Ros Atkins, Host of "World Have Your Say"

The BBC's World Service produces a call-in show called "World Have Your Say". You can guess the tenor of the show and the majority of the callers: Moral relativists fortified by irate Muslims claiming that the West has no business "interfering" in their traditional culture, Cambridge lefties rattling off the scores of "atrocities" committed by Europe and America (all the way back to the Crusades). You get the picture.

The topic was the imminent stoning to death of Sakine Mohammedie Ashtiani by the Mullahocracy in Tehran. The drill is familiar: Western journalists, especially those in the BBC, invite to the studio Muslims residing in Europe, who enjoy the bounty of free speech, sexual choice and economic opportunity to trash Western culture and spew apologetics for barbaric Islamic regimes like those in Iran, Saudi Arabia or the Sudan. After all, the argument goes, who are we to criticize those states when our hands are just as dirty with capital punishment, torture and the proclivity to invade third world lands. And so, the Beeb takes the point on moral relativism and teaches its audience tolerance for medieval barbarities.

Yesterday, however, the stereotypical, haranguing British host of the show got more than he bargained for when a Canadian editorialist from the Toronto Sun, Theo Caldwell, took the network to the woodshed. The host's other interlocutors were "Layla", an Iranian living in London and "Sinam" a producer for the BBC's Persian service. Listen to an excerpt - it speaks for itself. Bravo, Theo Caldwell! (read his op-ed here.)

[Also see: Ghost of a Flea: Sakine Ashtiani to be Stoned to Death in Iran -MS]

[Crossposted from JStreetJive.]