On it shouldn't happen to a Muslim

I have just watched Peter Oborne's documentary It shouldn't happen to a Muslim which appeared on Channel 4 last night.

The first half of the show looked at Islamophobia in the national press and the usual suspects of the Express,Mail and Sun were heavily refer ed to.

One of the most remarkable pieces in it was a scene in a shopping mall when he showed some members of the public headlines that had appeared in the papers such as Muslims tell us how to make our laws and substituted "Jews" or Blacks.

Showing these provoked reactions of horror from the public saying that it was racist or it was reminiscent of the Holocaust.When he then showed the real headline putting in the word Muslim,the consensus changed,the horror was no longer there and it was felt that it was simply a sign of the times.

It was interesting that he read from a piece in a London newspaper in 1911 which refereed to the Jews being Eastern European and unable to inegrate into British society.

The programme drew on a study from Cardiff School of journalism which looked at the trends of Muslim reporting between 2000-2008 which showed that there had been a trend to more stories on Muslims off the back of 9/11 but that in recent years,there was an increasing importance on the stories focusing on cultural and religious differences between Muslims and Christians rather than terrorism or related stories.