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BBC forced to removed 'bastard' slur about Jesus from its website
Last updated at 21:52pm on 18.08.07The BBC has been forced to remove statements from its website referring to Jesus as a 'bastard'.
It is the latest in a string of offensive comments that BBC editors have allowed members of the public to post.
The remarks have been allowed to remain for weeks, despite complaints from religious groups.
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Offensive: The comment on the website
It has led to claims that the BBC is allowing its output to be hijacked by extremists while censoring anti-Muslim sentiment.
The remarks about Jesus were left as part of a discussion of the death of the Archbishop of Paris.
The debate had descended into an argument about the merits of Christians, Jews and Muslims when a writer, known as 'colonelartist', posted: "Are you a christian? You do know that jesus had to hide all his short life he lived in those promised land because his tribesmen used to call him fatherless, ridiculed him for being a B-A-S-T-A-R-D...'
He added: "Jesus...was also persecuted because the jews would never accept as their Messiah a person whose father was missing...'
The comments were allowed to remain for a week despite complaints. But after The Mail on Sunday contacted senior BBC officials, they were deleted.
Colonelartist is a regular contributor to the BBC site.
He has also written: "The jews in much remembered concentration camps had even better qualitity of freedom that these palestinians have...'
One website user wanted to see if BBC editors were allowing these offensive remarks to remain while blocking others. He wrote: "No one can surpass the Muslims for denial of their role in Terrorism and Suicide bombing." The remarks were almost immediately deleted.
The BBC has also been criticised for allowing allegedly anti-Semitic posts from a contributor called "Iron Naz'.
In a message left on the site for more than a month, Iron Naz says: "Zionism is a racist ideology where jews are given supremacy over all other races and faiths. This is found in the Talmud...which allows jews to lie as long as its to non-jews."
The remarks brought complaints from the Board of Deputies, the organisation that represents Britain's Jews and its Community Security Trust. They say the post draws on a discredited 19th Century text, the Talmud Unmasked, which is still distributed by neo-Nazi booksellers.
However, the BBC said the remarks did not merit removal.
A spokesman said posts were taken down if they were considered likely to 'disrupt, provoke attack or offend others or are considered racist, homophobic, sexually explicit or otherwise objectionable'.
The Board of Deputies intends to pursue its complaints. Mark Gardiner, of the Community Security Trust, said: "The BBC obviously no longer recognises anti-Semitism. The BBC is a public body, funded by the British taxpayer. It has legal obligations."
Last night the Church of England also criticised the management of the BBC discussion sites noting that "voices of reason, compassion and charity seem to get little look-in".
A spokesman said: "Discussion - including robustly critical discussion - of any faith's doctrines and practices is an important feature of civilised discourse.
"But deliberately or recklessly offensive denigration of those doctrines and practices is unacceptable."
Reader views (11)
This is ridiculous. I am a well educated Christian. I don't like it when people insult Jesus, but He can handle himself. He after all gave us the freedom to choose him, and the freedom not to choose him. However, a level playing field is needed. If you're going to insult Jesus, that's okay. People have been doing that for a long time, but you also need to allow people to insult your beliefs, Islamic, Jewish, Atheist, Agnostic, Buddhist, or whatever.
One of the most annoying things I have witnessed is the stupid reaction to the Prophet Muhammad's drawings. Here in Turkey people were upset, but in the same week I saw drawings of Jesus being made fun of on their cartoons. Yet I saw no one protest about that.
Seriously, this world is really going down the toilet when tolerance and taboo is worshipped more than common sense.
No one ever said I had the right for the world to be tolerant of me because I don't! Tolerance is not a right to life. Certainly, I need to be patient of other people, and seek out and listen to and ponder other viewpoints, but some things are wrong, and that is simply true, and good men and women should not be tolerant of what is wrong.
The BBC has gone down a road it can't enforce. Because at some point everyone will be insulted by something someone says on their website. So either allow it all, and let it reflect on the stupidity of the contributor, than censor it and let it reflect on the stupidity of the BBC.
- Mark, Istanbul, Turkey, 10/10/2007 12:48
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It's not the BBC's job to act as thought police. If people take exception to the comments other users leave, the correct response is to refute them with comments of their own, not to go crying to the regulators.
- Anonymous, UK, 20/08/2007 17:33
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You are all missing the point. The point is to have a level playing field.
If someone on the BBC boards critizes Islam, it's immediately censored, even if the criticism is deserved, as it usually is.
If someone critisises Christianity or Judaism, it's allowed in the name of 'open discussion'.
That's called a double-standard.
- Phil, Durban, South Africa, 20/08/2007 11:40
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A bastard is a person whose parents, at the time of their birth, were not married to each other.
So if God was Jesus' father and never married Mary then Jesus was a bastard.
It seems strange that those who claim to have the power of the one true God(tm) on their side have such thin skins!
- Nathan D Lacey, London, UK, 19/08/2007 21:02
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What's the problem? What happened to open discussion? The word b*****d can be meant as an insult or as a statement of fact, how can we have an open discussion about religious beliefs if we have to tip-toe around it as not to 'offend'? I owe no respect to the figure of Jesus if I don't believe in him and should be able, within the confines of our language and with a measure of reason, to question fundamental facts about him.
- Antonio, London, 19/08/2007 20:46
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If you read the comment it says he was a 'bastard' because he had no father which is a legitimate use of the term. So in actual fact there censoring the truth, but I guess because it’s about Jesus any discussion has to be heavily censored so it doesn’t offend the ‘turn the other cheek’ Christians of this world.
- Steve.W, East Sussex, UK, 19/08/2007 20:40
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"Church of England also criticised the management of the BBC discussion sites noting that "voices of reason, compassion and charity seem to get little look-in"."
---
Welcome to the Internet.
- Luke, Edinburgh, 19/08/2007 20:07
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Comments disparaging a religion (any religion) are wrong, but if we start censoring comments like these, we are on the road to removing freedom of speech.
- J, Derby, UK, 19/08/2007 19:17
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This BBC is not British anymore and should be closed. Why do British people have to pay TV tax for them?
- Jacqueline, Hampstead, London, 19/08/2007 16:38
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Surely removing these comments was both politically incorrect and an insult to the people who put them there. If the removal of the comments in turn incites violent rioting, perhaps more, by the groups who wrote them then the BBC will and should be held responsible.
- Alexander, Singapore, 19/08/2007 13:50
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To be fair, his mother wasn't married to his father and hence was a bastard, in the literal sense of the word.
Quite why people would be offended by a factual statement is a bit odd.
- Ian Mansfield, London, UK, 19/08/2007 11:08
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