The BBC pumps up our Muslim hotheads

Instead we are fearful and furious. A suspected gang of British Muslim extremists allegedly tried to firebomb the home of Martin Rynja, publisher of the forthcoming novel by Sherry Jones on the imagined life of Ayesha, Prophet Mohammed's youngest bride. Rynja is in hiding and almost 20 years on from the devastating Rushdie affair, Muslims are once more seen as barbarians and violent censors.

I don't blame ordinary Britons for these perceptions. For years now, they have heard our ranting fanatics bullying and threatening reprisals, most of all on the supposedly ethical BBC, which habitually seeks out for comment the most vile Muslims it can find. And so it is today. Anjem Choudary, a trained lawyer with poisonous slime on his tongue, has this week been on every BBC channel, saying: "The messenger Mohammed said that whoever insults any messenger of God, they will carry capital punishment, so this has been clear with the case of Salman Rushdie, Hirsi Ali and Theo van Gogh."

Choudary has taken over from old villains Abu Hamza (under house arrest) and Omar Bakri (exiled in Lebanon), who were regulars on radio and TV expressing hatred of the West.

Meanwhile sensible, integrated Muslims are excluded by the corporation. When some launched British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the broadcaster was disdainful and uninterested; an independent producer asked me to present a series on the perceptions of Muslims in the popular imagination. All quiet on that front suddenly — I am not the right kind of Muslim for the BBC, I reckon.

As the crisis over Jones's novel builds up, the broadcaster could elicit the views of Tory Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, or Rushanara Ali, the articulate Labour candidate for Tower Hamlets, or the playwright Ayub Khan Din, who wrote the film East is East. But they wouldn't be provocative enough, wouldn't fuel the fire or confirm prejudices.

It is outrageous, this abrogation of duty to the public the corporation is paid to serve. The BBC is guilty of calculated incitement. It has a serious case to answer. Will it? I don't think so: it's too arrogant for such accountability.