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Mark Thompson the Director General of the BBC has admitted Christianity is treated with less sensitivity than other religions because it is “pretty broad shoulders” reports The Telegraph.
Speaking in a wide-ranging interview about faith and broadcasting, Mr Thompson disclosed that producers were faced with the possibilities of “violent threats” instead of normal complaints if they broadcast certain types of satire.
He suggested other faiths had “very close identity with ethnic minorities” and as a result were covered in a more careful way by broadcasters.
“Without question, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms’, is different from, ‘I complain in the strongest possible terms and I am loading my AK47 as I write’,” he said. “This definitely raises the stakes.”
Thompson said Islam was a religion “almost entirely” practised by people who already may feel in other ways “isolated”, “prejudiced against” and who may regard an attack on their religion as “racism by other means”.
Mr Thompson said: “The kind of constraints that most people accept around racial hatred, the fact that it may be in certain forms of expression or certain forms of depiction, may be outlawed because of the way in which they go to racial hatred and potentially the promotion and incitement of racial hatred.”
“I think religion should never receive that level of protection or sensitivity.”
On the other hand Thompson, a church-going Catholic, said that secularists make the mistake of not understanding the nature of blasphemy and how it feels to a believer.
Source
- The Telegraph
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