EastEnders Gay-Bashing storyline set to offend - By: Gary Cosby

The secret gay romance between EastEnder’s characters Christian Clarke and Syed Masood takes a dramatic turn next month.

Soon after the love affair becomes public Christian, played by John Partridge, will suffer an anti-gay attack by a Muslim character.

The storyline is expected to spark a barrage of complaints from Muslim groups reports The Daily Star.

An EastEnders insider revealed to the newspaper: “Amira [Syed’s wife] finally learns the truth about Syed and, as you can imagine, she’s devastated

“She can’t believe that he would betray her like that with a man. And not just any man but Christian

“Everyone knows Amira’s leaving but it’s not yet known if Syed will go with her or stay in Walford with Christian. But it seems that Christian is going to take the brunt of Syed’s problems.

“Syed and Amira’s wedding achieved one of the highest ratings of the year, so we’re expecting viewers to again be gripped when this storyline reaches its dramatic climax. There will be lots of twists and turns along the way. And sadly for poor Christian, he’ll be the one who ends up taking a battering. There will also be lots of complaints.”

The Christian and Syed gay saga has already been criticized by senior Muslims.

A spokesman from the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, told The Star: “EastEnders is famous for its gritty and realistic storylines but we cannot condone such violence from a Muslim character.”

Last year Asghar Bokhari, founding member of the MPAC, told the BBC that EastEnders “really lost an opportunity to present a normal friendly Muslim character to the British public” when commenting on the Syed character.

Diedrick Santer, executive producer for EastEnders disgreed: “Sometimes there’s a danger of being too careful with black or Asian characters that we might go into territories that might offend.

“But it seems to me if we steer away from any controversy, they don’t stand a chance of being a great EastEnders family [the Masood family] – they’ll just be in their kitchen unit making curries for years and years and that’s not going to be very interesting.”

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About the Author

Gary Cosby is company copy, media and technical writer. His weekly news blogs Mand8 Out-Takes and Maleforce Flasher feature international news articles. Gary also provides site copy for gay social networking website mand8.com and gay chat and date site maleforce.com

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