Fisking LGF

Anyone who has spent any time on Charles Johnson's weblog Little Green Footballs knows that the information disseminated there is at best hyperbolic, at worst outright falsehood. So it comes as no surprise that one of the latest postings, titled 'British Dhimmitude Watch', proved to be another load of hogwash.

Ever eager to smear the Islamic religion and its followers, Charles is also keen to paint Europe as a continent descending into servitude to a 'death cult' (his words) that is slowly infiltrating every aspect of public life. In this example, Charles picks up a post on the website of a certain David Holford, an American teaching religious education in a British school, and claims that

"Religious Education students in Britain must now include the letters "pbuh" ("peace be upon him") in parentheses every time they write the name of Mohammed"

The only evidence he provides, apart from the link to Mr Holford's website, is the scan of a specimen paper from the relevant exam board’s web site which "actually uses Arabic script for the blessing" (shock horror!).

Did CJ bother to verify this story? Did he contact the exam board? Did he speak to Holford or any other RE teachers in Britain about this? Did he bother to read more of the exam paper? No on all counts, because if he had he would have found out that, while the exam papers do put little Arabic 'pbuh's' behind the word Mohammed, they also blank out the 'o' in G-d in the Judaism exam questions. And does the exam board require that teachers make their pupils write 'pbuh' after every instance of Mohammed? No, they don't, and no pupil would get extra marks for doing so.

Finally, what does Mr Holford have to say about all this kerfuffle? Well, having removed the post to which CJ links, Holford now says that

"[T]he underlying information was related to me by a work colleague as being how she was told to inform students in response to my query about this, I have not had an opportunity to check this further with my department or with OCR."

This is to say that Charles Johnson takes the unchecked interpretations of one blogging RE teacher as fact and posts them on his website as an example of Britain falling on its knees before Islam/political correctness (take your pick).

Is this the guy they called Charles 'fact-check' Johnson? Fact-check my ass!

PS: For an insight into the damage done by CJ's ignorance, look at these charming responses to his post on the LGF message board:

#13 bigel 2/14/2005 09:26AM PST

I understand that these same religious students will be made to write the intials (DTTENZJ) after they write the world "Israel".

DTTENZJ = Death To The Evil Neocon Zionazi Joooooooos

#14 Joel 2/14/2005 09:26AM PST

The Prophet Mohammed pig shit be upon him.

#17 trigger girlie 2/14/2005 09:27AM PST

Maybe we should just stop complaining and watch Euro..Eurabia slowly descend into the pits of Islamofascist hell.
To tell the truth, I can't wait for the day to come when we can say: "told you so!" The sooner, the better, and the bigger the impact will be.

#32 doppelganglander 2/14/2005 09:31AM PST

Over my cold dead body would any child of mine conform to this asinine requirement. What's next, making the English girls wear the veil so the Muslim boys won't rape them?

*spit*

#44 zombie 2/14/2005 09:37AM PST

[...] What we've really got to do is get to the bottom of this "exam board." Can some minor bureaucrats really enforce demon-worship nationwide? What kind of madness is this?