Shia scholars demand new C4 film on their faith
Tuesday, July 29, 2008 
A group of leading Shia Muslim scholars are threatening to take their grievances about a Channel 4 documentary on the Qur'an to Ofcom, unless the broadcaster apologises to viewers and commissions a second programme on their faith.
In the Channel 4 documentary, broadcast this month, film-maker Antony Thomas explored the history of the Qur'an to launch a week of coverage about Islam.
A group of Shia Muslim scholars wrote to Channel 4 criticising the programme for making "seriously inaccurate statements" about their branch of the faith.
Yousif al-Khoei, one of the signatories of the first letter and grandson of Grand Ayatollah Sayyid Abul-Qassim al-Khoei, said that a second letter detailing the complaint was being drafted.
"We are going to handle the issue with Channel 4 directly to highlight how it managed to get such imbalances in prime-time TV," al-Khoei said. "If we don't get any joy we will point out [in a second letter] all the technical faults, mistranslations and editorialising opinion as fact."
He said that Channel 4 owed its viewers an apology and that the goal was to try and get the broadcaster to commission another programme on the subject to put across a "balanced view".
"If this doesn't happen we are going to go to Ofcom. We are pretty confident we have a case," al-Khoei added.
He said the complaint to Ofcom would be on the grounds that the documentary was "systematically misleading", "inflammatory" and "the programme promoted hatred of a minority within a minority".