Government Islamophobia adviser calls for film ban
ONE of the people agitating for cinemas to cancel a film accused of “blasphemy” is the Government’s adviser on Islamophobia.
The Cineworld cinema chain was forced to cancel screenings of The Lady of Heaven, about the Prophet Mohammed’s daughter, Fatima, after venues showing the historical epic were picketed by hundreds of Muslims.
One of the figures who lobbied for screenings to be cancelled was Qari Asim, an independent government adviser on Islamophobia, who has branded the film “derogatory”.
The head imam of the Makkah mosque in Leeds, he has backed the protesters and asked cinemas to drop the £12million production, which is at the centre of a free-speech row.
Amid widespread protests, Mr Asim posted an online statement critical of the film, branding it a “disparaging movie” that “caused much pain and hurt to Muslims”. The statement from the imam, and deputy chairman of the Government’s anti-muslim hatred working group, added: “We have been working with many brothers and imams … to liaise with the cinemas.
“As a community, in some places we have been successful and those cinemas will no longer be showing the movie, in other places negotiations are ongoing.”
Mr Asim’s comments, posted on Facebook, appear to contradict the position of fellow government adviser Dame Sara Khan, who this week criticised authorities that failed to resist the protests that forced Cineworld to end UK screenings of the film “to ensure the safety of our staff and customers”. The film’s release on June 3 sparked days of demonstrations in Bradford, Bolton, Birmingham and Sheffield, London and Leeds, as protesters branded the film’s depiction of Islam’s history and early leaders “offensive” and sectarian.
Mr Asim – who has suggested showing pictures of the Prophet should be as socially unacceptable as using the n-word – said: “All agree that the movie is derogatory, and uses sectarian and racist narratives. Freedom of speech is important and all citizens should be able to exercise their freedoms within the law. This movie could potentially fuel hatred, sectarianism and extremism.”
The executive producer of The Lady of Heaven, Malik Shlibak, said the protesters were stoking sectarian tensions by asserting that “only their interpretation is correct”, and accused them of undermining “British values”.
The great majority of British people want to own their home. It is an aspiration bred in the bone, unlike in some countries where renting has long been the norm. But the opportunity to do so has been constrained in recent years by a shortage of houses and a consequent rise in prices, placing a home beyond the reach of many would-be buyers.
The flagship policy of Margaret Thatcher’s first government was the sale of council houses to tenants at a discount, beginning an expansion of ownership that later extended to shares in privatised state utilities.
For the first time, millions of people for whom a home and a stake in capitalism had previously been a pipe dream were part of a property-owning democracy. It was, as a new report from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) observes, one of the most transformative policies of the 20th century, changing lives for the better.
Subsequent Conservative prime ministers have sought to emulate that success, with David Cameron in 2015 proposing that the right to buy should be extended to people wishing to purchase their housing association homes. Now Boris Johnson has revived the idea, to predictable howls of outrage from the Left, which objects to the notion that less well-off people might actually escape the ranks of captured client voters.
The decline in right-to-buy sales and high prices mean that Britain, once the home ownership capital of Europe, now has the fifth lowest rate.
Critics say the right to buy leads to a shortage of social housing, but if the higher-value homes are sold, the money can be ploughed back into building more affordable homes. Moreover, rather than costing the Government money, the CPS calculates that the policy delivers long-term savings for the Treasury of around £140,000 per house sold, largely due to the reduced cost of housing benefit when someone becomes an owner.
Other barriers that need to be addressed include the high deposits first-time buyers need to find even when they are easily able to finance a mortgage. A review of the market is long overdue.
After a bruising week in which he survived a vote of confidence in his leadership, Mr Johnson sees this policy as part of a “reset”, charting a course to see him through the rest of the Parliament. But this must be more than a good idea tossed into a speech and then forgotten about. It needs to be enacted.