Ofcom removes licence from religious broadcaster Club TV

Ofcom has withdrawn the licence of Club TV, the broadcaster of Islamic religious channel Peace TV Urdu after ruling that one of its programmes had incited murder. 

Ofcom wrote to Club TV on November 12 and 13 after the Peace TV channel rebroadcast Kitaab-ut-Tawheed – Part 59, a programme that the regulator had previously found to incite murder. 

On November 18, having received Ofcom’s draft suspension notice, Club TV surrendered its licence. Its sister company Lord Production Inc, which held the licence to broadcast the English language Peace TV service, also surrendered its licence at the same time. Peace TV and Peace TV Urdu services are no longer broadcasting.

The case dated back to July, when Peace TV Urdu broadcast the programme , which discussed the Islamic punishment for magicians and those who practise magic. 

Ofcom found that many South Asian and Sunni Muslim people in the UK would understand the definition of magic to include  the Taweez and Ruqya practices and said that many consider these to be part of a long standing historical Islamic tradition that they believe in, and in some cases practice. A Muslim cleric was recently murdered for involvement in these practices, in the case or Regina v Syeedy. 

Club TV had made the case that a subsequent rebroadcasts of the programme were made in error. However, Ofcom did not accept the company’s explanation for the repeated broadcasts.