HAHAHAHAAA.

Fundamentally, what I want from the government is a preventative approach rather than this kind of “fire fighting”. I simple cannot accept the usage of the blunt instrument of banning speakers – with the comcomitant limitations on freedom of speech in this country – in lieu of a “fully thought through policy in Government.” Even if the challenge which would be presented by you and me going along to these events and asking tricky questions would not be nearly as effective as simply banning the speakers, that’s a situation I’d be willing to accept to preserve an institutional commitment to the values which make me proud to be British.

As for what form preventative policy would take, that is the $64,000 question. I am hoping to get a guest post on the Spittoon soon from a correspondent of mine who is involved with an interfaith centre at an American university. Their work and the institutions in place there successfully discourage religious extremism from becoming an issue on campus. There is also a French organisation which does some interesting work in the banlieus of Paris: I have a correspondent who has been involved with them and I am intending to guest post him at the Spittoon soon. Of course there are, as with any analogies, important differences between the British experience of religious extremism and that of other countries, but I think there is much that we could learn from what has been tried elsewhere.

I am sure that you and many others will have interesting ideas to contribute on the question of preventative policy, which is a topic I really hope can be encouraged to come to the forefront of debate in this area.

“He is banned from entering Australia.”

Evidence?

Here

And what did he say about Jews and Judaism?

Funny how anti-Semitism so easily morphs into Muslimphobia.

Evidence? Who was the “young and popular progressive muslim cleric”? And why should this be deemed controversial when it forms the basic platform of Muhammadiyah, Indonesia’s 2nd largest Muslim religious organisation?

Or did you just make it all up?

Evidence?

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/group.php?gid=35673288170&ref=ts

http://twitter.com/Cheerleadered

They should be engaged in open debate even if what they are saying maybe seen by some as ‘offensive’. Pushing the issue underground by using stupid undiefinable laws such as ‘hate speech’ is simply Orwellian and counter productive. We need to keep bacteria of the Bilal Phillips variety in direct sunlight where they wll decompose naturally.

Sounds wonderful.

I would like to agree with you but … in cases where the bacteria claim to speak in the name of the Prophet, (or any other deity for that matter, not only Muslims), there may be some rather stupid members of the audience who will take his words and translate them into violence being filmed with womens stockings over their heads, screaming Allah Akbar while someone is slowly beheaded with a large kitchen knife.

This is no Joke. Some of ‘them’ were getting organised to do this to a British serviceman who was to be abducted inside the UK and then beheaded on film.

We are talking about irrational people who do exist.