We welcome those who preach terror and death. So why ban an idiotic Dutch MP with noxious yet non-violent views?

Last updated at 4:55 PM on 12th February 2009

Refused free speech: Geert Wilders

Should we care that an apparently kooky Far-Right Dutch MP of whom we have never heard has been banned from entering this country? Much as we abhor his beliefs, I believe we should.

Geert Wilders had been invited to show his shocking 17-minute film called Fitna at a small gathering today at the House of Lords, but has now been prevented from doing so by the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith.

It can, however, be easily viewed on YouTube — and has already been by hundreds of thousands of people.

His film links mainstream Islamic texts with the terrorist attacks on New York in September 2001. It begins with the hugely controversial cartoon of the Prophet Mohammed with a bomb as a turban. I must say that the film seems to me a crude — and pretty boring — piece of propaganda.

Its purpose is to demonise the Muslim faith by implying that it is essentially violent. The suggestion that the Koran is ‘a fascist book’ is bound to be offensive to millions of lawabiding and peaceful Muslims.

For all that, Fitna does not incite violence, and I doubt it offends against any British laws.

Why, then, should Mr Wilders have been banned from coming here? The Home Office was evidently concerned that the film might be deemed provocative by British Muslims.

Lord Ahmed, a supposedly moderate Labour peer, had been reported as saying that he would mobilise 10,000 of his coreligionists if Mr Wilders were allowed to come here, though he strongly denies he ever said this.

The same Lord Ahmed invited an Al Qaeda terror suspect to visit Westminster three years ago.

The last thing the Home Office wanted was a confrontation between Mr Wilders and members of the British Muslim community.

So an age-old and cherished principle — that of free speech — has been torn up and thrown away.

No sensible person would suggest that a person be allowed to say whatever he wants in public.

The criminal law recognises that there should be limits to free speech — for example, by legislating against those inciting violence.

But there is no evidence that Mr Wilders’ film falls foul of such laws, and the Home Office has not suggested that it does.

I’m afraid the Government is guilty of the most appalling double standards.

Whatever we may think of Mr Wilders, he is an elected representative and the leader of a perfectly legal political organisation called the Party For Freedom, which holds nine out of 120 seats in the Dutch Parliament.

So far as I am aware, he has never broken the law or threatened anyone with violence, though he faces a trial in the Netherlands for making anti-Islamic statements.

The Dutch government, though not at all friendly towards Mr Wilders, is right to have protested so strongly to the British Government at the exclusion of one of its own parliamentarians from another European Union nation.

Yet our Government has indulged and protected a number of extreme imams who have gone far further than Mr Wilders in preaching hate.

Incompetent: Jacqui Smith

For example, the radical cleric Abu Hamza was allowed to rail against homosexuals and women in bikinis for years before he was finally sentenced for soliciting murder.

As Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone embraced a Muslim cleric called Yusuf al-Qaradawi when he visited City Hall in 2005 with the full permission of HM Government.

Al-Qaradawi had been criticised for condoning suicide bombings and for having anti-Semitic and homophobic views.

Last November, the same Jacqui Smith, who now raises the drawbridge against Mr Wilders, granted a radical propagandist called Ibrahim Moussawi a six-month visa so that he could speak at a conference in London on Islam.

Moussawi once allegedly described Jews as ‘a lesion on the forehead of history’.

There are endless examples of the Government turning a blind eye to extreme Islamists so that they are allowed to say whatever they want in this country.

Nor is it above accepting people who have been sentenced for serious non-religious offences, including a 61-year-old convicted paedophile who had lived in Australia for 56 years.

Many people would judge him a much greater threat than Mr Wilders.

The gay activist and former Labour MP Peter Tatchell yesterday pointed out that Jacqui Smith has regularly given visas and work permits to Jamaican reggae singers who openly incite the murder of lesbian and gay people.

Tatchell mentioned the granting of a visa last year to a Jamaican singer called Bounty Killer. T

Though he was allowed into this country, he had been banned from Guyana earlier in 2008 on account of his murderous lyrics.

All kinds of undesirable people, some potentially dangerous, are welcomed to our shores, while a Dutch MP who is admittedly highly controversial but does not preach violence is told that he can’t come here.

Mr Wilders, who clearly relishes the publicity, is likely to make an attempt today to defy the Home Secretary’s ban but will almost certainly be thwarted.

Jacqui Smith — the most incompetent and accident-prone of ministers — has been cowed by a number of Muslim leaders such as Lord Ahmed who don’t want Mr Wilders here.

Welcome: Muslim hate cleric Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi with Ken Livingstone

In fact, she is not doing decent Muslims any favour at all.

The tragedy is that Ms Smith’s decision will reinforce the view that Islam is an intolerant religion which will not allow its opponents to take part in public debate.

A more sensible note was struck yesterday by the Quilliam foundation, which exists to promote moderate Islam.

It believes that however obnoxious and offensive the opinions of the Dutch MP may be, it is better to engage directly with him and answer his points rather than trying to shut him up.

This is in keeping with this country’s tolerant traditions towards free speech which Jacqui Smith does not respect.

She does not want open debate. She does not value freedom. Again and again since 9/11, this Government has responded by clamping down on ancient liberties and restricting freedoms which we once took for granted.

The ban on Mr Wilders is one more turn of the screw.

What has become of our once tolerant country?

Earlier this week, the Church of England’s General Synod voted in favour of banning priests from belonging to the British National Party which, however disgusting its views, is a legal organisation.

 

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Surely our established Church should be discouraging its priests from preaching anti-Christian or racist sermons — though I very much doubt that any of them do so — rather than setting out which organisations they may, or may not, belong to.

In the banning of Mr Wilders there is a collision of two traditions — you could say a clash of cultures.

One, which is partly associated with the more extreme forms of Islam, opposes open debate and seeks to ban its opponents, or otherwise, to shut them up.

The other, which is in the spirit of Western Enlightenment, accepts differences.

Voltaire famously said that he might not agree with his opponent’s beliefs, but he would fight to the death for his right to express them.

Needless to say, that cowardly chump Jacqui Smith does not understand any of this.

She bends her knee to the intolerant fanatics who will not take on the idiotic Geert Wilders, and in so doing she is guilty of further corrupting our precious values.

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