The BBC has denied censoring a debate on BBC3’s Free Speech on March the 12th, citing security concerns as the reason for its postponement.
Viewers of the live broadcast were shown a short video of drag artist Asif Lahore asking the gay community when it would be all right to be Muslim and gay. This segued into presenter Rick Edwards saying the debate would be had on the 25th of March as the hosts – a Birmingham Mosque – had “expressed deep concerns about having the debate here”.
The makers of the show claim threats were made to the mosque and the debate was pulled because of security concerns. Birmingham mosque chair Mohammed Naseem however appeared to contradict this claim when he said on the Today Programme that they were not told until 20 minutes before broadcast that this subject was to be debated. Stephen Evans of the National Secular Society claimed the BBC had bowed to pressure from “reactionary imams”. The makers of Free Speech countered that discussions were had ‘within’ two hours of the show being broadcast and the programme’s pre-publicity brought about the alleged threats that led to them cutting the piece.