The BBC has already surrendered to the Islamists UPDATED

UPDATE: The BBC appear to have changed the policy outlined below

As Douglas Murray eloquently stated yesterday on the BBC Daily Politics show (hosted by the man who is now the BBC's eminent balanced journalist - Andrew Neil), what the Islamist terrorists (forget the mainstream media euphemism "militants") wanted to enforce with Charlie Hebdo was effectively Islamist blasphemy law.

They were offended by Charlie Hebdo's repeated publication of caricatures of Mohammed, and other parodies of Muslims (not paying attention for a moment to the parodies of Jews, Christians or numerous political and public figures of France and across the world).

Images of Mohammed in a magazine would get you, at best, arrested and imprisoned in almost any predominantly Muslim state.  There are quite a few non-Muslim states that also have blasphemy laws, including New Zealand.

In Afghanistan, Egypt, Kuwait, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia the punishment can be death, and in Iran people have been acquitted for informally enforcing blasphemy provisions by murdering those they "proved" had blasphemed. 

Of course, the Islamic State and the Taliban openly support the death penalty for blasphemy, and if we go back far enough in history, blasphemy was punished by death in the UK, against Christianity, until 1676.

The Islamists want to return us to the dark ages.  They are not murdering out of a random desire for hatred, nor are they avenging Western involvement in wars in Iraq (which France did not participate in) and Afghanistan (which France had almost no involvement in), they are seeking to impose sharia law.

They achieve their aims by these sorts of events, and the previous attacks on the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten.

It creates a climate of fear, fear that if you do offend those who want sharia law, they will enforce it.

So what happens is that they get what they want.  

That is exactly what the BBC has done (and many other media outlets).

I pick on the BBC for some obvious reasons:

1.  It is state owned.  As such, it is meant to represent the UK, as a whole and embody the ill-defined values of the country.  

2. It projects itself as a bastion of objectivity and balance.  Although plenty will accuse of it bias (and it has an inherently statist bias, rarely taking the view that government should do less), it still has some credibility internationally, particularly with the BBC World Service, in not being afraid to take on those who would censor opinions and information that offend them or disadvantage them.

3. It is the dominant broadcaster in the UK, with the biggest audience across over eight TV channels and dozens of radio stations.

4. It enforces, with criminal punishment, payment by all British households with a TV, payment by force.  We are all forced to pay for the BBC.

The BBC's editorial policy states in its guidance on "stills, photographs and images" that "The Prophet Mohammed must not be represented in any shape or form".  

What is that if not appeasement?  It isn't that representation should not be undertaken if it is intended to be gratuitous.  It is absolutely blanket prohibition on even showing an image that is the source of the offence for the terrorists.

It is as if the BBC simply has agreed with the Islamists, and is, internally, enforcing its own form of self-censorship applying the sharia law that the Islamists are seeking to impose.

So have the terrorists won, if the UK's dominant, state owned broadcaster, enforces the censorship they want?

UPDATE AS THIS HAS BEEN WRITTEN - THIS HAS SINCE BEEN REMOVED

Maybe, just maybe, the tide may be turning.