Welcome, Geert Wilders

Geert Wilders, the Dutch Member of Parliament who was denied entry to Britain by former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, has arrived in Britain after he was granted permission to travel here when an immigration tribunal ruling overturned his ban on entering the country last week.

Today, I’m happy to say, is a victory for freedom of speech. But the fact remains he shouldn’t have been refused entry in the first place. In doing so Her Majesty’s Government had effectively denied everyone who had voted for him and his party in the Netherlands their legitimate voice, their democratic right to be heard.

This is just not acceptable in a democracy as great as ours claims to be. It is not the role of government to prevent someone from entering the country simply because they disagree with their political views. The official reason was that they were concerned he might offend or incite violence or hatred, reasons that any sane person would agree were pretty flimsy as was shown to be the case last week.

Geert Wilders poses no danger to any of us. In fact we pose a greater danger to him. Wilders has to live with 24 hour police protection simply for the views he holds. Weather or not you agree with him it certainly says something that so many Muslims are prepared to resort to violence instead of words in order to defend their religion. It is a fact that further re-enforces his arguments. In a mature democracy people should be able to engage in civilised debate without resorting to violence of any kind.

Having said that I do think that his attitude towards Islam is entirely the wrong approach. You cannot fight what he sees as an Islamic assault on our freedom by attacking their freedoms. As I understand it Wilders seeks to reduce Muslims to the status of second class citizens, banning the Qur’an etc as he views Islam as incompatible with liberal European (Christian) values. While it is true that elements of the Qur’an are seen, certainly by liberal western standards, as unacceptable exactly the same can be said of the Bible.

I think its important to keep in mind that Islam is effectively where Christianity was roughly 500 years ago. Over time, with exposure to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment biblical teachings were challenged. As a result interpretation was not taken so literally and the more unsavory elements of the Bible are now largely ignored. Islam will, I suspect follow a similar route. Of course had these movements reached the Islamic world at the time we would be living in a radically different world today.

The right approach is to encourage a moderate interpretation of the Qur’an that respects western liberal democratic values. This is perhaps one of the greatest failures of the policy of multiculturalism. Integration has not been a priority for successive governments. Little effort has been made to ensure that immigrant populations assimilate well into our society. Instead people live in isolated pockets, cut off from the rest of society where views and ideology contrary to the western liberal tradition can flourish unopposed. It was exactly this sort of environment that enabled the 7/7 bombers to carry out their attack on the London transport network in 2005.

If Geert Wilders is as libertarian as he claims and loves freedom as much as he claims – including the freedom of religion or no religion – then he shouldn’t have to suggest such extreme measures.