Wilders denied entry to Great Britain

(Note: By the way, I think that this is too absurd to stand, even for the leftist British government, just as the earlier rescinding of the invitation to Wilders to show Fitna in the Parliament building was too absurd to stand and was un-rescinded.)

This morning, Lord Malcolm Pearson of the British House of Lords announced via press release that Geert Wilders would be screening Fitna in a committee room in Parliament on February 12. This afternoon comes this shocker from The Brussels Journal:

This afternoon Mr. Wilders received a letter from the British ambassador to the Netherlands saying that he is a “persona non grata” in the United Kingdom. The ambassador told Mr. Wilders that he is a threat to public security and public harmony because of the controversy created by Fitna. Mr. Wilders intends to go to London anyway. “Let them arrest me in Heathrow,” he says.

If Mr. Wilders is denied entry to the United Kingdom, it will be the first time that Britain refuses entry to an elected politician from another member state of the European Union. The Dutch government has protested to the British government over the unprecedented barring of an EU parliamentarian by another EU country.

Thus the British government puts Geert Wilders in the same class as Omar Bakri Muhammad, the jihadist and terror supporter whom it barred from re-entering Britain several years ago. Another person the British stopped from entering Britain, about 20 years ago, was Louis Farrakhan.

As shocking as the British government’s action may seem, we need to understand that from the liberal (a.k.a. “conservative”) point of view, it makes perfect sense. As Joseph Bottom, the editor of the “conservative” journal First Things, said three years ago in reply to my argument that we should stop Muslim immigration to the U.S., “If we stopped Muslim immigration, we would be as immoral as the terrorists.” So, Geert Wilders, who, among other things, has called for the end of Muslim immigration into the West, is as immoral and dangerous as the Muslim jihadists from whom he’s trying to protect the West, and therefore he should be barred from Great Britain.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 10, 2009 02:01 PM | Send