Low power community radio licences were a good idea from the radio spectrum regulator Ofcom.  Stations authorised by Ofcom either as permanent stations serving a local community or restricted service licences for special events such as sports events or at arts festivals have augmented the services provided by existing commercial and BBC radio stations on the AM and FM band.
Small scale microbroadcasters usually with a effective radiated transmitter output power of typically 25 w for FM and 20 – 70 watts for AM, can help to serve communities that are geographically isolated or which are not being properly served by other stations or to enhance the experience of those attending special events.  These stations, tiny in comparison to their commericial or BBC neighbours in the RF spectrum, which often have a power of ten kilowatts or more, have also provided valuable experience for those wishing to try for a career in broadcasting, especially those interested in broadcast radio technology.

Community and restricted service radio licences are a great tool for serving areas and communties that may get left out, but community radio licences are a great privilege because the radio spectrum is a finite resource.  Those holding such licences are expected to use them responsibly, to not interfere with the signals of other legitimate stations and not to use the frequencies granted to them for nefarious purposes.

So, what happens when a community radio licence is given out to a bunch of Muslims in the city of Sheffield?  Did they use their licence privileges responsibily, to bring people together or to serve a previously missed out demographic?  What do you think?  Of course they did not.  In fact this station did not merely break the broadcasting code by making a few minor errors such as a bit of unwarned about profanity before the watershed, Iman FM instead broadcast 25 hours of a dead Islamic hate preacher calling for the deaths of non Muslims.  It seems that in Sheffield the local ‘religion of peace’ radio is anything but peaceful.

According to Breitbart, Iman FM has had their licence suspended by the RF regulator Ofcom for broadcasting speeches by  Anwar Al-Awlaki, a notorious Al Qaida recruiter who was killed in a US drone strike in 2011.  Incredibly, in a blatant bit of taqiyya, lying to protect Islam, the management of the station said that they had no idea who Al-Awlaki was or what his background was.  This is clearly a blatant lie by the station managment and so also is the statement by Mohammed Mughal the station’s chief executive that ‘none of us had any idea that the lecture was preaching hatred’.  Pull the other one Mohammed, it’s got bells on.  Has anyone every seen such a transparent falsehood?  How on earth can anyone not know who Al-Awlaki was or what he was involved in?  His features were gracing many a news programme and newspaper and there is very little excuse for anybody, especially the manager of a radio station or anyone involved in programme planning, not knowing who he was.

Even Ofcom themselves say the excuse given by the station management for the broadcast of calls to commit acts of violence against non Muslims was ‘not credible’.  The station has alleged that they didn’t check all the pre recorded material for broadcast due to ‘time restraints’.  Do you smell bullshit?  l do, lots of it, huge great piles of it in fact.

Breitbart said:
A Sheffield-based Muslim radio station has had its license suspended after broadcasting 25 hours of sermons “encouraging and condoning” violence against non-Muslims.
Ofcom investigated Iman FM after a complaint that the radio station had, during Ramadan, aired lectures by Anwar Al-Awlaki, an influential cleric killed by a U.S. drone strike in 2011.
It’s probably really difficult to accidentally broadcast 25 hours of hate preacher.  It’s not the sort of thing that should have gone unnoticed for long.  I can understand a few minuites of the wrong audio source going out or even an hour, but 25 hours?  Was there nobody in the Iman organisation monitoring the signal over the air?  Was there nobody who listened in and called the studio to say ‘woah there, you seem to have a content problem’?   This was such a gross error that the only honest conclusion that can be come to about this story is that the station management or staff, whether in whole or in part, knew exactly what they were doing when they broadcast this hate preacher’s lectures.
What ImanFM put out wasn’t just the words of a person with a conservative view of Islam but instead were words that encouraged violence against non Muslims.

Breitbart in commenting on the Ofcom report added:
The material “amounted to a direct call to action to members of the Muslim community to prepare for and carry out violent action against non-Muslim people,” according to Ofcom, which suspended the community radio station’s license and gave managers 21 days to explain themselves or have the channel shut down.
Ofcom further stated that the cumulative effect of al-Awlaki’s statements in the lectures broadcast would “condone, promote and encourage violent behaviour towards non-Muslim people,” the Sheffield Star reported.
“Further, the lectures appeared to link violent acts of the past with actions that might potentially be taken today,” judged the regulator, taking the view that the content therefore amounted to a call to action which was likely to encourage or incite the commission of crime or lead to disorder.”
The description of the content of the broadcasts given by Ofcom sends chills down the spines of those of us who know the role that radio broadcasts played in the Rwandan genocide.  In that awful tragedy Hutu extremists captured a large audience of Hutus and encouraged them to kill the Tutsi community. The end result of this incitement by radio was 800,000 dead Tutsis.  I see very little difference either in potential effect or in the content of this hate preacher’s words broadcast by Iman FM and the Hutu radio station telling the Tutsis that ‘their graves are not yet full’.  This action by Iman FM doesn’t look like an error, it looks like a deliberate act.  When even Ofcom are saying that this station’s excuse is not credible then this must look to them as it does to others like a deliberate rather than an accidental broadcast.  At best it’s shoddy station managment at worst it’s wilful dissemination of terror material.

It’s interesting to compare the sort of stuff that Iman FM was obviously allowed to get away with for far too long and how eager the authorities are to shut down any criticism of Islam even when such criticism is plainly not inciting violence.  I can’t help but wonder what else, what other incitements to violence and to hatred, Iman FM have been pumping out  since 2014?

Ofcom were correct to suspend the licence of this station although the Ofcom website inexclicably doesn’t show a licence suspension.  Because of the nature of the licence breach and the fact that an Al Qaida hate preacher has been given 25 hours of airtime this suspension of Imans licence needs to be made permanent and if they do not do this then Ofcom really have some questions to answer.

This precious bit of frequency in the RF spectrum could have been used for so many more constructive purposes than merely be used for Muslims to pump out Christian hating, Jew hating, gay hating and freedom hating crap.   Iman FM have taken the piss out of their broadcast privileges, taken the piss out of Ofcom by uttering such obvious falsehoods in mitigation and taken the piss out of the good will of non Muslim Britons who this station incited violence against.

If Iman FM get their broadcast licence back then it is even more evidence of a monstrous double standard in public administration. This is because we all know that if a licenced non Muslim community radio station put out stuff that was even 5% as bad as what Iman FM put out, then it would be shut down immediately.

I’m pretty sure that Ofcom could find groups in the Sheffield area that are far more deserving than Iman FM to occupy the 101.3 MHz frequency, groups who could put this resource to much better and more positive use.

Links

Breitbart story on Iman FM
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/07/08/radio-urging-violence-non-muslims/
Ofcom coverage data and basic information for Iman FM
http://static.ofcom.org.uk/static/radiolicensing/html/radio-stations/community/cr100152ba1imanfm.htm
Ofcom analogue radio coverage policy
https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/54621/analogue-coverage-policy.pdf
OFCOM failing to deal with the proliferation of illegal ‘ethnic’ stations in London broadcasting who knows what in languages other than English
https://www.fahrenheit211.net/2014/10/21/ofcom-have-the-lost-control-of-the-fm-band-in-london-or-is-political-correctness-influencing-frequency-policing/