Hindu and Sikh leaders have accused the BBC of pandering to Britain's Muslim community by making a disproportionate number of programmes on Islam at the expense of covering other Asian religions.

A breakdown of programming from the BBC's Religion and Ethics department reveals that since 2001, the BBC made 41 faith programmes on Islam, compared with just five on Hinduism and one on Sikhism.

Source: www.independent.co.uk

What are your thoughts on this?

Having been working in the media now for a good number of years I do feel there aren't enough programmes exploring aspects of the Sikh culture, traditional, way of life and ideology.

There is also a lack of Sikhs in this field. We need to encourage more young people to get into the media and creative industries in order to be able to be properly represented.

Amritpal,
Good idea. Let's encourage our youth to get into media. Can you arrange an open day when our youth can find out more.

i dont think its as easy as arranging an open day. and i dont think arranging an open day would be so easy to arrange either.

my suggestion would be to give the youth opportunities to engage in creative arts. music, film, theatre, creative writing, etc are all excellent forms of expression. and through these our young people become more confident and begin to explore and express who they are as people and what they can offer the world.

this would also give media alot more to cover.

i grew up in glasgow. i never attended any opens days about media. my interests drew me to media and the creative industries, but without having the opportunity to learn punjabi, learn tabla, take part in kirtan etc my interests wouldnt have grown. friends of mine who learn with me are now working as musicians or journalists etc.

Maybe going off at a tangent, however I think the following needs to be taken into consideration:

According to the last census, there are 3x as many Muslims are there are Hindus and 5x as many Muslims as there are Sikhs in the UK:

Christian 42,079,000 71.6%
Muslim 1,591,000 2.7%
Hindu 559,000 1.0%
Sikh 336,000 0.6%
Jewish 267,000 0.5%
Buddhist 152,000 0.3%
Other religion 179,000 0.3%
Not stated 4,289,000 7.3%
No religion 9,104,000 15.5%
Total religious 45,163,000 76.8%

The number of programs made about Islam are disproportionate to the Muslim population possibly for the following reasons (only my opinion of course):

- Post 9/11 and subsequent to the rise of Muslim fundementalists, many programs have been made - both 'pro-Islam' and 'anti-Islam' (can they both be grouped under the 'faith programme' banner?) by the BBC and Channel 4, amongst others. The pro-Islam programmes try to show the true meaning of Islam and show how the original teachings have been misinterpreted by the fundemetalists, whereas the anti-Islam programmes show the hard-liners at work in UK mosques trying to stir up hate.

- A lot of funding (hundreds of millions of pounds) is provided to the various muslim groups in the UK by Saudi Arabia to promote and teach Islam in the UK (any ideas how much money comes from India to promote Hinduism and Sikhism? I'm sure it's pennies compared the aforementioned).

Also, it is not only us that are complain about Islam being given preference - it seems Christians are also complaining (I know - not the best source of info):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1024823/Church-England-accuses-Brown-favouring-Islam-minority-religions-damning-report.html

Would appreciate thoughts from others on this.

Dear All,

I would like to put my point in different way and not looking this as a baised event by BBC. Sukhvir has shown the facts that muslim population is 5 times more than Sikhs in scotland and this directly influence BBC. Considering the fact that BBC is a broadcasting agency and not a court, who has to do the Justice, they produced more programmes on muslims that on hindus or sikhs. Other reason I can understand is that they are either being forced by muslim people (who have their say in BBC) to do so OR they are getting some incentives that we are not able to see. One thing is sure that BBC will broadcast only those programmes which they think the consumer will see. After 9/11, every one in this world knows about muslims, and want to know more about them (both positive and negative sides), and BBC also knows this.

I know we can not think in that direction, but we can certainly think the opposite. I mean, we do so many small things in our community like kirtan, gathka, etc., we can let people know about that through TV and Radio. I believe we have people in our community who have their say in broadcasting industry, and will help broadcasting small documentries on our history and culture and let people know what we are. We can certainly arrange small sessions on Radio as well (not only on Awaz FM!!).

These are the small things that I believe will slowly change people's prespective towards our religion.

I noticed someone mentioned in the mails that we should have small programmes through out the year. It is actually a very great idea, and we dont have to do much to establish this, as many events are already been taken care off individually. I was thinking that it would be good idea to make a documentary on all those small events and try to publicise them.

I think we need to win people's interest in our culture and faith.

I might have gone over the sense, so apologise in advance.