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Citizen Khan - BBC One |
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#276 |
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I'm disappointed they didn't get Pakistani actors/actresses to play the British Pakistani characters, would have made it seem more realistic.
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#277 |
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Ofcom to investigate complaints?:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012...c-citizen-khan Mark Lawson's view: http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...ded?intcmp=239 K |
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#278 |
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Interesting piece regarding "self selected" custodians of morals, equality and harmony.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-rad...ually-offended I agree with these two paragraphs : My own cultural outsider's view is that Citizen Khan pays British Muslims perhaps the highest compliment television can bestow, which is treating them like any other creed and people by subjecting them to a gentle domestic sitcom in the tradition of My Family. This connection is made explicit by the casting of Kris Marshall from that show as a white English convert to Islam. The jokes about ecclesiastical bureaucracy, parental hypocrisy and teenage cunning have a target and tone familiar from the genre's previous white British incarnations. On the evidence of the opening episode, imams will come off no worse than vicars have in laugh shows of the past, which may be considered a mark of equality. |
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#279 |
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I'm disappointed they didn't get Pakistani actors/actresses to play the British Pakistani characters, would have made it seem more realistic.
Anyway, I don't think it's crucial because a good actor/actress should be able to make any character seem authentic. Nina Wadia & Nitin Ganatra do a fabulous job playing The Masoods on Eastenders (who are of Pakistani origin and Muslim, even if the actors are neither). A good piece by Saira Khan on Citizen Khan in the Mail today: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...--oh-true.html I don't agree with her that the show was particularly funny, but I don't think it was offensive either. Just unoriginal. |
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#280 |
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I wasn't talking about the FM hating anything. I was speaking generally not about one person and I apologise if it came off wrong.
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#281 |
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Deleted duplicated link.
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#282 |
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Pakistanis didn't all arrive at the same time!
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#283 |
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How can it be shot in front of a live audience when you've got scenes that are shot on location, for example outside the mosque?
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#284 |
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this program was sooo funny, its gotta be the best comedy program BBC has made in years.
I Love it. The comedy makes After You've Gone look like Emmy Award winning stuff. Forget about the gender and stereotypical representations, it was plain awful. May have cracked a few jokes but dreadful in all. |
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#285 |
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Someone said that the characters were rushing their lines, and that was my overwhelming impression too. It was most noticeable to me in a lot of the scenes with the daughters, and the way they were galloping through the script had me looking at the clock about two thirds of the way through convinced that it was about to be all over. This made me feel like it was dragging, despite the fact that it wasn't that bad. I doubt I'll go out of my way to watch it again, but I wouldn't automatically switch channels if I found myself sitting in front of it.
I quite understood why they made tightwad Mr Khan and his surroundings look so dated. The diluting the washing-up liquid thing made perfect sense in a kitchen with orange fronted doors that didn't look like it had had a facelift in decades. I could well believe that all his clothes come from charity shops and jumble sales. In contrast though, the girls' bedrooms looked quite modern and up-to-date, and I did wonder where they would get the money from for this (and half hundredweight of make-up for the younger one!) if their stingy dad wasn't fronting up for it, because neither of them seemed to have jobs. You could go too far analysing this stuff in a quest for realism, though. When I found myself wondering if he would really pepper every sentence he spoke with the word 'bloody', it was during a scene when he was at home with his family, in which case I'm not sure they'd even be speaking English at all in reality. Artistic licence is acceptable here (I'm too lazy for subtitles), so I'd feel a bit hypocritical if I didn't accept it elsewhere in the programme. Taking it at face value, it had it's moments, but it's a long way from shaping up to be a classic. I liked the line about Pakistan being mentioned twice in a good way (as much for the delivery as anything else), 'Delilah' booming out of the mosque PA system and the younger daughter claiming to be using a prayer app when she was texting. The 'Alton Towers ladies' fell a bit flat for me though, and Mr Khan's future son-in-law must be one of the dullest characters ever written. |
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#286 |
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Very well put I could not have said it better myself. Most comedies are based on taking the mickey out of something or someone,. I come from Glasgow for example and find Rab C Nesbitt hilarious. Yes it stereotypes Glasgow but at least we can laugh at ourselves. It would seem that Muslim are super sensitive. father ted is another great example, this programme takes the mick out of catholics priests and christianity in general but you dont hear many folk getting up in arms about it. Its a sitcom its not meant to define a race or religion, lighten up Quote:
Exactly.
Father Ted made fun of Catholicism and a certain stereotype of Irishness. It was ludicrous, exaggerated, offensive to a lot of Catholics and Irish, bore no relationship to any real priests or Irish who have ever lived etc etc, but it was also very funny. Most Irish Catholic priests either ignored it or joined in with the joke. What is so special about Muslims that they cannot be made fun of? Nobody is pretending that it is giving an accurate portrayal of real life - it is a sitcom, with the main aim of making people laugh. |
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#287 |
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Whenever I see crap like this go straight to BBC1, when the peerless Still Game, got kicked around the schedules on BBC2 until it died a death, I am convinced that the BBC have race issues with Scotland.
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#288 |
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Well, for Muslims, it is kind of against Islam to make a mockery of it (I didn't see it however), that's why us Muslims are making a big deal.
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#289 |
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Join Date: Jul 2011
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I'm looking forward to the episode where the family murder the young daughter for living a Westernised lifestyle. That should be a funny one.
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#290 |
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Well, for Muslims, it is kind of against Islam to make a mockery of it (I didn't see it however), that's why us Muslims are making a big deal.
The biggest deal so far seems to be that loads just found it very poor, so poor it's given them the pip, rather than just bored them/not to their taste. |
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#291 |
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Join Date: Jul 2004
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Quote:
I'm disappointed they didn't get Pakistani actors/actresses to play the British Pakistani characters, would have made it seem more realistic.
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#292 |
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I saw the trailer and it looks embarrassingly cringey.
My first thought was progs (in the 70's?) like Love Thy Neighbour. I think that's the one anyway about the white couple and black couple who are neighbours. Is it supposed to be set in that era? I can't imagine who will find it funny. I wouldn't think Asians would enjoy watching it because it looks so unfunny. Quote:
The leftie Guardian readers are not going to like this.....
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Muslim 'comedy' programmes now eh. More evidence of the Islamisation of Britian?
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It's like white actors doing a REALLY bad stereotype of what they think British/Muslim/Pakistani family life is like. All that overacting...they've all been to the 'Dev from Corrie School of Acting'.
It really is like a 70s sitcom: unfunny and relies too much on lazy characterizations. Quote:
Is it racist ? They all seem like stereotype characters.
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I have to also ask...
And they're dropping the BBC4 budget by 5 million for this and Lee Nelson?! Quote:
Didn't really tune in, more it just kind of stayed on after the news finished. Thought it looked horrific in the trailer and I wasn't wrong.
It seemed very racist to me (but that's ok because it's an Asian family) and the whole Westernised daughter angle sat very uncomfortably with me coming so hot on the heels of the Shafilea Ahmed murder trial. Quote:
Adil Ray was interviewed and he said that some of the writers from GGM had input into this to make it more 'realistic' and suitable for a 'western' audience.
Why was GGM SO much better than this then? Quote:
The worst attempt at a PC sitcom was (in my opinion) that Jasper Carrott one where he was married to (I think) Meera Syal. That was set in Brum too but it was worse than this, I think. I think the characters may be likeable in this once you get into it and suspend disbelief at the OTT accents, etc.
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That's a bit pathetic, nit-picking a typo
Existentialist has a perfectly valid point.. who are you to label him/her ignorant? ![]() I was once told on here that it is racist to ever criticise a black person!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote:
I see the BBC has been 'inundated' with 200 complaints from Muslims saying Citizen Khan stereotypes and insults them. Sheesh.
Most comedy works by highlighting stereotypes, so Citizen Khan is nothing special. Only Fools & Horses showed us a white family who avoided taxes and dealt in dodgy gear - did we storm the BBC, complaining of 'insult to our race?' Sure, Khan is a very dated, cliche-ridden show, but many Pakistani families ARE like that, just as many British families are drunken chavs as portrayed in Shameless. What's the betting the writer will now have a fatwah declared against him and have to go into hiding? Fair enough, but they are one of the few groups in our society who seek to "punish" those who say something that they don't like. Quote:
It did seem a bit dated and some of the visual jokes extreme, but then some of the Asian community do set themselves up.
It always makes me smile when on the rare occasions I see what looks like a young women wearing a burka, they are often wearing "F M" shoes. Quote:
its not that hijabis dont wear make up , its the fact that it disrespects islam , demeans hijabis and their religiosity.
this whilst we are in a climate where islamophobia is increasing within uk society. we already know of many attacks against muslim women who wear the hijab, this undermines their status further and then calls into question the wearing of the hijab (covering of the hair) as being something that is throw-away which in islam it is not. Quote:
Can you indicate to me where in the Koran it dictates what women should wear, if it actually says anything about it?
It reminds me of a meeting I was at where a girl once proclaimed "I like black people, they're nice"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Quote:
I watched it and thought it was a load of old rubbish. It never made me laugh once and I thought the "acting" was terrible. So overdone. They were rushing through their lines and the timing was terrible.
I am confused - Mr Khan is wearing 70s style clothes yet the daughter is texting and there are modern tellies and computers so it must be contemporary. I don't think it will last long. Quote:
Around here, older Pakistanis wear rather out-dated brown suits and fawn jumpers.
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Have you had a look round charity clothing shops recently? Full of that kind of gear and I can imagine being frequented by our penny-pinching Mr Khan. Actually frequnted is probably not quite right. Every five or ten years is possibly nearer the mark.
The penny pinching stereotype in the programme is apt too. Asian people have a, well deserved in my opinion, reputation for this. The vast majority of asians of all religions that I know are mean, self serving and greedy to a greater or lesser extent when it comes to money and material possessions. Even the PC people in my circle of friends are unable to successfully deny this fact as they have experienced it too. Quote:
Exactly.
Father Ted made fun of Catholicism and a certain stereotype of Irishness. It was ludicrous, exaggerated, offensive to a lot of Catholics and Irish, bore no relationship to any real priests or Irish who have ever lived etc etc, but it was also very funny. Most Irish Catholic priests either ignored it or joined in with the joke. What is so special about Muslims that they cannot be made fun of? Nobody is pretending that it is giving an accurate portrayal of real life - it is a sitcom, with the main aim of making people laugh. Of course, in real life, we should all be prepared to laugh at ourselves and some of the funniest things i've seen are where asian people take the piss out of their own culture. |
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#293 |
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Join Date: Jun 2012
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I thought Adil Ray was a British Pakistani?
Anyway, I don't think it's crucial because a good actor/actress should be able to make any character seem authentic. Nina Wadia & Nitin Ganatra do a fabulous job playing The Masoods on Eastenders (who are of Pakistani origin and Muslim, even if the actors are neither). A good piece by Saira Khan on Citizen Khan in the Mail today: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/ar...--oh-true.html I don't agree with her that the show was particularly funny, but I don't think it was offensive either. Just unoriginal. By my reckoning, and I only watched about 10 minutes, Adil Ray has plagiarised on an almost monumental scale. In that 10 minutes I saw scenes, characters and voices he nicked from Fawlty Towers, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Mind Your Language etc etc etc. |
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#294 |
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I understand your point, but (hate doing that, lol) the main three female characters are all played by Punjabi actors and I don't think the family have a specified ethnicity, they are just meant to be...in the words of Mr Khan a "Pakistani" family and Adil Ray and Abdullah Afzal are Pakistani. Would it really have been any more realistic if they were all played by Pakistani actors?
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#295 |
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Well, for Muslims, it is kind of against Islam to make a mockery of it (I didn't see it however), that's why us Muslims are making a big deal.
![]() Quote:
......................I was once told on here that it is racist to ever criticise a black person!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.................
A couple of weeks ago, Accused showed us something of the life of a gay transvestite, and I'm sure many people were left feeling very sympathetic towards people like that, since it showed that, with a few unimportant differences, they were just the same as everyone else. Similarly, Citizen Khan shows that, in the things which matter, Muslim families are no different from any family . |
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#296 |
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Join Date: Nov 2011
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Exactly.
Father Ted made fun of Catholicism and a certain stereotype of Irishness. It was ludicrous, exaggerated, offensive to a lot of Catholics and Irish, bore no relationship to any real priests or Irish who have ever lived etc etc, but it was also very funny. Most Irish Catholic priests either ignored it or joined in with the joke. What is so special about Muslims that they cannot be made fun of? Nobody is pretending that it is giving an accurate portrayal of real life - it is a sitcom, with the main aim of making people laugh. Here is a review from 1997 from the Catholic League which gives a flavour of the reaction at the time in certain quarters. I quote at some length for sheer hilarity: WE ARE NOT AMUSED Just when you thought popular television had reached bottom in the casual disrespect and downright vulgarity it regularly displays in its treatment of religious people and religious beliefs, especially Catholic ones, along comes the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) to show that it is possible to descend to an even lower level—yet some audiences apparently go right on eating it all up. One of the most popular current situation comedies broadcast by the BBC in the British Isles is not only relentlessly and deliberately vulgar in its—mostly slapstick—situations and effects. It achieves most of these effects precisely by depicting Catholic priests in Ireland as considerably less than admirable characters generally; and also by regularly making light of supposed Catholic beliefs and practices (the show is nevertheless so popular in Ireland that the Irish state-owned television network has purchased the rights to rebroadcast it). This BBC television series is entitled Father Ted, and is based on the imagined lives and adventures of three priests living on an island off the west coast of Ireland. The humor of the series, such as it is, relies heavily on typical British-style “put downs” of various types of people: alcoholics, people in wheelchairs, members of the servant class, people who are not very bright, Irish people in general (who are mostly seen to fit into the previous category), and, especially, Catholic priests. The three main characters in the show are three wacky Irish priests who live together in a rectory with a dotty housekeeper who is always trying to serve tea at the most inconvenient moments. Most of the humor and the humorous situations are based on the incongruity of Catholic priests ever doing or saying what these three Catholic priests are depicted as regularly doing and saying. The language alone typically used by them is quite vulgar and sometimes truly shocking. The situations depicted are usually quite remote from any possible priestly work or activity. No doubt all of this is quite intentional on the part of the writers, actors, producers, and sponsors; being a priest is itself considered by them humorous and worthy of a put-down, apparently. The star of the show is a Father Ted Crilly, a flashy, opportunistic type of fellow with apparently unfulfilled yearnings and blow-dried hair. In one of the episodes of the series which I viewed, Father Ted was principally engaged in competing—impersonating Elvis no less!—in a priests’ masquerade contest (in which a competing group of Irish priests arrive as female impersonators clad in low-cut ball gowns). If you can imagine any priests who would ever be involved in such dubious doings, then you probably have roughly the same idea of the Catholic Church that the scriptwriters of this show do. Another one of the episodes I saw begins with Father Ted in a bookstore at a book-signing session attempting to get the signature of the lady author of a volume entitled Bejewelled with Kisses. The lady author in question turns out to be both attractive and, conveniently, recently divorced; just as conveniently, she happens to be on her way to spending some time on the very island where the three priests live. Father Ted is later shown clumsily attempting to pursue her in scenes not completely saved from suggestiveness by the farce into which they quickly descend. This latter episode is apparently one of the rare episodes in the series in which any reference at all is made to Father Ted’s work as a priest; in order to keep an appointment with his visiting lady friend, Father Ted has to rush through an obligatory Mass celebrated for some nuns so fast that the vast television audience will not fail to grasp why the sworn enemies of the Church once branded the Mass as “mumbo-jumbo.” Father Ted makes some of today’s liturgical innovators look positively reverent by comparison. The second of the three priests depicted on the show, Father Dougal, is quite deliberately presented as an uncomprehending simpleton, a cheerful idiot. Father Dougal is the foil for Father Ted; he can always be depended on to say the wrong thing and, on one occasion, he turns out not even to know who the pope is. Such a person could never have gotten into, much less out of, any seminary anywhere. The third of the island-dwelling priests, Father Jack, is presented as an out-and-out alcoholic; he is consistently shown, in the episodes I viewed, either in an alcoholic stupor or single-mindedly attempting to acquire yet another bottle. In one episode he passes out after having drunk Toilet Duck cleaner. One of the “visiting priests” in one of the episodes I viewed is shown as quite unable to control his compulsive laughter about virtually everything. In short, in the world of this sitcom, Catholic priests are a very strange breed indeed; they are regularly shown as figures of fun, appropriately having pratfalls or otherwise in questionable, embarrassing, or compromising situations: rarely is the fun good, clean fun. The two Irish scriptwriters who first conceived this show and continue to write the scripts for it are supposed to be ex-Catholics—”out of practice,” they say. It shows. They don’t even get the externals right (i.e., vestments, giving blessings, etc.). The point of having priests as the main characters in the show in the first place continues to be almost solely the incongruity of what they are then shown doing and saying. The show’s scriptwriters evidently belong to today’s generation of Catholics deprived of any proper catechesis; this has been the situation apparently also in Ireland. At one point Father Ted is actually made to remark: “That’s the great thing about Catholicism. It’s so vague nobody knows what it’s all about.” On behalf of the Catholic League, I took sharp issue with the very nature of the show as such. I found it fundamentally objectionable to attempt to base humor upon such sad and unreal caricatures of Catholic priests. The show’s approach and treatment of Catholic beliefs and Catholic people fundamentally belittles and mocks both—and there is otherwise no redeeming social value whatsoever. I said that I could guarantee that the Catholic League would vigorously oppose the airing of this BBC sitcom on any American network. I added that it was a British monarch who probably said it best: “We are not amused,” Queen Victoria was accustomed to say approps of lapses of taste and morality considerably less serious than those regularly featured in this tasteless BBC series about three Irish priests out on an island off the west coast of Ireland. http://www.catholicleague.org/we-are-not-amused/ |
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#297 |
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Join Date: May 2011
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Is it? Does it actually say in the Q'ran that you mustn't make fun of Muslims on TV? A bit prophetic, wasn't it?
![]() That's nothing, I was once called a homophobic bigot for criticising someone who happened to be gay ..... and I hadn't even known they were. A couple of weeks ago, Accused showed us something of the life of a gay transvestite, and I'm sure many people were left feeling very sympathetic towards people like that, since it showed that, with a few unimportant differences, they were just the same as everyone else. Similarly, Citizen Khan shows that, in the things which matter, Muslim families are no different from any family . |
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#298 |
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Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Belfast
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No. Muslims shouldn't take the mick out of the religion, on TV or not.
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#299 |
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Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 9,702
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Quote:
Is it? Does it actually say in the Q'ran that you mustn't make fun of Muslims on TV? A bit prophetic, wasn't it?
![]() That's nothing, I was once called a homophobic bigot for criticising someone who happened to be gay ..... and I hadn't even known they were. A couple of weeks ago, Accused showed us something of the life of a gay transvestite, and I'm sure many people were left feeling very sympathetic towards people like that, since it showed that, with a few unimportant differences, they were just the same as everyone else. Similarly, Citizen Khan shows that, in the things which matter, Muslim families are no different from any family . What you do find is a lot of muslims interpret it differently, often to suit their own views. This is particularly prevalent within the radically extreme muslim community. Some muslims that I know won't go to a certain local mosque because they say they "aren't muslim enough"! I once said on here that I did not find black people sexually attractive. Of course, this soon prompted use of the "R" word! What was I expected to do? Sleep with someone I didn't fancy just to suit the PC brigade!!! My response was to say that anybody who was not strictly 50/50 bisexual, must be sexist by their idiotic definition Quote:
No. Muslims shouldn't take the mick out of the religion, on TV or not.
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#300 |
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Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: NW London
Posts: 19,904
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...
Here is a review from 1997 from the Catholic League which gives a flavour of the reaction at the time in certain quarters. I quote at some length for sheer hilarity: WE ARE NOT AMUSED ...along comes the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) ...broadcast by the BBC... This BBC television series is entitled Father Ted,... this tasteless BBC series... http://www.catholicleague.org/we-are-not-amused/ K |
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