Dilip Hiro is a well-known leftist who has been posing as an expert on India and the Middle East for at least 30 years and has written 28 highly partisan books. The issue is clearly that the BBC are treating him as an academic expert rather than a political figure. Thus if one of the small horde of Islamist militants the BBC regularly invite into their studios had made these comments there might have been some attempt at an interviewer challenge or a balancing speaker. However as an 'expert' Hiro is there to provide background and the interviewers will just nod sagely whatever he says. After all this is exactly the kind of stuff they read every morning in the Guardian or Independent - sometimes written by Hiro himself - and it no longer even strikes them as controversial.