Daily UK linguistic liberties update

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Three freedom-of-speech updates on various language-related shock- horror- scandal- probe episodes in the UK this morning.

(1) Prince Harry is being sent away to an equality and diversity training course where perhaps he will at last learn that the royal family should avoid any use of offensive epithets for ethnic minority groups in the population over which they have hereditary rule.

(2) The Dutch far-right-wing politician Geert Wilders has been denied the right to enter Britain to attend a screening of his anti-Muslim film Fitna (it reportedly juxtaposes shots of the 9/11 attacks with quotations from the Qur'an), which a member of the House of Lords wants to screen for parliamentarians. The refusal of entry is said to be because Wilders poses a danger to the public through the ferocity of his extreme anti-Islamic views (at least 79 preachers deemed to preach "hate" have also been denied entry to the UK under the same European Union law). Wilders plans to fly in anyway, daring the authorities to "put me in handcuffs".

(3) The twentieth anniversary of Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa condemning novelist Salman Rushdie to death for disrespecting Islam is causing some renewed discussion of the case. At the University of Bristol broadcaster Kenan Malik and Professor Tariq Modood will debate limits on free speech in a multicultural society — both attacking the liberal left, but for different reasons (Malik thinks liberals have been complicit in gagging free speech; Modood them liberals of inconsistency and double-standards for not extending protection from offensive speech to religious minorities).

Life struggles on in this peaceful but frozen country. Rowan Laxton is on bail. Here in Edinburgh a light snow is falling outside, and as I sit at the laptop over breakfast in my kitchen posting about possible threats to linguistic liberty, so far the heavy footfall of police has not been heard on the stairs outside our apartment. Wait a minute, there's someone at the door…



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