The BBC and Self-Censorship...

The BBC cancels a docu-drama about the 7/7 bombers...

The London Bombers works so well because it's a family drama about intergenerational conflict as well as an account of the largest massacre in Britain since Lockerbie. The BBC captures the claustrophobic milieu of bodybuilding and vigilantism into which the men retreat. The bomb-making in a tiny terraced house becomes a male-bonding ritual in which the members of a cult of death squash each other's doubts.

"How can we keep Muslims off the Tube that day?" asks Abdullah Jamal, the fourth bomber. "They'll go straight to paradise," answers Sidique. "It is quadaa [fate] that they're there. And if it is Allah's wish... [pause ] We need more acetone."

SO PSYCHOLOGICALLY convincing is the portrayal of macho loyalty and the lure of barbarism that viewers can understand how these men turn into mass murderers. Except that they can't and won't understand, because the BBC will not give them the opportunity to understand. This is a review of a drama that was never made.

The reporters convinced the families of three of the four bombers to cooperate. By the end, they agreed that the BBC's account of their sons and brothers' lives and deaths was accurate. Cafolla submitted five versions of the script. He was working up to a final draft when the BBC abandoned the project. The official reason is that the drama didn't make the grade. The script is circulating in samizdat form, which is how it reached Standpoint, and every writer and director who has read it disagrees. As do the journalists. They say that BBC managers did not tell them they were stopping production because their work was substandard but because it was "Islamophobic."

Eh? The defining characteristic of Islamophobic prejudice is the belief that all Muslims are potential terrorists, and yet here, apparently, is the BBC seconding that motion by arguing that a dramatic examination of terrorism would be offensive to all Muslims.

It makes no sense until you understand the moral contortions of the postmodern liberal establishment. In the past few years, the Foreign Office, the Home Office, the West Midlands Police, the liberal press, the Liberal Democrats, the Metropolitan Police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the lord chief justice and the archbishop of Canterbury have either supported ultra-reactionary doctrines or made libelous accusations against the critics of radical Islam. All have sought to prove their liberal tolerance by supporting the most illiberal and intolerant wing of British Islam, and by blocking out the voices of its Muslim and non-Muslim critics as they do it.