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Phew! Been out of touch for a while so will have to catch up.
naomi has talked nothing but sense here while Gromit and Mani have accused her (and me by association) of claiming all manner of things that we haven't claimed. Octavius is difficult to engage with because he hasn't seen it and 'blah blah' does not relieve him of that obligation. The facts about Fitma are:
1.The quotes from the Quran are certainly the sources of the violence portrayed. Those who scream for that violence do not deny it.
2. All that the film does (apart from its ending) is to draw the parallel between the quotes and the atrocities.
3. At no time does it suggest that all Muslims are murderous lunatics, merely that the acts of violence illustrated were certainly inspired by Quran teaching, and they are bad enough.
4. At the end and contentiously Wilders suggests that we should stop Islam from succeeding in its aim to take over the world just as we did with Nazism and Soviet communism. He certainly does not demand that it be done by violence and, in fact, makes no further suggestion at all.
My main question (as naomi reminded you) was whether we should have stopped him from entering this country.
This was surely an absurd action considering that his film is available for anyone to see!
And, of course, unprincipled, if we are to preserve our reputation for freedom of expression.
Mani, where do you see any signs of violence against Muslims because of this film?
Finally, if we kept him out because of the risk that he might inspire violence, what about all those imams and others who preach violence from pulpits in mosques? Homosexuals should be beheaded, Rushdie should be murdered, and all that. Should we deport them? And I can't imagine how many copies there are of an Old Testament which depicts a God who demands that whole tribes be