By Douglas Murray, Director of the Centre for Social Cohesion
The Centre for Social Cohesion has today been successful in ensuring that Ibrahim el Moussawi of Hezbollah will be barred from the UK. The Home Office has now confirmed that they will not be allowing the organisation's media spokesman into the country.
Last week I wrote to the Home Secretary informing her that I was prepared to issue an international arrest warrant if el Moussawi was allowed into the UK to disseminate his organisation's genocidal hatred of Jews.
The CSC had previously revealed that el Moussawi was set to teach part of a course on political Islam to government officials and the police at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. This grotesque charade – in which the participants are expected to pay £2,000 of taxpayers' money to listen to terrorist propagandists and anti-Semites – is still due to go ahead. Kemal Helbawy (advocate of killing 2-year old Israeli children) is still taking part. But at least Hezbollah will not be flying into the country for the occasion.
It is a sign of how terrible things are that the UK government could ever have considered that a member of a terrorist group – a man who would not be doing his job properly were he not inciting hatred – could be allowed into the UK to teach government officials and police. Coming after the decision to bar Geert Wilders MP from the UK, the contradiction has, as Michael Barone said from the US, seemed "something like national suicide".
While the decision to ban el Moussawi is a welcome development, the Geert Wilders precedent has clearly left the government in a terrible fix. They are trying to equate an elected party leader from a close ally of ours with a terrorist spokesman.
The ludicrousness of the Wilders ban has been exposed quicker than anyone could have imagined. But Government is now in a position of constantly having to justify all future arrivals into the UK in the context of the Wilders ban. Home Office policy – which has clearly been made up on the hoof - is in tatters.