MELANIE PHILLIPS ON UK'S BANNING OF PAMELA GELLER AND ROBERT SPENCER

From Melanie Phillips:

By banning from the country as extremists the American anti-jihadis Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Home Secretary Teresa May has not only made herself look ridiculous but has sent the enemies of the United Kingdom the message that they have it on the run.  

I do not support the approach taken by either Geller or Spencer to the problem of Islamic extremism. Both have endorsed groups such as the EDL and others which at best do not deal with the thuggish elements in their ranks and at worst are truly racist or xenophobic.  

The result has been a serious blow to the credibility of these two writers, with particular damage being done to Spencer whose scholarship in itself is scrupulous. It has also split the defence against Islamic extremism, and handed a potent propaganda weapon to those who seek falsely to portray as bigoted extremists all who are engaged in the defence of the west against the Islamic jihad.  

Nevertheless, the decision to ban this duo from Britain is unjustified, oppressive and comes perilously close to lining up the British government alongside those who wish to silence defenders of the west against the jihad, making a total mockery of Britain’s understanding of just who presents a danger to the state. Neither Geller nor Spencer remotely presents such a danger.

So why did Mrs May ban Spencer and Geller? Was it because of the petition to do so by Hope not Hate -- which misrepresented and smeared them by claiming they called all Muslims savages (they did not)? Was it in response to one of the signatories to this petition, Tony Lloyd, Greater Manchester’s Police and Crime Commissioner (who Spencer and Geller say also misrepresented what they have said) who termed them ‘hate preachers – every bit as bad as those who use the name of Islam to propagate hatred’?  

What an extraordinary thing to say. Geller and Spencer don’t go round calling for people to be killed, or preaching genocide or holy war, or spreading conspiracy theories and lies to foment hysteria and hatred. But when he was chairman of the Parliamentary Labour Party, Tony Lloyd led a delegation to Gaza to meet leaders of Hamas, where he was photographed fraternally shaking the hand of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.  

So Lloyd is happy to meet with a group whose leader has called Israel a ‘cancerous tumour that must be removed’ and whose officials have said ‘the Jews are the most despicable and contemptible nation to crawl upon the face of the earth, because they have displayed hostility to Allah… 

Allah will kill the Jews in the hell of the world to come, just like they killed the believers in the hell of this world’  

and  

‘...the Jewish faith does not wish for peace nor stability, since it is a faith that is based on murder: “I kill, therefore I am”... Israel is based only on blood and murder in order to exist, and it will disappear, with Allah's will, through blood and shahids [martyrs]’  

 – and yet he called for Spencer and Geller to be banned as ‘hate preachers’, a demand which the Home Secretary agrees was justified even as she allows real hate preachers to spread their poison around Britain.  

 Has Britain now totally lost the plot?