Yes indeed, and it’s also how the Paisleyites supplanted the more moderate Unionists.

Not only that but the “more moderate” Unionists who were supplanted had themselves risen to dominance over more moderate Unionists by the same means. Northern Ireland shows a depressing pattern of this process being repeated and repeated on both sides of the unionist/nationalist divide.

Yes indeed, and it’s also how the Paisleyites supplanted the more moderate Unionists.

The ultraliberal never-ban-anything approach (which neither you nor I entirely support, Matthew) has the big drawback that it plays into the hands of these extremists. A more repressive approach of course has its own drawbacks, but may be justified if it is racist rogues that a government has to deal with.

While I did not grow up in Northern Ireland, I have followed the news on this, and it seems to me that Sinn Fein – a political party I regard as every bit as contemptible as the BNP (or more, given its direct endorsement of violence) – has quite deliberately wound up the provocation issue in order to play the usual “beat the moderates” game. While I appreciate if one lives in Northern Ireland one has to deal with Sinn Fein endorsed thugs, I hope that if I did I would have the courage to follow my Christian and liberal principles on this matter.

As a Christian the message is “turn the other cheek” and refuse to respond with violence. As a liberal the message is freedom of speech. If the response to any attempt by the Orange to provoke me and claim that I am not a Christian is to refuse to be provoked and to act in the way my Christianity tells me to act, what a magnificent response that would be, and how the wind would be taken out of the Orange Order’s sails.

Winding up provocation, provoking back, and pretending to act as the “defenders” of the community against the provocation one has oneself helped inspire is the standard trick in the terrorist/extremist rule book. You then denounce the moderates on your own side who don’t get so wound up and who condemn the violence and extremism as “traitors”, “cowards” etc. That is how Sinn Fein came to win the majority of the Catholic votes in Northern Ireland, something of which as a Catholic I am deeply ashamed.

With any sort of parade, of course the route has to be sensible. So while deliberately parading around backstreets to cause provocation should not be allowed, the main road between two churches which sponsor the parade most certainly should be allowed. Pragmatically, of course I accept the necessity to disallow a parade either because opponents to it threaten violence so overwhelming it cannot be policed against, or because the parade in the past has involved actions by its participants which is beyond mere promotion of views and celebration of their own heritage. But the pragmatic ban here would quite clearly be on the grounds of the illiberal behaviour on either side rather than because the expression of views with which others disagree is not to be allowed.

So I am not saying never ban anything, but I am saying banning because of the threats of violence from opponents brings shame on those opponents, banning because of violent behaviour by the paraders brings shame on the paraders.

This clearly has a direct relevance to the Muslim issue. How dearly I wish that those with influence in the Muslim communities would react in a sensible and liberal way to those who criticise Islam. How much I fear that instead the game of the extremists amongst Muslims enjoying the provocation and using it to squash decent liberal people on their own side is being played, and if played as successfully as it was by Sinn Fein in Northern Ireland will lead to horrible and divisive consequences.

Bet you didn’t grow up in Northern Ireland, then!

Admittedly nor did I – though it’s where my mother came from and her sisters lived. They were Protestants (so you and I seem to be on opposite sides, yet again…!)

During the Troubles, Orange marches were, rightly, often permitted. They were permitted in places like city centres, including majority Catholic cities, where the Orange had every right to stand up for their beliefs and their strength. A line was (often) rightly drawn in banning deliberately provocative coat-trailing when the Orange picked on ghettoised Catholic estates to march through.

It’s never easy to decide where to draw that line, but it’s vital not to shirk the task, or take the ultraliberal view that you never ban anything. Fortunately Mosley didn’t get a free hand when he tried to march throught the Jewish East End. I don’t know my 1930s history that well, but I suspect there were plenty of German ultraliberals around who thought Hitler’s brownshirt activities should never be banned.

The Orange Order used to have a clever trick of parading in pomp through Catholic areas while beating their deafening Lambeg drums. The liberal response, in my view, was not to rely on neutering any potentially violent response from the Catholic side, but to ban the “speaker”.

I disagree. The Orange Order have a right to disagree with Catholicism, to express their disagrement with it, and to commemorate those occasions on which freedom to worship in the Protestant style was established. The streets are free for everyone in the UK – Catholic or Protestant – it is outrageous to say “this is a Catholic area, the expounding of Protestant views is forbidden”. Just as Catholics have a right to express their support for their own religion where they like.

I remember as a child the open-air Corpus Christi procession we had through the main street of the town where I lived, with full Catholic pomp, singing Catholic hymns, past an evangelical chapel, close to a Baptist church and the Anglican church. Provocative? Well, maybe if they saw it that way.

Sinn Fein managed to wind up outrage over these things and turn them into an occasion for a fight. The liberal response is to tolerate the expression of views with which you disagree, and to tolerate also the celebrations of cultures with which one is not enamoured. Now, a once-a-week Orange Order parade would certainly be wrong, once a year is certainly not.

As a Catholic, I dislike the evangelical/pentecostal Christian groups who so often play music expounding their theology (which I despise, for I feel it to be a completely wrong interpretation of Christianity) and hand out pamphlets in the High Street where the church in which I worship stands. Is it offensive? Well, yes, actually, it is to me, it offends me that I think they have this thing wrong. I really do find the “prosperity theology” which is growing in these circles (pray to God and he will give you lots of material success) offensive.

But I have to accept they have a right to their own interpretation, and a right to promote it and celebrate it.

If someone were to say to me do I “oppose it” or “condemn it”, I would have to ask what they mean. In the sense that I disagree with its message, I oppose it. But I do not know what “condemn” might mean? That I wish them to suffer some penalty for pushing this message that offends me? No, in that sense I do not condemn it.

But regarding a “new right to hate Muslims”. This is not new. Individuals have a right to hate whoever they please. They have no right to do harm. As the great songwriter Tom Leher wrote…
“Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Muslims,
And everybody hates the Jews…”

It’s a great song.

On the contrary, whatever you may pretend, I have never said there is anything wrong with criticising Islam. Of course there isn’t.

What I am criticising is the attempt to arouse fear and hatred of Muslims.

Jesus Wept. That’s the whole point, innit? Any attempt at the former is open to accusations of the latter, which is exactly the justification used to block Wilders, and is exactly the brush with which you’ve spent the whole thread trying to tar anyone who won’t unreservedly “oppose” the film, and is exactly the implication that everyone else has spent the whole thread rejecting.

You really are tying yourself in knots here.

But if you won’t even say that prejudice against Muslims is wrong – and indeed if you go so far as make bizarre statements like “there is no such thing as prejudice against Muslims” – you really are proving my point.

Again with the misrepresentations. I did not say that there was “no such thing as prejudice agianst Muslims”, I said quite clearly “In the precise sense you mean “prejudice”, there is no such thing as prejudice against Muslims”. The precise sense it which you meant it was to equate it with racism or anti-semetism, and as I have already said I reject the suggestion that there is any equivalence at all.

I’m quite certain that you understand the distinction I am making, but if you really are going to make me spell it out then here it goes:

Anti-semetic, racist and homophobic “prejudice” is against what someone is, purely as a matter of personal happenstance, a category bestowed upon them from the moment of conception and completely immutable until the day they die no matter what they think, say or do throughout their lives, and it tells us absolutely nothing whatsoever about them as individuals. Criticising them as a group is therefore nonsensical and irrational.

That is completely different from “prejudice” against Islam or Muslims. Being a Muslim is not in any way shape or form an immutable characterstic of one’s being. It is a political and spiritual belief system that is learned and adhered to BY CHOICE. It tells us absolutely nothing about a person’s genes, or language, or cultural origins, it tells us only what they believe.

Criticism of Islam has far more in common with criticism of communusm than with racism, with the obvious caveat that communists don’t often find blind, misguided liberals rushing to their defense with shrill cries of “prejudice!” whenever someone shines a light on the failings of that belief system.

“If a speaker is met with threats of violent protest, then is the liberal response to ban the speaker, or ban the violent protest?”

Well, it depends. The Orange Order used to have a clever trick of parading in pomp through Catholic areas while beating their deafening Lambeg drums. The liberal response, in my view, was not to rely on neutering any potentially violent response from the Catholic side, but to ban the “speaker”.

Now I do think that it is arguable that Wilders trying to enter the House of Lords was provocative in much the same way as the Orange marching down the Falls Road was provocative. It was a primitive grab for physical territory, and for the centre of power. A response to that from Muslims (if not a violent one) was quite understandable.

This issue just is not black and white. It’s grey! There is no philosophical line of inquiry that can demonstrate as a piece of objective truth that banning Wilders was right, or that it was wrong. Welcome to the real world!

Unlike yourself, that is, who attempts to attribute any ability on my behalf to comment without any knowledge of whether I have or have not watched the film.

You fail to either ask or answer the important question of what action should be taken while also holding the view that you don’t think Mr Wilders should have been prevented from entering the country, you don’t think the film should be banned and you also don’t think the content of the film was agreeable.

You appear to be the only person who doesn’t recognize the problematic nature of making clear and unequivocal statements about what action to take, so perhaps you could propose a course of action which we might all agree to.

Or is a course of warm words all you propose?

Of course, I haven’t said half the strange things you attribute to me. I suppose I should be used to it by now.

But I asked you above whether you’d actually seen the film, or whether you were in the position of all the other people who were commenting on it without having bothered to watch it. You didn’t answer.

Have you seen it?

You’ve asked for clear and unequivocal statements condemning this film, which you’ve received with caveats, yet you accuse us of illiberal behaviour for a spokesman saying what action should be taken as a result of what you’ve asked for.

You then ask for condemnation of the spokesman for his apparent call for censorship, which you also receive with caveats, only to accuse those who do of illiberal behaviour in attempting to gag opponents of the film and blindness to the offense contained within it.

You’ve said you don’t support watching the film, but that you have done so yourself…

I accept you’ve made the standard arguments, but it is laughable that you can attempt to hold those both for and against simultaneously without attracting criticism yourself.

You are exhibiting your double standards and you are exhibiting them from your armchair.

Your form of opposition so far amounts to attacking those you agree with on the basis that we are taking action and believe in accountability – that’s not opposition, that’s harping from the sidelines.

I realise you can’t be absolutely certain about Wilders’s intentions, but what I’m asking you is whether you believe the intention was to arouse fear and hatred of Muslims.

Of course, I mean Muslims in general, not Muslim terrorists or extremists. You may remember those bar charts showing the increase in the Muslim population. That was the whole Muslim population, not the population of Muslim terrorists or extremists.

Towards the end of your comment, you seem almost to be advocating a new right – the right to hate Muslims. Can you reassure me that wasn’t really what you meant?

On the contrary, whatever you may pretend, I have never said there is anything wrong with criticising Islam. Of course there isn’t.

What I am criticising is the attempt to arouse fear and hatred of Muslims.

But if you won’t even say that prejudice against Muslims is wrong – and indeed if you go so far as make bizarre statements like “there is no such thing as prejudice against Muslims” – you really are proving my point.

Was the film was made with the purpose of arousing “fear and hatred of Muslims”?

I am not privy to Wilder’s thoughts, but I would not deny that it arouses hatred of a certain type of Muslim, namely the extreme fundamentalist. The fear it arouses, certainly in my own mind, is that the ideas propagated by charismatic fundamentalist preachers will eventually dominate mainstream Islamic thought. If this happens in Europe then there would be a large minority that would be deeply inimical to the ideals of liberal democracy. I care deeply about these ideals.

Is this fear justified? I don’t know. This film makes a case that it is.

Are only the religious allowed to express hatred? The Koran says “Allah… has made hateful to you unbelief and transgression and disobedience”. As an unbeliever, I have every moral right to return the compliment should I so wish.

In the precise sense you mean “prejudice”, there is no such thing as prejudice against Muslims.

I’m not asking you about “criticism of Islam”. If I asked you whether anti-semitism was OK, you wouldn’t say “I don’t accept that criticism of Judaism amounts to prejudice”, would you?

What I’m asking is whether you think it’s OK to be prejudiced against Muslims. What’s the answer?

Are you still beating your wife?

I don’t accept that criticism of Islam amounts to prejudice in the sense you clearly mean it, any more than criticism of fascism or criticism of communism or criticism of libertarianism amounts to prejudice against those who espouse those world views.

I’ll tell you what equivalence I do see though. I see striking similarities between your desperate and rather pathetic attempts to imply racism on the part of anyone who criticises Islam with the tactics of those supporters of Israel who respond to any criticism of that country with immediate accusations of anti-semitism.

Well, what are you saying? Are you saying it’s OK to be prejudiced against Muslims or not?

Now who is misrepresenting? I didn’t say that the equivalent was acceptable, I said there is no equivalence in the first place.