I see that the BBC is once again getting it in the corporate neck for supplementing the welfare benefits of Islamofascist rentagob Anjem Choudary. The al-Muhajiroun leader featured on this morning’s Today programme, interviewed by presenter John Humphrys alongside the equally tedious but considerably less insane securocrat Alex Carlile.

Choudary is an out-and-out nutter, and in no way speaks for British Muslims. This much is clear. However, what the critics of the BBC fail to grasp is that the “radical” Islamist mentality epitomised by Choudary appears to be shared by a worrying large subset of UK Muslims, and not just the more intellectually challenged individuals such as the murderers of soldier Lee Rigby.

British Muslims may by and large not support terrorism, but in many cases their theology is skewed and absolute, and their disdain for the open society which has nurtured them is all too obvious. That is one of the prices we pay for an open society, and it is surely a price worth paying.

The BBC’s critics over-estimate the importance of the mainstream media narrative when it comes to influencing political and social subcultures such as that of reactionary political Islam. If journalists choose not to interview the likes of Anjem Choudary, the latter remain free to propagate their manifestos of hate. In societies both open and closed there exist a plurality of hidden communications channels, and Islamists make full use of them.

Given that potentially large numbers of especially younger British Muslims fantasise about being “soldiers of Allah”, the population at large needs to be reminded of the politico-religious extremism in their midst. They may otherwise become complacent, or actually start believing in the silly notion that to criticise political Islamism is by definition Islamophobic.

There is a serious problem in our plural-monocultural British society that needs addressing. Credit to the BBC and other news media for alerting us to this fact.