5Pillars has decided to leave the media regulator Impress because we do not want non-Muslims who do not share our values to have editorial control over our content, writes Roshan Muhammed Salih.
At the end of October 5Pillars left Impress which has regulated our content since 2018.
5Pillars voluntarily agreed to be regulated by Impress because we wanted our readers and viewers to know that we were serious about adhering to professional editorial guidelines, and because we wanted them to have an independent body which they could complain to if necessary.
And overall we do not regret being part of Impress because it focussed our minds on adhering to professional standards and also gave us a certain credibility amongst our supporters and detractors alike. In fact, there is no doubt that our enemies were very annoyed that Impress included us in their regulatory scheme.
That said, Impress is no longer a suitable regulator for 5Pillars. And I will try to explain why below.
Rulings against us
Firstly, Impress is run by what we perceive to be liberals whose values are not compatible with Islamic norms. And this very fact is problematic for a media platform that strives to embody the values of the Quran and Sunnah.
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This was brought home to us in 2021 when Impress disregarded their own rules and decided to adjudicate a case about us that did not fall under their remit because it dated back to before we were regulated by them.
The case in question concerned Dilly Hussain’s explanation, according to the Quranic narrative, of Islam’s position on same-sex relations. Impress ruled that we had incited hatred against homosexuals because Dilly described the homosexual act as a “crime against God” (which is how the Quran terms it).
We thought long and hard about leaving Impress there and then at this outrageous attempt to silence normative Islamic views which were expressed without hatred or incitement. But ultimately we decided against it after doing extensive shura because we believed the benefits of staying within Impress outweighed those of leaving. But believe you me, it was a very close call.
After this negative experience 5Pillars remained a member of Impress but without any enthusiasm and did not engage with their various initiatives like we had done in the past.
And, of course, the complaints about 5Pillars kept coming in, especially from our detractors in the pro-Israel and pro-LGBT lobby. The government’s former extremism tsar – Sara Khan – even held a meeting with Impress about us.
To Impress’s credit, most of the complaints against us were dismissed because they were wholly spurious, but some did lead to investigations and subsequent rulings against us.
This year Impress ruled against 5Pillars twice.
The first ruling related to an episode of Blood Brothers with the far-right activist Mark Collet. Impress determined that the podcast encouraged hatred or abuse against Jews. The second ruling concerning a Blood Brothers podcast with far-right figure Jayda Fransen reached a similar conclusion.
In mitigation, we argued that we do not share the views expressed by those podcast guests because Islam outlaws racism or hatred of Jews because they are Jews (although we pled guilty to being against the racist ideology of Zionism). We also explained that we did push back against such views and conducted the interviews with guests we disagreed with in the interest of free speech and because our viewers found it interesting.
But our mitigation seems to have fallen on deaf ears.
In addition, it became clear to us that our enemies were trying to utilise Impress to bog us down with numerous complaints. I would personally spend days responding to complaints (most of them wholly spurious) and this became unjustifiable when the Gaza genocide began and I needed to exert my energy defending our Palestinian brothers and sisters.
That said, I don’t want this article to be a condemnation of Impress. They were a decent regulator which dealt with us in a professional manner. And even when they ruled against us they were (in most but not all cases) simply upholding their liberal code.
I also think that Impress were under wider political pressure to “slap our wrists” and could not be seen to be siding with “Islamists.” They are the UK’s first officially recognised press regulator with a Royal Charter, after all.
Muslim media regulation
So Impress has become part of 5Pillars’ history, and alhamdulilah we are glad that they are in the past. But I don’t believe the concept of external regulation should be.
5Pillars will still adhere to the majority of the professional guidelines set out in the Impress Standards Code (and other journalistic codes) because we believe in them, especially those standards pertaining to accuracy, how to handle stories involving children, and guidelines on harassment, privacy and transparency etc.
Long term, we also want to see the emergence of an external regulator – but a Muslim one that will judge us according to the Quran and Sunnah.
I think an independent Muslim media regulator – which 5Pillars and other Muslim media could join – would send a strong signal to the community (as well as non-Muslims) that Muslims take journalism seriously.
The fact is that the charity and the food industries, for example, are well established in the Muslim community and are regulated because of that. But, unfortunately, Muslims have yet to put journalism on the same pedestal (unlike other communities), and perhaps this is why we are successfully demonised and are constantly playing catch-up when it comes to exerting soft power.
I envisage that this future Muslim media regulator, comprised of believing and practising people, would come up with a journalistic standards code that we would all be obliged to follow. And it would also adjudicate complaints that readers/viewers may have. It would be comprised of media professionals as well as Muslim professionals from other fields. And it would be independent, fair-minded and rigorous.
But while we await the emergence of this Muslim regulator, I want to assure readers and viewers that while 5Pillars may not have an official regulator anymore, it is of course still regulated by the laws and values imparted to us by Allah SWT, by the Quran and Sunnah.
