From Private Eye 1203 Page 8

NEWSNIGHT AND THE MOSQUES
SOMEWHERE in London eight British Muslim researchers have gone to ground; and a far-right Muslim outfit that helped fund the Nazi apologist David Irving wants to know where they are. How did this come about? Because no less an authority than the BBC's Newsnight had unmasked the eight as "zio-con frauds", as the Muslim Public Affairs Committee called them on its web site.

"If you know who they are - please write in and we will expose these men and women for all the Muslim community to see. They worked for over a year on their project, so some Muslims out there must have come into contact with them," wrote the MPAC.

The researchers have an understandable fear that they are about to be "Rushdie-ised" and are furious with the BBC. They offered Newsnight an exclusive preview of a report they had helped the Conservative think-tank Policy Exchange produce on extremism in a minority of British mosques.

The BBC took their work, sat on it while the rest of the media reported its findings, and then just before Christmas devoted 17 minutes of hard-hitting investigative journalism to, er, ignoring extremist literature and doing over Policy Exchange instead.

Newsnight alleged that Policy Exchange or its researchers had forged the receipts which showed you could buy books spewing out hatred of women, Jews, Christians and moderate Muslims in mosques. The researchers utterly deny any forgery; but the implications of the alleged expose were explosive: David Cameron's favourite think-tank was apparently stirring up racial hatred with fraudulent evidence.

Furious Conservatives say they've no option but to sue or to take a dossier on Peter Barron, Newsnight's editor, to the BBC's senior management. Either way, the dispute promises to be one of the most vitriolic of2008, with accusations of racism, bias and incompetence and bad faith from both sides.

For the researchers, however, the implications could be more explosive still; but they can at least see the irony of their position: they are looking over their shoulders to avoid the very extremists Newsnight says they invented.

Sadly for the rest of us, the BBC's belief that there's nothing to worry about looks a tad overoptimistic. As the row deepens and lawyers are briefed, the evidence that Policy Exchange was basically right about the extremist literature available is overwhelming.

Newsnight's killer claim was that its hacks had organised forensic tests which proved that receipts Policy Exchange said it had collected from the Muslim Education Centre in High Wycombe were dubious. When Policy Exchange said that the centre was selling such titles as Women Who Deserve" to go to Hell- for complaining about their husbands and going along with feminist  promoted by Jews and Christians - it clearly couldn't be believed. The BBC stuck by the 2L'::'iL~-m ,-"Yen though the Muslim Education Centre told reporters that the books were ~oosa.;e.

Similarly Newsnight said receipts from the All"'Illnrn,h :\l-lslami Trust in west London were ~.:i,,"'JS. The implication was that Policy Exchange was lying when it said that the works of SayyeJ Qutb, the intellectual father of al-Qaeda 2T:d eYery other supporter of mass murder by suicide bombings, were on sale. Policy Exchange also quoted from a guide for Muslims living in the west which recommended "jihad against the unbelievers and the hypocrites. This kind of Jihad may be by heart, or by abhorring their deeds, by tongue, by finance or by force". A second guide said that Muslims in the west couldn't "stand up to honour a national flag, or a national anthem".

If Newsnight's allegations were correct, the al-Muntada centre should be the innocent victim of a disgraceful smear. But the most basic checks show that it wasn't. At the time the Eye was going to press, the al-Muntada online bookshop was offering both guidebooks - while Sayyed Qutb was at number four in its bestseller list!

It doesn't take much to get Conservatives going about the BBC and the darkest conspiracy theories are doing the rounds. They imagine that liberal broadcasters have an hysterical desire to prove their own commitment to multiiculturalism by besmirching the names of anyone who worries about radical Islam and ignoring anything they say.

Hacks, however, have a more cynical explanation. Somewhat foolishly, as events were to turn out, Policy Exchange gave Newsnight an exclusive preview of its research. The next morning the press covered the report in detail, but because Newsnight had refused to touch it, other branches of BBC News in television and radio didn't cover it either.