Islamophonic - Yeah yeah, so I’m gurt slow

I finally got around to listening to this brilliant podcast yesterday. Its a nice antidote to the “Islamic problem” - the problem being why all the Muslims on TV are setting fire to flags or being arrested for not being terrorists. The last two episodes contain some brilliant audio flourishes - including a moment where the presenter was harassed by some unpleasant types for being a woman at a protest, and an intro where she denied having anything to do with the South Yorkshire floods. It also seems to be managing to keep a grip on a the enormous number of muslim groups which have arisen in the last few years or so. Ignore at your peril.

The meaning of hospitality

Here’s a crude journalistic cliché - a dictionary definition:

Hospitality: [hos-pi-tal-i-tee] –noun, plural -ties.
1. the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers.
2. the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.

This word made an interesting appearance on the front page of the Daily Express on July 19, with a picture of some ladies protesting at the trial of the chaps involved in the nasty cartoon demo. Their politics are probably questionable, but what does our hospitality have to do with it? The sentence implies that the newspaper has shown them some kind of pleasantry (hello lovely lady in the Burqa, would you like some tea and biscuits?) already. But it has had a with a history of spewing inflammatory bile against Muslims, with their campaign against the veil a recurring theme. So to assume someone is abusing your hospitality, some should be shown in the first place.

But hold on a second. What if the chapesses shown protesting are, gosh, English, Scottish, or Welsh? The whole sentence implies that hospitality has to be shown because they are guests or strangers. If they are native, then the whole idea that ‘we’ have fallen over backwards to show them a good time in the little old UK is totally patronising and racist. It suggests that its not their country, they are not UK nationals and they are not British enough to not be introduced to ‘our’ ways.

Which means the paper is saying what about Muslims exactly? That they do not have a place in the UK and that they are tredding on our goodness to make them fit? It’s the old ‘well they might be born here but they ain’t British’ mentality shining through. The Express almost gets away with it here because they’re focusing on a rather unpleasant group of people, but it flags up their worldview of race relations pretty well. While most other people acknowledge that you can be non-white, non-Christian and British, the Express has the affront to say you’re a stranger - and do it on the front page.

But it’s OK - it’s just the Express. Only just over 770,000 people read it after all.