Remember, Allahu Akbar

So the hot potato du jour is yet again the freedom of speech vs. hate crime one, prompted by the Government’s decision to bar Dutch MP Geert Wilders from entering the UK to promote his anti-Islamic tract, the short film Fitna. The Government has attempted to justify its decision on the grounds of public safety, seeking to avoid inflaming a Muslim community already aggravated by events in the Middle East in which the UK, by its military participation in America’s missions, has implicitly sent out a signal that it approves US action against Muslims insofar that Al-Qaeda is potentially present in, and composed of members of, any Muslim populace.
That Wilders, a preening right-wing self-publicist akin to George Galloway at the other end of the argument in the UK, has benefited from the attention created by the decision, can be ignored. It’s not the crux of the matter: these things are better brought out into the open in a free society, even when they end up stirring up tension.
Of course, freedom of speech should necessarily not be inclusive of allowing public attacks on individuals and communities simply for what they are. But there’s a fundamental lack of focus here on what constitutes such an attack. If someone takes the Qu'ran to task for homophobia, oppression of women or intolerance of other belief systems, how can this simply be blocked off as a hate crime against all Muslims? What the Government is doing here is in fact propagating a far more insidious kind of thinking towards the Muslim community: that different rules need to be applied in their case when it comes to freedom of speech – any criticism of Islam must be suppressed because Muslims are hot-headed children who en masse cannot take care of their own faith community’s fundamentalist extremes and need protecting by law from their own propensity to overreact.
Had Wilders been a Dutch Muslim (remember Ayaan Hirsi Ali?), this situation would never have arisen. That he happens to be a non-Muslim right-winger with an unquestionably destructive slant and xenophobic motives must not be allowed to detract from the fact that what is being censored here is just critique of Islam. That the critique is jaundiced is neither here nor there: that’s what we have open debate for. The one rational limitation of free speech; the prohibition on inciting persecution or violence, has not been breached. Regardless, this hasn't stopped a host of statements in defence of the Government's position, particularly despicably in cases such as that of the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee Keith Vaz, who effectively condoned Salman Rushdie’s murder during the Satanic Verses affair. Apparently, a march calling for it was to Vaz 'a great celebration of freedom'. Sorry to fall prey to Godwin’s Law at this late stage, but we risk censoring criticism of Nazis for fear of upsetting all Germans.
There is of course the argument that the comparison cannot hold water because organised religion is by its nature fundamentalist and its practitioners don’t have a choice to pick and mix, to sort out the humanist parts from the haraam, as one does with personal politics. But freedom of self-expression is what western nations are built on: in return for your own freedom, you have to allow others to have it as well. There’s a real danger that, stricken by guilt over permitting our governments to retaliate in such an indiscriminate way over terrorism, we’re losing sight of this basic precept by offering recompense in the form of mollycoddling.