The identification with Islam by some (non-Muslim) BBC staff seems to grow by the day.
The following is an e-mail exchange (sent to my colleague Melanie Phillips) between a BBC listener and a BBC news executive over the use of the word “Inshallah” by a “star” BBC Middle East reporter on BBC Radio Four’s PM program.
The BBC’s Assistant Editor at Broadcasting House in London strongly defends his reporter’s use of the term “inshallah.”
Subject: Re: Hugh Sykes’s ‘inshallah’
Sent: 25 March 2007 03:09
To: PM Feedback
From: Brian Gilbert
Dear PM,
Did I hear correctly – did Hugh Sykes in his report from Baghdad on Friday 23.3.07 say ‘inshallah’, personally, and not as a quotation? Has he converted to Islam? I think we should know. Or is he using ‘inshallah’ casually as one might the English phrase ‘God willing’ which in contemporary usage has little religious content? Can ‘inshallah’ be so used – drained of religious content? Or does Sykes intend it piously?
It is shocking to hear BBC reporters, who have a duty of impartiality, using religious phrases as their own from faiths they do not in fact share. Is it to become the fashion for non-Muslim reporters (many of whom may be atheists), to say ‘The Prophet, Peace be upon him’? The BBC should be clear to its listeners about this. If there is to be a mouthing of religious phrases in an effort at cultural ingratiation this should be a declared policy, and you should inform your listeners about it.
Yours sincerelyBrian Gilbert
Subject: Re: Hugh Sykes’s ‘inshallah’Date: 27/03/2007 17:40:58 GMT Standard Time
To Brian Gilbert
From: Roger Sawyer
Dear Mr Gilbert,
Thank you for your email. I don’t agree that Hugh’s use of ‘inshallah’ was shocking. As I am sure you are aware, the phrase is used constantly, very often fatalistically, as an expression of hope that a certain course of events comes to pass and is not necessarily religiously loaded. It was not inappropriate for Hugh to use it.
If you wish to take your complaint further, details of how to do so can be found at: www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
Yours sincerely,Roger Sawyer
Assistant Editor
Broadcasting House/PM
Subject: Re: Hugh Sykes’s ‘inshallah’Date: 27/03/2007 21:01:25 GMT Standard Time
To: Roger Sawyer
From: Brian Gilbert
Dear Roger,
When I hear reporters on Al Jazeera using ‘For Jesus Christ’s sake’ or ‘Deo volente’ or ‘Shalom’ I might begin to regard ‘inshallah’ as value neutral. Until then, you’re kidding yourself and your listeners – and poor old sentimental, lugubrious Hugh Sykes has, in the old unfortunate phrase, ‘gone native’ …
SincerelyBrian Gilbert
Subject: Re: Hugh Sykes’s ‘inshallah’Date: 28/03/2007 08:42:09 GMT Standard Time
From: Roger Sawyer
To: Brian Gilbert
Dear Mr Gilbert,
I’ve heard Hugh say ‘Shalom’ to someone during an interview. It’s about empathy and has no more significance than his using ‘bonjour’ in a piece from France. Or indeed, a foreign reporter saying ‘goodbye’ in English, meaning as it does ‘God be with you’.
As I mentioned in my first email, there is a mechanism for you to escalate your complaint.
Yours sincerely,Roger Sawyer
Assistant Editor
Broadcasting House/PM
Subject: Re: Hugh Sykes’s ‘inshallah’Date: 28/03/2007 16:59:30 GMT Standard Time
From: Brian Gilbert
To: Roger Sawyer
Dear Roger,
Thanks for your reply. Empathy is good, although in this case Hugh was not speaking to his Iraqi but to his Radio 4 audience. Let’s hope Al Jazeera’s reporters show similar cultural empathy in their dealings….
Best wishesBrian Gilbert
28/03/07
Dear BBC,
Please find below copies of the e-mails I have exchanged with Roger Sawyer of the PM programme regarding Hugh Sykes’s casual use of ‘inshallah’ in a report to his British audience 23.3.07.
I find it extraordinary that a reporter for the BBC can so casually use ‘inshallah’ as an equivalent for ‘God willing’ or ‘with any luck’ when addressing a British audience. Why should he do this? As a special effort at empathy? You must remember that many of those hoping to kill British and American soldiers, as well as innocent Iraqis, will be using the same expression regularly, and with religious intent. I have heard such fanatics do the same when interviewed by the BBC.
Using ‘inshallah’ to show empathy to Muslim Iraqis is something, I suspect, that is quite lost on Sykes’s British audience, who will not hear it as a simple ‘bonjour’ or ‘goodbye’ as Mr Sawyer asserts, but rather as a devout wish by a believer in Islam.
Sykes’s ‘inshallah’ is an example of cultural cringe, or sycophancy, or simply adopting the psychology of the adversary – a mental strategy well-known in times of stress – but to be avoided, especially when, for example, a young student at Clare College, Cambridge, remains in hiding for fear of his life because he dared crack a joke about Islam in his college paper…
His head will still be on his neck in the months to come, ‘inshallah’!
Yours SincerelyBrian Gilbert