Three ways to make us all safer

Three ways to make us all safer

London Mayor Ken Livingstone: "Support the police, treat Muslims with respect and pull out of Iraq."

The whole thing is a good read but note these couple paragraphs:

Which leads directly to the question of whether Britain should ban Sheikh Qaradawi - a matter with major consequences for the treatment of Britain's Muslim community. Last week, Jonathan Freedland honestly reported on these pages that Qaradawi utterly condemned the London bombings. However, many have suggested that Qaradawi should none the less be banned because he says Palestinian suicide bombing can be justified under Islam in the specific conditions of the Israel-Palestine conflict. I am utterly against both suicide bombings and Israeli killing of civilians - I didn't oppose capital punishment decade after decade to turn round and say it's all right when suicide bombers blow people up.

But if supporters of the Palestinians should be banned on the grounds that Palestinians kill civilians, then consistency would require banning Israeli leaders, who have been responsible for killing several times more Palestinian civilians. Someone advocating that both Sharon and Qaradawi be banned would be wrong, but at least they would be consistent.

Politics