Gates Of Vienna points us at some more interesting BBC bias regarding the world’s religions- GCSE Bitesize on Christianity and Islam. The different portrayals couldn’t be more obvious. I won’t just repeat the whole posting here, for obvious reasons (go read it there).
On the Christianity pages, we find descriptions of sexism and racism in Christianity. On the Islam pages there is apologetics and no mention of the dread words sexism or racism, despite the clear sexism in Islam and the widespread hatred of the Jews therein. So while we are told, regarding Christians-
Many people think that the Christian Church is sexist. It does not treat men and women equally.
The teaching of St Paul is often quoted to support the way some churches today treat women. From the extracts below, it would seem that he believed that the role of women was different to that of men, and secondary to it…
Some Christian denominations have recently begun to allow women to be priests or ministers (eg, Church of England and the Methodist church). Some remain opposed to this (eg, the Roman Catholic Church). Some Christians believe that women are second to men, that men should lead and women should follow (see 1 Timothy 2:8–15).So although Christianity teaches that everyone should be equal and should be treated the same, this doesn’t always happen.
etc. On Islam, we get-
Islam also teaches that men and women are equal in the sight of Allah. They are individually accountable for their actions, and will be judged equally by Allah.
However, although men and women are equal, they are not the same. They have different purposes. It is part of Allah’s design and purpose for men and women to have different physical characteristics; likewise it is the duty of a man to provide for the financial needs of his family, and for a woman to look after the home and family.
So Christians are sexist. Muslims merely believe in “different but equal roles”. Christians believe women are secondary. Muslims believe in “differences and responsibilities”. One is portrayed as a cruel discrimination, another as a natural order of things. And this despite much of the Islamic world imposing on women in ways beyond the pale throughout the Judaeo-Christian world. Bias is too weak a word. Have a look through all the pages. The religions are treated entirely differently- there is condemnation of Christianity, and a mysterious absence of such condemnation of Islam. It is a classic of that Gramsci-derived new normal that that which is an evil when perpetrated by the defined Oppressor Class becomes “culturally appropriate” and supported when perpetrated by the Victim Class.
The other striking thing is how appallingly written the whole thing is. It’s like bad wikipedia. So we get the weasel worded
“People sometimes say that discrimination is created when prejudice is combined with power.”
Which people say this? We know the answer of course, being wise students of lefties; post-marxists say this, it’s Gramscian hegemonic theory in which “isms” are class oppression; but here it is weaseled in as a fact, effectively. Then we find that
Many people think that the Christian Church is sexist. It does not treat men and women equally.
Many people? How many? Who? Are they right? Well, the second sentence sorts it out for us. Yes, yes they are right. But the “many people” is jammed in there as a disclaimer. When you’re perpetrating writing so bad that it wouldn’t be tolerated on wikipedia, you’re in trouble as a writer. This is crap.
And what really bugs me to be honest (other than that the BBC are spending the TV poll tax on this shit) is the childish level of the writing in general. These articles are for GCSE students. They’re written for fifteen and sixteen year olds; young adults. Yes, I know that the GCSE replaced the GCE and CSE so that one exam could be taken by everyone from a young Einstein to the borderline retarded, but look at it. Look at it. Short sentences, no big words. Young people of this age are on the cusp of embarking on adult life. They should have a normal adult command of the english language. The only time I’d deploy a style like that used in these articles would be writing for children- eight or nine year olds. It’s Enid Blyton standard. I was quite capable of reading books for adults (no, not that kind, we weren’t a progressive household) by the time I was, ooh, ten at the most. For fuck’s sake, me and my sister could both read by the time we went to school at the age of four, and we came from an ordinary home with ordinary parents, and neither of us are anything other than intellectually somewhere on the average bit of the bell curve.
What have we done to our kids? Really, if this kind of cheesy, childish writing is all the nation’s fifteen year olds can handle, then Britain truly is screwed. It seems that, as a society, we are testing to destruction the hypothesis that if you treat people like idiots, that is what they will be. But then, idiots will believe anything- and that presumably is what our masters want. Either that or it was itself written by one of those people who managed to get a degree in Something Studies whilst avoiding learning how to construct a decent paragraph. Which, come to think of it, is probably the more likely explanation.
It’s funny how times change, I took the RE O’ Level in 1980
as far as I can recall, it was purely about the Judean/Christian mythos, Old and New Teststament. ( I got an ‘A’ in case you were wondering)
I was not taught about any other religions, yet here we are only 29 years later paying dhimmitude , to a so called religion that even as a minority seems to affect every part of daily lives.
It’s a strange old world.
Yup.
The enemy class is biased against Christianity for a number of reasons most of which need to be examined in the light of their ideological underpinnings. Christian beliefs are an older version of the collectivist mental virus. Socialism in this country is often said to owe more to Methodism than Marx though I don’t know whether this is still true. Christianity also stresses individual responsibility and personal salvation which is anathema to the collectivist where only socially sanctioned beliefs can be tolerated. Also Christianity represents a centre of power which is independent of the collective and over which the enemy class considers it has insufficient control. In the end, despite all the hand-wringing and whimpering, the enemy class is interested only in power. Islam, on the other hand is hostile to the traditional values of Western Civilization, a fact which secretly delights the enemy class, so its treatment of women can be ignored or explained away.
It would be a cliche to say that the purpose of education is no longer to impart knowledge but I’ll say it anyway! The purpose of education is to expose children to the correct collectivist ideology. If you teach children to think they might start asking questions. That would never do. The dumbing down is intended to make dissent difficult if not impossible.
Great blog BTW
Bearing in mind the subject matter, I’m inclined to think this is Beeb multiculti-speak: nothing too taxing, syntactically, for you-know-who to have to decipher.
I got O level RE back in 65 or so.
This will tie up two of Ian Bs threads nicely.
To get into Uni you needed maximum amounts of passes, so we took RE as an add on.
We stayed after school for an hour or so, had Gestetnered notes produced, and did the whole course in 3 months, not two years, or 11 years or whatever we are imprisoned in these institutions for.
Oh yes it was all Old Testement even back then. JC was a Johnny upstart!
So no Woolies pix n mix like the kiddies have today!
Now I went to a Grammar School.
You were expected to be able to do that.
And it is the expectation that the Comprehensive system has bred out.
Other than the hope and expectation that we all end up equally dumb!