Ok can someone please explain why the BBC has decided to give an extremist cleric who has been kicked out of the UK a chance to talk on national television last night?
Tonight on Newsnight we're devoting the whole programme to exploring the struggle within Islam. Has the lack of any over-arching religious figure led to a schism between Sunni and Shia; to the rise of political Islam; and, ultimately, to an increase in the number of extremists willing to kill in the name of their religion?
Is there a crisis intrinsic to the Muslim faith? And, if so, does Islam need its own Reformation?
Or is the crisis a response to Western governments' attempts to influence, or even control, Muslim-majority nations? Should the USA be promoting, or trying to impose, democracy? And when democracy produces results that Western nations may consider "unsavoury" - what should their response be?
Gavin will be joined by guests including the former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, the leading Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, and from Lebanon by the radical cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed who is banned from returning to the UK.
You can't tell me that Bakri is the only islamist they could get a hold of to talk to for the show. There is an entire party of them that has just come to power in Turkey for crying out loud. Why give airtime to a man who glorifies terror attacks, is this really what our licence fee is going to be used for?
