Shamefully (and tellingly), the so-called “mainstream” Islamic organizations of Britain have responded to the Channel 4 documentary Undercover Mosque by attacking critics and denying the very obvious problems: Islamic Prejudice, Islamic Denial.

For last week’s “Dispatches” program on Britain’s Channel Four, a reporter with a hidden camera entered Birmingham’s Green Lane mosque (which has won praise from Britain’s Muslim peer, Lord Ahmed) and other leading mosques in Britain. He found they preached Islamic supremacism, hatred of Jews and Christians, and the subjugation of women.

The mosques, of course, are in heavy damage-control mode. A press release at the Green Lane mosque website complains that “it is extremely disappointing but not at all surprising that ‘Dispatches’ has chosen to portray Muslims in the worst possible light. ‘Dispatches’ has opted for sensationalism over substance with total disregard for peaceful community relations.” And not only that: “This so-called ‘undercover’ investigation merely panders to age-old anti-Muslim prejudices by employing the time-honoured tradition of cherry picking statements and presenting them in the most inflammatory manner.”
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The statement doesn’t address the obvious fact that it would be difficult, if not impossible, to cherry-pick statements anywhere near as hateful and inflammatory as those recorded in the Green Lane mosque from proceedings in any Jewish, Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist house of worship.
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Among the statements recorded in the Green Lane mosque were these about women:

* “Allah has created the woman – even if she gets a Ph.D. – deficient. Her intellect is incomplete, deficient. She may be suffering from hormones that will make her emotional. It takes two witnesses of a woman to equal the one witness of the man.”

* “By the age of ten, it becomes an obligation on us to force her to wear hijab, and if she doesn’t wear hijab, we hit her.”

* “Men are in charge of women. Wherever he goes she should follow him, and she shouldn’t be allowed leave the house without his permission.”

Robert Spencer points out that the statements we hear in Undercover Mosque are not really “extreme” at all, but rooted deeply in traditional Islam. And the reactions from groups like MPACUK and the Muslim Council of Britain illustrate that they’re well aware of it.