This blog has carried several stories recently about how the courts seem to be imposing sentences on Muslim criminals that seem to be rather too lenient for the crime. These stories include a Muslim who phoned in a bomb threat to a primary school and who got a non custodial sentence, along with a serial sex offender, in this case an illegal migrant Muslim, who although technically gaoled for life, could be back on the streets within six years or less.

But, it is not only the courts who are handing out lenient punishments to Muslims, punishments that would probably be much more severe if the offender had been a non-Muslim, Britain’s radio frequency spectrum authority Ofcom seems to be doing this as well. Ofcom have recently imposed a ludicrously lenient punishment, £2,000, on a Nottingham-based Islamic community radio station for breaching broadcast regulations pertaining to inciting hatred and ‘hate speech’. Radio Dawn, currently occupying the 107.6MHz spot in the Nottingham area, broadcast a hymn of praise for the Taliban and also permitted a broadcast to be made that encouraged Muslims to ‘gain honour’ for Islam by ‘killing non-Muslims’.

This punishment strikes me as being extremely light bearing in mind not only what was broadcast but also because Radio Dawn have come to the attention of Ofcom in the past. This was not on that occasion for encouraging Islamic violence, but for dishing out potentially dangerous medical advice to its listeners. When both these failures of management are taken into consideration it looks more and more reasonable to consider Radio Dawn to be a group unfit to hold a broadcast licence, even a low power 25 Watt one such as they are presumably using. Radio Dawn should have known to be careful with issuing the sort of dodgy and dangerous medical advice to its listeners that they should stay away from non-Muslim doctors while fasting, as the non-Muslim doctor may tell them to stop fasting. The clown giving out this ‘advice’ on Radio Dawn was not a medical professional but instead a non medically qualified Islamic religious scholar.

This, on top of broadcasting 17 minutes of pro-Taliban praise and broadcasting calls for ‘deaths to the infidel’ should quite rightly and reasonably have seen Radio Dawn lose their licence at the very least. That they have not been banned from the public airwaves is both worrying and scandalous. It is quite possible that Ofcom managers, anxious to polish their diversity halos, gave Radio Dawn one chance too many in order to be seen as ‘diversity friendly’. There is also the possibility that whining and taqiyya from Nottingham’s Muslims and those involved in Radio Dawn, concerned that they may lose their Dawa (Islamic evangelism) station, may also have influenced Ofcom’s ridiculous decision.

Another thing that is troubling about this decision by Ofcom, is that it is not as if Ofcom do not have wide-ranging powers with which to deal with those who use the RF spectrum for illegal purposes, they do, they have a lot of power. They can bring cases before the courts where large fines and prison terms of up to 12 months can be imposed for offences such as illegal broadcasting. Ofcom also has the power to impose stringent financial penalties on broadcasters as an incentive to improve their standards. But very few of Ofcom’s many powers to penalise broadcasters were used against Radio Dawn despite their lackadaisical way of obeying the broadcast regulations. There has been no court case, no station shutdown, and no additional restrictions imposed on Radio Dawn despite this station seeming to be thoroughly dodgy at worst and unprofessional at best. In effect, Radio Dawn have been hit with such a small and insignificant penalty that it could probably be funded by a whip round in the mosque on one Friday night. £2,000 is a meaningless non-penalty to impose on Radio Dawn.

This smells a little bit like Ofcom having a bit of a double standard issue when it comes to Islamic community radio stations. A lot of them seem to end up attracting the sort of complaints that Radio Dawn has had. Another Islamic station, one that Ofcom did shut down, broadcast 25 hours of an Al Qaida linked Islamic preacher. Ofcom have licensed a number of Islamic community radio stations over the last decade and too many of them have taken the piss out of Ofcom and the rest of us by abusing their broadcast privileges to incite hatred for non Muslims or encourage ghettoisation and hostility to others.

Some of these Islamic community radio stations are a complete waste of spectrum that could have been used for something much more worthwhile than encouraging people to turn to Islam, promoting hostile separatism and even giving encouragement to murderers. I must admit that I am pretty disgusted by the leniency with which Radio Dawn have been treated. If it was you or I as non-Muslims who held broadcast licences and behaved with just a fraction of the piss poor way that Radio Dawn have behaved, then any licences that we held would most surely be revoked. Why not in this case?

Ofcom really do need to get to grips with the problems surrounding Islamic community radio stations. Although some may be entirely innocent, Ofcom would be foolish to deny that Islamic community radio stations may also be being used as vehicles to promote religious extremism. Sadly, by dishing out such a lenient fine to a station that deserved greater punishment, Ofcom are not sending a message to extremists that they should back off with the Islamic religious hatred, but instead are telling these extremists that if they are caught misbehaving then they will be to all intents and purposes, let off with a slap on the wrist.