Is the BBC evil or just very, very stupid? In an item on BBC TV’s Newsnight last night dealing with what drove young Muslim men into terrorism, Dr Azam Tamimi was given several minutes of broadcasting time to make a film on this topic which he narrated, thus placing him in a quite different and much more authoritative position than a mere interviewee. This is a privilege television programmes give to very few people. He used it by not merely trotting out the usual morally bankrupt argument that a major factor was British foreign policy – complete with an implicit threat in his pay-off line that unless this policy was changed there would be more such attacks – but divested himself of such pieties as:

‘The Muslim community must combat extremism and the ideology of hate that equates innocence with guilt.’

This was simply astounding. For Dr Tamimi is no moderate. He is a leading light in the Muslim Association of Britain, which is the voice in the UK of the Muslim Brotherhood, the sect which is banned in Egypt on account of its extremism and which has been a major influence in promoting the murderous global jihad. What’s more Dr Tamimi, who has said he is a supporter of Hamas, has also said he supports suicide bombings against Israelis – the very slaughter of the innocents he so piously said he abhorred. Yet Newsnight gave him precious air time to take its viewers for a ride.

What’s more, it knew perfectly well what he was. For in the studio discussion afterwards, presenter Gavin Esler finally challenged him on his support for murdering Israelis and accused him of hypocrisy – thus giving him a further platform to demonise the country against which he supports terrorism. In addition, his fellow interviewees were a man from the extreme and venomous Muslim Public Affairs Committee who – surprise surprise -- said he ‘couldn’t agree more’ with Tamimi’s view that it was right and proper for Palestinians to murder Israelis, and a man from the UK Council of Mosques, who did not dissent.

Why are we paying a licence fee to be turned into accessories to a justification of mass murder?