Islam channel to appeal against Ofcom censure

The Islam Channel is to appeal against Ofcom’s ruling that it broke the regulator’s broadcasting code by advocating marital rape and violence against women.

The media regulator censured the UK-based Islamic-focussed satellite television channel last week for breaching impartiality rules in its programmes on the Middle East conflict, which were broadcast between 2008 and 2009. Ofcom slammed the channel’s five programmes for advocating marital rape, violence against women and for describing women who wore perfume outside of the home as “prostitutes”.

The regulator launched an investigation into Islam Channel programmes in March after the Quilliam Foundation thinktank accused the broadcaster of regularly promoting extremist views and regressive attitudes towards women.

The London-based channel took offence to the Ofcom rulings, saying it will request a review of all five of them. The broadcaster maintains that Ofcom cannot make objective judgements about the broadcaster’s output based on what it describes as the “media frenzy and sensationalist headlines” that surrounded the Quilliam report earlier this year. It accused the Quilliam Foundation of being a “fundamentalist organisation whose corrosive techniques of misinformation” and “junk research” had served to discredit its work. The channel also said “questions must be asked” about the influence of the Quilliam Foundation on the Government