Crackerjack

The BBC says the corporation has:

... an "unequivocal" commitment to religious broadcasting and... Christians, as the majority UK faith, would remain its central audience.

That must be why they have appointed a Muslim, formerly with Channel 4, as Head of BBC Religious Broadcasting.

The Church of England reacts typically too gently and, probably, too late:

"Many of the Channel 4 programmes concerned with Christianity, in contrast to those featuring other faiths, seem to be of a sensationalist or unduly critical nature," wrote Nigel Holmes, a Synod member... From this point of view it is worrying that the Channel 4 religion and multicultural commissioning editor, Aaqil Ahmed, who is a Muslim, is soon to be responsible for all the religious output from the BBC."

It takes a comedian and former kid's show host to not pull his punches:

Don Maclean... who hosted Good Morning Sunday for 16 years, said the broadcaster was 'keen' on programmes that attack the Christian church... "you don't see any programmes on Anglicanism that don't talk about homosexual clergy and you don't see anything on Roman Catholicism that don't talk about paedophiles. They seem to take the negative angle every time. They don't do that if they're doing programmes on Islam. Programmes on Islam are always supportive.

"I'm not against anybody's right to practise their religion and I think we need to talk sensibly to people who practise the Islamic religion... the last thing we want is war on the streets... we need all the moderate Muslims to stand up and be counted."

He added: 'They're all in private telling you how dreadful they think Islamic terrorism is, but they're not forming together in a group and standing up against it. But it's as big a threat as Nazism was in the 1930s when Germans stood back and didn't stand up against that, and if they had maybe the Second World War wouldn't have started."

-- Nick