The Home Secretary should instead stop the advocates of violence from entering Britain, argues Charles Moore
'The Secretary of State is satisfied" would be a good title for a satirical television drama. It is the favourite bureaucratic phrase used to convey a ministerial decision.
This week, the office of the Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wrote to Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP who had been invited to the House of Lords to present his anti-Muslim film Fitna to MPs and peers there.
Miss Smith, said the letter, was "satisfied" that what Mr Wilders said "about Muslims and their beliefs… would threaten community harmony and therefore public security in the UK".
So the Flying Dutchman reached Heathrow on Thursday, but was put on a plane back to Holland straightaway.
It is extremely unusual that an elected member of a European legislature is banned from this country when invited by members of our own Parliament. It contravenes a key democratic principle about the power of legislators to talk to one another, whether governments like it or not.
The Dutch authorities – though they greatly dislike Mr Wilders – saw this point at once, and protested to the British Government. Out of his respect for the rights of the elected, the Dutch ambassador went to Heathrow to meet Mr Wilders. It is typical of the collapse of our Parliament's self-belief that this aspect of the case has been ignored.
Anyway, the Secretary of State was satisfied. What satisfied her? I do not believe that it was the intrinsic nature of Mr Wilders's film or words. I have watched Fitna on YouTube. It takes the view that Islam is irredeemably evil. Mr Wilders has said elsewhere that "Islam is not another leaf on the tree of religion", but a totalitarian political ideology. Banning Wilders Plays into the Hands of Our Islamist Enemies >>> By Charles Moore | Friday, February 13, 2009
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