Woe in Sparkbrook

It seems that the muslim community in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, has fallen into denial. Many of the residents interviewed in the papers are saying that last week's arrests (of the would-be kidnapping beheading jihadists) are a police conspiracy. Admittedly, with such focused and continuing attention on muslims in the UK, it must be hard to avoid a persecution complex. But the fact is, too many imams are still preaching hate (of 'infidels', gays etc) and it is right for the law to step in and put an end to it. David Cameron won my respect last week for announcing his planned measures to ensure that more imams are 'home-grown' and that hate-speech is eradicated in the nation's mosques. The Muslim Council of Britain is facing increasing pressure to ensure better and stronger regulation of the rabid sermons up and down the country. Meanwhile, the centre-rightist columnist Henry Porter has an interesting piece in today's Observer, which ends with this sobering citation:

'Half of Arab women cannot read or write. The entire Arab world translates about 330 books annually, one fifth the number that Greece translates... in the thousand years since the reign of the Caliph al Ma'mun, the Arabs have translated as many books as Spain does in just one year.' The quote is from Pervez Hoodbhoy, a celebrated Muslim physicist.

There is no contradiction in pro-Palestine lovers of Islamic culture and arts (such as myself) agreeing with Porter and Cameron that allowing hateful imams to continue their wahabist diatribe up and down the land is wrong and should be stopped. Freedom of speech should end precisely at the point when it becomes the preaching of hatred.