arabs desert their dead soldiers in the desert to be buried with reverence by the Americans, we go to enormous lengths to retrieve every single body.
And we treat them all - every single one - with respect, as we saw with the services on the Ark Royal and the deeply moving ceremony with a full-turn out of the top brass at Brize Norton though, inexplicably, Tony Blair was AWOL. Who says that all cultures are morally equal?
Ms Lorraine Heggessey,
Controller
BBC One
Wood Lane
London
W12 7RJ
Tuesday 6th January, 2003
Dear Ms Heggessey,
For some time now, many British Muslims have been deeply troubled about why the BBC continues to employ Robert Kilroy-Silk in any capacity, let alone in such a high profile position as the morning chat show host on BBC1. It is truly galling to see an Islamophobic presenter like Kilroy enriching himself over a number of years courtesy of a publicly funded body such as the BBC.
Kilroy-Silk is - as you must know - a man who positively revels in airing his anti-Arab and anti-Muslim views. We wonder whether you would consider it proper to give the same kind of prominence to a presenter who was so openly anti-black or anti-Jewish?
Kilroy-Silk writes a weekly column for the Express on Sunday in which he often gives vent to his bigoted and ill-informed ideas about what is happening in the world. In last Sunday's paper he surpassed all his previous efforts and produced a hysterically gratuitous anti-Arab rant.
As you can see in the following extract ("We Owe The Arabs Nothing") from the Express on Sunday (4th January 2004), Kilroy-Silk appears unable (or unwilling) to distinguish between the terrorists who perpetrated the Sept 11 atrocities and the ordinary Arab peoples who constitute a population of over 200 million.
"We're told that the Arabs loathe us. Really???? What do they think we feel about them? That we adore them for the way they murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11??? That we admire them for the cold-blooded killings in Mombasa, Yemen and elsewhere? That we admire them for being suicide bombers, limb-amputators, women-repressors?"
Note that Kilroy doesn't attack the actions of a particular few - but 'the Arabs' as a whole. This seems to be a clear case of indiscriminate generalisation and as such, blatantly racist. The Press Council upheld a complaint against The Sun for publishing similar comments about 'the Arabs' in 1987.
Kilroy also displays a lamentable grasp of geography and history:
"The Arab world has not exactly earned our respect, has it? Iran is a vile, terrorist-supporting regime - part of the axis of evil. So is the Saddam Hussein-supporting Syria. So is Libya. Indeed, most of them chant support for Saddam."
Iran is a largely Farsi-speaking country (not Arab) and heir to an enormously rich civilisation. Kilroy's dismissive remarks Iran and the Arab world are not untypical of the arrogant way he treats anything to do with Islam or Muslims.
In addition, the Iraqi and Syrian regimes have for decades actually been bitter rivals in the region as each country's branch of the Ba'th party tried to project itself as the leader of the Arab world. Moreover, the majority of the Arab public has never hidden its disdain for Saddam Hussein and his brutal rule.
There has been a lot of comment in the press recently about journalists and commentators employed by the BBC who bring the corporation into disrepute by writing opinionated pieces in newspapers.
The Muslim Council of Britain considers Kilroy's remarks quoted above to be ignorant, extremely derogatory and indisputably racist.
In the BBC's Producer's Guidelines, your Chairman, Greg Dyke says "Our audiences rightly expect the highest???ethical standards from the BBC???values such as impartiality, accuracy, fairness, editorial independence and our commitment to appropriate standards of taste and decency" We hope you will agree that Mr Robert Kilroy-Silk has fallen far short of these values and standards.
We now urge the BBC to take urgent and appropriate action on this extremely serious matter to reassure the Muslim and Arab communities in Britain and abroad that the BBC will not in any way accept the contemptible demonisation of entire peoples.
Certainly, if the word 'Jews' was substituted for 'Arabs' in the Kilroy quotes above it seems to us that the BBC would not tolerate any delay before it took substantive action against Kilroy.
For your information, the Muslim Council of Britain is also writing to the Press Complaints Commission about Kilroy's article.
Yours sincerely,
Mr Iqbal Sacranie,
Secretary-General
The Muslim Council of Britain
Boardman House,
64 Broadway,
Stratford,
London E15 1NT
Cc:
Greg Dyke, Director-General, BBC
Alison Sharman, Controller, BBC Daytime Television
Sir, Robert Kilroy-Silk's length, breadth and depth of ignorance is only surpassed by his level of racism (We owe Arabs nothing, Jan. 4th). He seems to have absolutely no historical knowledge of the world whatsoever. He overlooks the fact that most dictators have been backed militarily and politically by the West, and instead enters a fantasy land where he claims the West wants democracy in the Middle East. Perhaps Mr Silk could tell us if such free and democratic states would be free enough to nationalise their oil industries?
He then goes on to further embarass himself by saying that he cannot think of any valuable or useful contribution Arabs have made to the world. How about language, mathematics, medicine or farming?
His racist mantra reaches a peak with "they [Arabs] murdered more than 3,000 civilians on September 11". Are a whole people to be blamed for the crimes of a handful?
As further 'evidence' of Arab unworthiness, Silk then turns to Iran (the fact that Iran is not an Arab state obviously escapes him) and cites the Bush mantra of "axis of evil" as if a mere repition of this religious mumbo-jumbo will have us calling for the bombs to drop. He provides us with further nonsense in the next sentence with a reference to "Saddam Hussein-supporting Syria", a country which was an arch-rival with Iraq until Saddam's fall.
And yet there is more...Silk then claims that there are Arab countries "currently threatening our civilian populations with chemical and biological weapons. They are promising to let suicide bombers loose in Western and American cities. They are trying to terrorise us, disrupt our lives." Perhaps he could share his intelligence sources with us, or the UN and British Intelligence?
Silk then supplies a list of countries where asylum seekers have come from and yet he obviously doesn't notice that most of them are allied with the US.
I can't help but feel that if a columnist made such grossly racist - not to mention ill-informed - remarks against almost any other group of people he or she would, quite rightly, be sacked on the spot.
Yours sincerely,
Benjamin Counsell.
Executive Committee member, Arab Media Watch
London.