I note that Philip Johnston asks in this morning's Telegraph what has happened to free speech after yesterday's incident at Heathrow when the Dutch right wing polititian Geert Wilders was refused entry to Britain.
According to Philip
The refusal to admit the oddball Dutch MP Geert Wilders to Britain yesterday marks a further retreat from this country's traditions of free speech. It stands in stark contrast to what happened exactly 20 years ago tomorrow, when Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa calling for the death of Salman Rushdie for insulting the Prophet Mohammed in his book The Satanic Verses.
The arguments about free speech is rage and rage.But what the incident has done is fan the flames of publicity for a cause which to many people is simply abominable.
Geert is quite simply a racist and his anti Islam film has no doubt been viewed on the internet by a lot nore people than if he had been allowed in to show the film to the House of Lords
As this morning's leader in the Independent says
Lord Pearson of Rannoch must be feeling pleased with himself. The UK Independence Party peer's invitation to the Dutch politician Geert Wilders to attend a screening of his offensively anti-Islamic film, Fitna, in the House of Lords was intended as a publicity generating act of provocation. It has achieved both publicity and provocation. And Mr Wilders did not even need to set foot in Parliament.
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