https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/activist-group-wants-to-stifle-discussion-of-islamism-8dm5f6v9s

The BBC should not have called Khalid Masood, the Westminster terrorist who killed five people, an “Islamic extremist”, because Islam means peace. News outlets are wrong to describe terror groups, including Hamas, Boko Haram and Islamic State, as “Islamist”. Indeed, the very term Islamism is “redundant” and should no longer be used by the press.

The headscarf for women is “normative” and a Muslim writer “misrepresent[ed] Muslim behaviour and belief” when she said there was “no basis in Islam for the niqab”, the full-face veil. The late Andrew Norfolk, of this newspaper, who did more than anyone to expose the grooming scandal, “scapegoated” Muslims.

Welcome to the Centre for Media Monitoring (CfMM), a little-scrutinised activist group seeking to skew the national conversation. CfMM is, or has recently been, part of the Muslim Council of Britain, with which successive governments have had a policy of non-engagement for its hardline views. But that has not stopped it from being listened to, welcomed or even employed at influential levels of the media. The CfMM claims to have been “feeding into the BBC’s terminology guidebook” and to have facilitated a focus group on the BBC’s behalf. It says it was “instrumental” in guidance by the press self-regulator, Ipso.

https://archive.ph/5aSdH