Anthony Small will star in Muslims Like Us (Picture: YouTube)

The BBC has defended its decision to include the former boxer Anthony Small in its new documentary Muslims Like Us.

Anthony, now known as Abdul Haq, was a British boxing champion but in recent years has converted to Islam and has posted online videos in which he has claimed that the execution of journalists including James Foley were ‘retaliation’ against the ‘United Snakes of America’.

The show will place ten Muslims ‘with contrasting world views in a house together’.

Muslims Like Us (Picture: BBC)

The ten are then recorded and the BBC claim that ‘what emerges is a passionate debate, honest disagreements, humour and moments of insight that reveal what is like to be a Muslim in Britain today’.




‘Muslims Like Us aims to explore a full range of attitudes and beliefs in the British Muslim community today,’ a spokesperson for the BBC told Metro.co.uk

‘The contributors were selected to provide an insight into a cross section of opinions and practices.

‘The views of Abdul Haq, and the other contributors, are robustly challenged and debated amongst the group as well as by the film makers throughout the series.’

However Davis Lewin, the deputy director of the counter-extremism think tank the Henry Jackson Society, has suggested that it ‘is totally inappropriate for the BBC to put anybody who has expressed support for Islamic State on our screens in this context’.

He told Evening Standard: ‘One must ask why such views have to be included in a welcome effort to showcase the diversity of Muslim opinion in Britain.’

Muslims Like Us airs on BBC One at 9pm on Monday December 12.

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