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EXCLUSIVE: The BBC is to broadcast a live Eid service from a mosque for the first ever time on British terrestrial TV.
Eid Live and Celebrity Eid will come from Bradford, a city with a large Muslim population that is this year’s UK City of Culture, and is the setting for new BBC thriller Virdee.
Eid Live will make UK history as the first service from a mosque broadcast on terrestrial TV, the BBC said. Coming live from next month on the morning of Eid, the show will spotlight 1,500 worshippers at Bradford Central Mosque. Two presenters will be stationed outside and there will be a range of guests. Later that day, Celebrity Eid will see well-known Muslim faces come together with non-Muslims and neighbors to celebrate the arrival of Eid, with those taking part set to be announced in due course.
The pair of shows feature on the BBC’s latest Faith and Hope season, which will also commemorate Easter and Passover. Daisy Scalchi, who runs religious commissioning for the BBC, said it is surprising the live Eid service has not been done before. “This feels like it is absolutely the right moment to be doing something loudly and proudly, celebrating this key moment in the calendar,” she added. “I would hope this signals how alert we are to our religious output.” Firecracker Scotland is producing with Amplify Consulting, which is run by one of Scalchi’s predecessors, Aaqil Ahmed.
At a time when communities are polarized and Islamophobia in the UK is on the rise, Scalchi said it is “more important now than ever” for the nation’s oldest pubcaster – commissioner of “99% of the UK’s religious output” – to be backing shows such as Eid Live.
“I really believe that to understand society and understand ourselves we need to understand religion and faith,” she added. “It’s about who we identify with, who we are and what we believe. Without having that understanding or appreciation of the major faiths I don’t think we really understand the neighbors we’re living next to or the people who are part of our day-to-day lives.”
The media has an “important role to play” in contributing towards “wider societal cohesion,” Scalchi added. Her remarks came just a few months after the devastating summer riots. These riots were caused in part by a false conspiracy theory claiming the murderer of three girls at a dance class was a Muslim terrorist who came from outside the UK. “We are speaking to different communities, faith leaders and understanding what is happening on the ground,” she added. “We are hearing directly from people embedded in these worlds every day.”
Scalchi said her commissioning team is more joined up than ever with the rest of the BBC and is working with departments such as BBC Children’s, BBC Bitesize, Sounds and teams from the nations and regions.
With that in mind, the BBC has chosen to broadcast its Eid show from Bradford, a city in which nearly one third of its inhabitants are Muslim, which is being showcased on the BBC at the moment via A A Dhand adaptation Virdee. “At a time when Bradford is celebrating being City of Culture, this feels really important,” added Scalchi.
For the Faith & Hope season, Scalchi also revealed the BBC’s latest Gareth Malone series, which will see the famous choirmaster bring Handel’s ‘Messiah’ to new audiences, along with the previously-announced Amol Rajan Goes to the Ganges [working title], as the University Challenge host joins up to 500 million pilgrims from all over the globe for the world’s largest religious festival.
