Islam Channel is planning to appeal against Ofcom’s ruling that the satellite TV network breached the regulator’s broadcasting code for advocating marital rape and violence against women.
Five programmes broadcast on the London-based Islam Channel between 2008 and 2009 were in breach of Ofcom’s broadcasting code, the regulator ruled last week.
Islam Channel was censured for breaching impartiality rules in programmes on the Middle East conflict and for programmes appearing to advocate marital rape, violence against women and describing women who wore perfume outside of the home as “prostitutes”.
Ofcom launched its investigation into Islam Channel programmes in March, following a report by the Quilliam Foundation thinktank accusing the broadcaster of regularly promoting extremist views and regressive attitudes towards women.
The Islam Channel today said it will request a review of all five Ofcom rulings, claiming it must have been “particularly difficult” for the regulator to make an objective judgment about the broadcaster’s output given the “media frenzy and sensationalist headlines” that surrounded the Quilliam report earlier this year.
Islam Channel claimed in a statement that it was “no stranger to attacks from those who wish to discredit and undermine those of influence in the Muslim community”.
The broadcaster cited the Quilliam Foundation as one of its chief attackers, accusing the thinktank of being a “fundamentalist organisation whose corrosive techniques of misinformation” and “junk research” had served to discredit its work.