OTTAWA – An accusation of hatred between Muslims and Jews breached Canada’s broadcast code of ethics, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has found.
After receiving a complaint, the CBSC reviewed an episode of the program Sid Roth’s It’s Supernatural which aired on CITS-TV (CTS – Crossroads Television Ontario) on September 14, 2010. While it concluded that some aspects of the discussion about Islam on that episode were in accordance with the requirements of the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Code of Ethics and Equitable Portrayal Code, the Panel found that the show contained a statement that breached the Human Rights Clauses of both those codes.
A complainant characterized the challenged episode as “a vicious attack on a huge portion of the world’s population, namely, Islam”, and said that the “apparent goal of [the broadcaster’s] message is to incite people to share his distorted view of Muslim people.” But the Ontario Regional Panel responded by saying that “such sweeping generalizations are […] insufficient to enable the Panel to find a breach of the Human Rights Clauses. In order to reach such a conclusion, the Panel must find concrete examples of abusive or unduly discriminatory content.”
Among the discussion subjects on the episode, during which author and Islam expert Joel Richardson was the invited guest, were the 7th century Treaty of Hudaibiya and its application in the modern era, and an assertion that “Muslims believe it is their divine call to eliminate the Jewish people.”
Regarding the treatment of the Treaty, the Panel said that it:
“…takes no position on the underlying issue of the interpretation of the significance of the Treaty of Hudaibiya itself, its origins, its breach or its lessons for today. The issue for the Panel is limited to the treatment by the broadcaster of those issues. On that limited subject, the Panel finds no Code breach. The host and his guest had an opinion, indeed several opinions. As is not infrequently the case (in discussions involving precepts of any religion), there were shadings of perspective by the host and his guest that may be criticized as more tenuous and sceptical. In the absence of materially misleading underlying content […], the Panel considers that Messrs. Roth and Richardson were entitled to hold and to air their point(s) of view.
As to the second assertion, the Panel said it “found a significant problem”, which it explained as follows:
“While that statement is, strictly speaking, an opinion, it is a pointed, barbed accusation that all Muslims consider that it is a divine or sacred responsibility to kill every Jew, even when there are no more than a “few Jews left hiding behind a tree or a rock.” Even if that were a solid, uncontradicted principle established by one or another of the learned texts that are cornerstones of the Islamic religion, the Panel considers that such an accusation directed in such general terms against, in effect, all Muslims is an abusive or unduly discriminatory comment that violates the proscription against such comments in the Human Rights Clauses of the CAB Code of Ethics and the Equitable Portrayal Code.”
