An unfair Casualty of the BBC's script police

What's interesting about this story is that it seems to pit the old politically correct Establishment, who won't rock the multicultural boat, against the new young and more sussed programme-makers, who recognise a storyline of consuming relevance.

What a change from the days of Love Thy Neighbour and the outright racist stereotypes that once dominated British media - or so the Right-wing bloggers who've rushed to their tweedy keyboards would have us believe. Now the BBC is dominated by a craven mindset which won't acknowledge the brute fact that, while not all Muslims are Islamist terrorists, all Islamist terrorists are, ipso facto, Muslims. Surely - so the argument goes - with such pusillanimous self-censorship, our society can't combat the dreaded enemy within.

Well, yes and no. I happen to believe the Department was wrong to reject this storyline, but not for those reasons. Or rather: not for the reasons given for those reasons. I don't believe that the objectors to what they call wishy-washy political correctness truly seek an inclusive and tolerant Britain. The real reason they want to see hospital soaps featuring the carnage wreaked by Islamic extremists is that they remain deeply hostile to British Muslims. The Tory party leadership may parrot the same shibboleths of multicultural Britain as the any-colour-as-long-as-it's-Brown Labour Party, but their foot soldiers in the shires remain stubbornly white supremacist. If the failure of David Cameron's A-list proves anything, it's this.

No, the BBC should've let the eponymous casualty department fill up with the victims of an Islamist terror attack, because not to do so is offensive: not to the victims of the 7/7 bombers, not to the Christian moral minority who think their own faith is being challenged by alien sectarians, but to that very majority of British Muslims, who, all parties are agreed, have no time or respect for the jihadists. It's simply patronising to think that British Muslims cannot tell the difference between Casualty and reality. The BBC should take a look instead at the Department of Editorial Guidelines' own dodgy narrative, and probably bring it to a resounding conclusion.