8 November 2010
Britain’s Islam Channel broke broadcasting regulations by condoning marital rape, encouraging violence against women, and promoting an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas line, the country’s broadcast regulator Ofcom ruled Monday.
One violation came during an advice program in which a female caller asked if a woman could hit her husband back if he was beating her. The host, as part of his answer, said the most a husband could do was hit her with a stick the size of a pen “just to make her feel that you are not happy with her.”
The same host said in another program that for a woman to wear perfume when praying in a mosque made her a prostitute in the eyes of the Prophet Mohammed. Another violation took place in a discussion about an Afghan law that, critics say, allows men to rape their wives. “To refuse relations would harm a marriage,” a guest on the program said.
The Islam Channel “does not condone or encourage violence toward women under any circumstances,” the broadcaster told Ofcom during the investigation.
