CAIRO, 13 January 2004 — BBC presenter and Sunday Express columnist Robert Kilroy-Silk is just one of a long list of closet bigots who have recently felt free to express their odious racist leanings using the pretext of Sept. 11.

While evangelical preachers Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham and US Gen. William Boykin turned their ire against Muslims, Kilroy-Silk has attempted to incite racial hatred against Arabs. For some weird reason persons of this discriminatory ilk have decided that the actions of 19 criminal individuals, who just happened to have been Arabs and Muslims, reflect negatively on the world’s 200 million Arabs and 1.5 billion Muslims. If the 19 had been either Jews or Christians it is doubtful that they would have applied a similar flawed logic.

Falwell, Robertson, Graham and Boykin were accepted back into the fold after their anti-Islamic statements leading Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington to say: “Anybody is free to be a bigot if they want to. What really concerns us is the lack of reaction by mainstream religious and political leaders, who say nothing when these bigots voice these attacks.”

Kilroy-Silk, however, has fared less well. The BBC has taken his program off air and he is facing a police investigation after vehement condemnation from Muslim groups including the Muslim Council of Britain.

Aljazeera.net quotes Iqbal Sacranie, the council’s secretary general as saying: “We have sent letters to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Attorney-General’s Office, asking them to look into what we believe was a breach of race relations law and the Public Order Act.

Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality Trevor Phillips has described the article as “indisputably stupid”, adding: “Given the extreme and violent terms in which Mr. Kilroy-Silk has expressed himself, there is a danger that this might incite some individuals to act against someone who they think is an Arab.”

The furor has been such that Kilroy-Silk, threatened with the demise of his career, has apologized saying his remarks were not directed at Arab people but their governments. The columnist appears to have forgotten his spurious claim that Arabs expect to be adored “for the way they murdered more than 3000 civilians on Sept. 11 and then danced in the hot, dusty streets to celebrate the murders.”

It has also slipped his memory that Arabs like almost everyone on the planet were horrified at the toppling of the twin towers and rushed to support the consequent war on terror. Many gave to Sept. 11 charities, some gave blood while others sent expressions of solidarity and lit candles.

His Sunday Express article, which ran for the second time on Jan. 4, is entitled “We owe the Arabs nothing”. Apart from its dubious English, since “nothing” can hardly be owed, it is a complete and utter falsehood.

Since Kilroy-Silk showed his ignorance when implying Iranians were Arabs in his rant, he can hardly be expected to have heard of Bukhara-born Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, who along with Persians Al-Razi and Abu Ali Al-Hasan paved the way for Western medicine.

It’s doubtful whether the chat show host realizes that it was thanks to Kutbi that the world’s first watch was crafted or that Abul Hasan invented the telescope. Indeed, Arabs built Europe’s first observatory in Seville under the supervision of Jabir ibn Afiah.

He would probably be surprised to learn that Ibn Al-Hashem has been credited with the invention of photography and Ibn Yunus, a scientific genius, with that of pendulum by. Arab mathematicians have long been renowned for their development of algebra and spherical trigonometry.

The Mesopotamian Code of Hammurabi is one of the earliest sets of laws which has survived today in most legal systems, giving rise to the term “written in stone”. Today that ancient land in present-day Iraq has been rendered lawless by its invaders, which didn’t deter Kilroy-Silk from suggesting that Arabs “should go down on their knees and thank God for the munificence of the United States.”

In the 9th century Idriss II of Morocco lifted up his hands at the founding of Fez, site of the world’s first university and said: “O God! Might this town be one of science and learning and might it be the place where Your book (the Holy Qur’an) be recited and Your commandments respected.” This was in the days when primitive Britons were fending off Danish and Norwegian invasions and the US didn’t even exist.

In more recent times Arabs have been the recipients of Nobel prizes, including former Egyptian leader Anwar El Sadat, writer Naguib Mahfouz and chemist Ahmed Zewail. Mohammed El-Baradei, who heads the nuclear watchdog the IAEA, is an Arab as is former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali.

As Kilroy-Silk is likely to have plenty of time on his hands in the upcoming months, he might care to ponder the words of one of the greatest poets and philosophers of all time Khelil Gibran: “Are you a journalist who sells his principles in the market of slaves and who fattens on gossip and misfortune and crime? If so, you are like a ravenous vulture preying upon rotting carrion.”

And in case he would like to wash his hands of the entire affair, he might be interested to know that soap is an Arab invention too.

— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs and can be contacted at [email protected]