Echoes of ‘The Satanic Verses’
I have been watching BBC News 24’s coverage of the Wilders story, which has included comments from the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband.
Miliband states that Fitna contains ‘extreme anti-Muslim hate and we have very clear laws in this country’. The laws are obviously not as clear as he would like as the film has now been shown and is not banned in the UK.
He also said that ‘there is no freedom to stir up hate, religious and racial hatred, according to the laws of the land’.
Does Fitna do this? This is a matter for debate. Debate is how the citizens of free societies dissect claims, ideas, films, and so on, as the Quilliam Foundation, to give a prominent example, argues.
Miliband, having watched Fitna, obviously feels it does ’stir up hate, religious and racial hatred’.
But, hold on… When asked by the interviewer if he had actually watched Fitna he responded that he had not and didn’t need to as he already knew what was in it!
Fitna is a 16 minute film, easily accessible online. Is it really so much to ask that our political overlords bother to watch a film before condemning it and supporting its creator being barred from the country? How is Miliband any better than Muslims who screamed about The Satanic Verses without bothering to read it?