I agree with your post, Rose.
I’m going to search for the episode you mentioned.

I’d like to see the following question on the show.
Can a religion created by a prophet who carried out acts of rape, pedophilia, mass murder and robbery ever be peaceful?

If your criticism was directed at The Big Questions I would like to make the case for the defence. It’s easy to downplay the fact that it’s actually having these debates in the first place, rather than implying there’s no problem at all. It deals with these thorny problems, many of them centring on Islam, on a regular basis, and it regularly features people like Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, Usama Hasan, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown who serve as staunch liberal/centrist opponents of the conservative Muslim voices who also appear. It’s true that vicious, right-wing jihadi-sympathisers like Raza Nadim, etc. appear on TBQ, but they are always counterposed by liberal, secular voices. You can argue that they shouldn’t be there in the first place but I cannot tell you how illuminating it has been to see people like Nadim and many other so-called ‘moderates’ genuinely taken to task by their TBQ opponents – it is the sole area in British media where Muslim conservatives are pushed on what they actually believe(generally by members of Quilliam, but also by others). No other show or channel is prepared to do so, and it’s not surprising, because time-after-time apparently moderate Muslims are incapable of condemning the most heinous crimes – things like stoning, amputation, killing apostates, etc. The single most daring exploration of what these self-appointed, unelected ‘voices of the community’ often believe was the TBQ ‘Do British Muslims have a problem with apostasy?’ episode from a year or so ago. It’s a brilliant episode – the rawest, most honest, painful debate I’ve ever seen about Islam. The Big Questions does not generally pull its punches when it comes to serious questions about Islam, or religion in general. It doesn’t let sophists and apologists get away with ducking the issue and in Nicky Campbell it has an excellent, calm, no-bullshit host. It’s not perfect but it’s one of the best things on the BBC, and because of its format, and the non-partisan choice of guests, it is rarely cosy or facile when it discusses serious stuff.

Im sure you are right regarding the walkoffs – I couldn’t pick up what they were yelling at the very back with all the interjections and excitement and away from microphone. All the more depressing it was so uniformly one sided.

I just feel the problem is a cultural hangover of philosophy in the West – when science split off from philosophy to leave the latter to the political and ethical sphere, philosophy remained largely metaphysical and obsessed with grand abstractions and grand principles. Sometimes it makes simplistic righteous assertions – like equating human history with the ascendancy of one nation as in Nazism. Sometimes it pretends human affairs are a science that can be equated to mathematics – Marx has lots of little algebra sums equating some grand asserted principle of human behaviour to a formula. Economic rationalists can do so in a different way. Post modernists just pretend Nothing can be known or asserted with confidence – except, conveniently, the evil of Western capitalism and technology, and the goodness of minority anything or anti capitalist anything. Some positivists assume that all thought is predetermined by laws of physics which is stupid. Some things are our choice and our free will and some we have little choice in. Some decisions influenced by unconscious things and some not

Human behaviour and society is just different from science in that it can’t be reduced to maths and it can’t deliver anything like the degree of certainty of science. However we can aim for an assessment of likelihood by various fact gathering methods and consistent argument which doesn’t contradict science, and we can accept that, unlike philosophy, (whether it pretends romantic grandness, mystic absolutism or mathematical rationality) we assess moral situations according to what is possible in the context (not some grand ideal) and always in terms of reducing or not adding to human suffering overall. There is an infinite amount to know – we can only know a tiny amount and much we will probably never be able to significantly affect. Life is uncertain and religion has a place to unify or motivate some people or at some times – but it should not be an all pervasive force governing society or holding society back.
Thus subordination is unacceptable if it is not necessary to efficiently deliver essential services or goods, likewise exploitation. Opportunities for betterment are good. Provision of important goods and services are good. Benefits to the many are better than benefits to the few. A majority losing something relatively minor should sacrifice for a minority if that something would otherwise severely affect the minority in humane and humanist terms. A majority has to be realistic about what can not be sacrificed though, to keep its society functional, and this has to be factored into the equation because sometimes a number of complex things that in themselves do not seem big are in fact very important to the functioning of an advanced society as it depends on interdependent services and technologies and change requires a suite of changes to work. Thus open debate about changes and options and actual import is important – and in polarised ideologies – as with fundamentalist religions – it becomes very hard to have this debate. Also there has to be agreement that humane values are the ultimate value of society – not de facto authoritarianism, mindless hierarchy and the patriarchy which usually goes with this.
Philosophy has spawned ideologies which promise grand ideals not in sync with reality and too abstract to be held to account, and this is being taught in various forms in the humanities. Our culture is being pervaded by the full flowering of the latest (post 1950s) version ideology – critical theory, structuralism and post modernism. We need some alternative to this to be taught in our universities that does not reflect our historic tendency to abstraction and distortion of social issues, and that would counter the false unity people are seeking. We also need to criticise and electorally punish parties which pander to false unity – whether the minoritarian politically correct kind or the right wing nationalist kind. The fact is that Islamism (as opposed to moderate Islam) evolved as a unified system of government and religion in a way Christianity – and other faiths including Hinduism did not. Like hard line Christianity, Islamism is overtly evangelical or supremacist. Another problem is in America Christianity is more hardline than in Europe – due to its history, its position as a hegemon facing other hegemons and the reverence Americans hold for their Constitution (which fragments the political exercise of Majority will and concentrates social identity on national values of capitalism, and religion)

if we pander to extreme and extremely assertive non Christian religion and if (theoretically) the numbers of its practitioners increase substantially over time, there will be a reversion to hard line Christianity in the native population as a defence to stop the trend – and a very unstable and unequal society resulting for the foreseeable generations. Thats not an outcome anyone wants. We need to change our debates and what we are teaching fast.

Regarding the 2 fellas who walked off TBQ at the end of last weeks show, my interpretation was that it was more about the shows constant scrutiny of Islam (which is rightly deserved as far as I’m concerned).

I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but it’s becoming difficult to dismiss that our governments, media and entire social establishment are conspiring towards some kind of united goal to facilitate the darkness of Islam.
When I say “Our” I mean all Western nations.

I’m married to an agnostic Muslim. I’ve witnessed the backwardness of Islam first hand, and I’m afraid for my kids future.

Madden the BBC situation is worse than that. Its pathological pandering to the loudest voices. Even if this is representative of Muslim communities now its not acceptable to have this growing and growing with the encouragement of State media.

The BBC need to define community interest not as absolute multiculturalism and seeing their role as defending minorities against the majority interest – because to have a viable society you need to have a dominant law and culture. As far as Im concerned multiculturalism should mean some accommodation of other cultures so far as they overall accept there is a dominant culture and one law for all and liberal humanist values so trashed by the regressives. Yes we need to criticise – or change – aspects of capitalism vigorously but this equation of all problems as reducible to Western capitalism is utterly pernicious. The reason some of these communities are not as well off as other communities in the west is failure to participate. They have no sympathy for the pre immigration working class either – who the Social Justice Warriors would classify as Bogans.

You need to give Some degree of representation to minorities and defending minorities where theres actual abuse but otherwise uphold the overall values of humanist secular post Enlightenment POST 4 Kingdoms religious wars stability.

I meant “No wonder at the end the moderate Muslim at the back walked out – its just unbelievable!” to correct
“no wonder the moderate islamist the end walked out its just unbelievable!”