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HI Silverback, 1st time poster... THought this article on Spooks (US title MI-5) might interest you.

BBC in hate race row Jun 10 2003

By Graham Young, Evening Mail

Nearly eight million people tuned into a BBC drama which featured a suicide bombing, despite a graffiti attack on Central Mosque in Birmingham and continued protests from the Muslim community.

A boy blew himself up in a playground at the end of last night’s edition of Spooks which featured a city cleric training youngsters to become suicide bombers.

As the boy prepared to pull a cord, a former Algerian agent trying to dissuade him spotted a soccer shirt beneath his coat.

“Suicide is extreme even for a Villa fan,” he said - before the boy blew them both up.

Controversy has lasted for more than a week because the episode was first screened on digital channel BBC3 last Monday.

Overnight figures show that last night’s episode was watched by nearly eight million viewers. A BBC spokesman said today: “Before the episode was screened we received some 500 calls from people with various concerns ahead of its transmission on BBC1. After the episode was screened the volume of calls reduced and we received 150 calls of complaint.

“These will be analysed in due course but we are not planning to make any further comment.”

The mosque was defaced on Sunday with the slogan “Suicide bombers inside - kill the bombers”.

Following a meeting between TV chiefs and the Muslim Council of Britain yesterday, BBC1 controller Lorraine Heggessey refused to take Spooks off the air.

But she said the corporation would work closer with the Muslim community to improve the way Islam was portrayed on future BBC programmes.

Dr Mohammed Naseem, chairman of Birmingham Central Mosque, branded the BBC as “irresponsible” and claimed the graffiti could be the first in a long line of attacks against local Muslims.

“The decent thing would have been to withdraw the programme,” he said.

Starring Matthew Macfadyen and Keeley Hawes, last night’s episode of the Bafta award-winning series about MI5 featured a terrorist bomber who finds sanctuary in a fictional Birmingham mosque.

In one scene young boys chanted “death to the West” as an undercover agent entered the mosque to investigate a militant mullah. When the MI5 man’s cover is blown he was brutally tortured.

MCB media committee secretary Inayat Bunglawala said the programme was defama-tory against Muslims.

“The main character is an ‘Abu Hamza’ figure who everyone in the local community just accepts.

“That could not be further from what is actually happening in the Muslim community,” he said.

In a letter to Mr Bunglawala last week, Ms Heggessey said the programme was inspired by a true story of an Algerian agent. “We do not believe that the programme reinforces negative stereotypes of British Muslims, nor does it pander to offensive or Islamophobic caricatures.”

Sorry to disagree with you but the baddies have been everybody from the IRA, Al-Quaeda, Left wing Anti Globalists, Ex - KGB and of course the main threat to the UK...France! as well as Anti-Abortionists, It is worth watching all the way to the end. Unlike 24 with its wishy washy PC ending, Spooks goes after everybody, including our American cousins.

Hey, thanks for posting that, and allow me to say that we all appreciate Britain's unwavering friendship during this trial.

Sorry to disagree with you but the baddies have been everybody from the IRA, Al-Quaeda, Left wing Anti Globalists, Ex - KGB and of course the main threat to the UK...France! as well as Anti-Abortionists, It is worth watching all the way to the end. Unlike 24 with its wishy washy PC ending, Spooks goes after everybody, including our American cousins.

You make a good point here, and certainly you've seen more of the show than I have. However, I stand by this statement:

The "pro-life terrorist" is one step away from being a total myth, but terrorism by America's abortion providers costs us 4,500 little kids a day and hundreds of millions have died at the hands of Islamist and socialist/communist terror (IRA is Marxist).

The number of “pro-lifers” who’ve killed doctors in three decades of decriminalized abortion can be counted on one hand, the number of bombers on (IIRC) one finger (two if you count a guy who sent white powder to some clinics), yet media types often pick pro-lifers when they need a strongly motivated, violent figure for a story. I don’t even watch that much TV, and I’ve seen no less than three hospital shows here in the U.S. where the emergency rooms were handling mass casualties from clinic bombings. In every single one of them, some nurse would loudly mention that the clinic also functioned as a pre-natal care center, as if the writers needed the extra effort to get across to the audience that bombing abortion clinics is a bad thing. I think they believe that the folks in middle America hear “clinic bombing” and think, “Goody! Whomp some abortionists for Jesus!”

BTW, what was the one with France as the oppos about?