Mark Thompson, the director-general of the BBC, told Aaqil Ahmed, the head of religious broadcasting, to “stop talking about this Muslim thing”.
When Aaqil Ahmed became the first Muslim to be the BBC’s head of religious broadcasting, he probably anticipated the controversy that it would cause among some Christians. What he did not expect, however, was that his faith would be an issue with the director-general of the corporation, Mark Thompson.
Ahmed has, though, let it be known that he was told not to discuss his religion by his boss. “Mark Thompson said to me, ‘you must stop talking about this Muslim thing’,” Ahmed disclosed. “I said: ‘You may have noticed, Mark, I’ve never raised it; everybody else raises it.”