Dutch Foreign Minister Questions about Paul Weston’s Arrest

Two members of the Dutch Parliament, Geert Wilders and Raymond de Roon of the Party for Freedom (PVV), have raised the question of Paul Weston’s recent arrest with the Dutch foreign minister.
Below is the press release sent out today by the PVV.



PVV questions Dutch Foreign Minister about arrest of British politician

Today, Dutch parliamentarians Geert Wilders and Raymond de Roon (both PVV) asked the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs, Frans Timmermans, a number of questions about the arrest of British politician Paul Weston. You can read the questions below:

Parliamentary questions of MPs Raymond de Roon and Geert Wilders (both PVV) to the Minister of Foreign Affairs about the arrest of a British politician for quoting Winston Churchill:

1. Are you familiar with the articles “Paul Weston — Victim of Sharia: Arrested For Quoting Winston Churchill” and “Arrested for quoting Winston Churchill: European election candidate accused of religious and racial harassment after he repeats wartime prime minister’s words on Islam during campaign speech”?

2. Do you share our opinion that the arrest of the politician Paul Weston is a gross violation of freedom of expression and an example of dhimmi behavior? If not, why not?

3. Do you agree that this event is not unique, but is exemplary for the state of siege surrounding freedom of expression through the rise of Islamic censorship in the West? If not, why not?

4. Is it true that Paul Weston risks a two-year prison sentence due to simply quoting a passage from Winston Churchill’s book “The River War” about the militant character of Islam and the social decline that results from it?

5. Are you willing to contact the British Minister of Justice and insist that no charges be pressed against Paul Weston? If so, will you keep Parliament informed of the British reaction? If not, why not?

6. What are you going to do to ensure that freedom of expression, both domestically and internationally, will not be sacrificed to Islamic intolerance?

7. Are you prepared to draw international attention to the danger that anti-racism laws and criminals laws on defamation of religion and/or groups are abused to silence criticism of Islam?

8. How do you intend to wage the fight for the preservation of freedom of expression, in light of the planned rapprochement to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, an organization which aims for an international ban of blasphemy and which attempts to restrict freedom of expression in the West under the pretext of the fight against “islamophobia”?


H/t to Gates of Vienna

National and International Outrage for Liberty GB's Paul Weston's Arrest



Last Saturday’s arrest of Paul Weston - chairman of the party Liberty GB and candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East - for quoting an anti-Islam passage by Churchill in Winchester, and the subsequent charge against him of Racially Aggravated Crime with a possible jail sentence of 2 years, have provoked many reactions.

Michael Coren interviewed Weston yesterday on the major Canadian national news channel SUN TV, ironically touching on his “Islamophobia” or, as Paul etymologically and aptly defined it, “an irrational fear of submission”. Coren was so incensed at this violation of the very freedom of speech that Churchill himself - and before him Alfred the Great from his seat in the same town of Winchester - established and defended, that he declared himself willing to defy arrest and quoted the full Churchill passage again on air.

The U.S. Fox News reported this news as a main story, adding that “There has been some backlash in the country over the arrest” and quoting Telegraph’s columnist Daniel Hannan:

Why should it fall to me to defend him? Where are the lion-hearted liberals who are so quick to denounce political arrests in distant dictatorships? I realise that "political arrest" is a strong phrase, but it's hard to think of any other way to describe a candidate for public office being taken into police custody because of objections to the content of his pitch.

Hannan, despite being a political opponent of Liberty GB and seemingly ignoring a few truths about the reality of Islam, has complained to the Hampshire and Wight Commissioner about the case. He adds: “This is not the first time that the police have invented a right not to be offended, and chosen to elevate it over the basic freedoms we used to take for granted.”

Dozens upon dozens of American sources have reported and commented on the story. Dr. Bill Warner, Director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, has taken inspiration from Weston’s example on how to be more effective in opposing totalitarian authority.

The Washington Times, perhaps not as famous as the Lefty Washington Post – which, like all Leftist media, has kept silent – but a high-circulation conservative paper, ran this:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/29/quoting-winston-churchills-criticism-islam-contrib/

Some of the numerous other international and British media outlets’ stories and comments:

http://article.wn.com/view/2014/04/28/Euro_candidate_Paul_Weston_arrested_over_Islam_remarks/

http://www.itv.com/news/update/2014-04-28/euro-elections-candidate-arrested-over-hate-speech/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-27186573

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2614834/Arrested-quoting-Winston-Churchill-European-election-candidate-accused-religious-racial-harassment-repeats-wartime-prime-ministers-words-Islam-campaign-speech.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10792895/Election-candidate-arrested-over-Churchill-speech.html

http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/11175418.European_election_candidate_arrested_on_suspicion_of__religious_or_racial_harassment_/

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/28/UK-Cops-Arrest-Man-for-Quoting-Churchill

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-London/2014/04/30/British-political-arrest-leads-to-nothing

http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/Dorset-man-arrested-quoting-Churchill-Islam/story-21023881-detail/story.html

http://www.theblaze.com/blog/2014/04/27/if-you-quote-winston-churchill-on-this-topic-you-could-go-to-jail-in-modern-day-great-britain/

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/04/the-uk-in-the-balance.php

http://www.steynonline.com/6300/denial-is-a-river-in-sudan

http://www.steynonline.com/6296/the-churchill-bust

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/europe/uk-politician-arrested-after-making-speech-quoting-winston-churchill-views-on-islam-30224041.html

Video of Paul Weston's Churchill Speech, Arrest, Interview

Previous articles on the topic

Winchester: Churchill Quotation Gets Liberty GB Leader Paul Weston Arrested

Liberty GB’s Paul Weston, Arrested in Winchester for Quoting Churchill, Could Face 2 Years in Jail



Transcript of the video


Q: Where exactly were you speaking, please?

A: Winchester, which is in the county of Hampshire, and Hampshire is part of the South-East constituency for the European Union elections which I’m standing in. So I thought: “As it’s part of my constituency, I will go down and try and explain to these people, who do not live nearby to a Muslim community, something about Islam to them.”

Q: You were actually speaking to a crowd about standing as a candidate in an election in a riding in which you were one of the candidates. How many people would you say were listening to you?

A: Well, in the beginning — you know, let’s face it: none of this lasted for very long, I’m afraid. We had — I started off by saying to them, that “People of Winchester, I want to talk to you specifically about Islam, and I want to read something to you.” And then I started reading it. We were immediately interrupted by this woman, who then immediately got on her phone, and we rightly assumed she had phoned the police. And within about three minutes the police had arrived and taken my megaphone away from me and taken my transcript of Churchill’s words, and said that I could no longer do that, because my words were causing offence and distress to people who were listening.

Q: Did your audience or the police know at the time you were quoting Churchill? Or did they know afterward? At what point did they know it was Churchill you were quoting? Did you start out by saying that this is Winston Churchill, or were you saving that for the end of the quote?

A: Well, no; I was never actually going to mention it at all. If I hadn’t been arrested, I would have mentioned it was Winston Churchill. Having been arrested, I thought, “There’s absolutely no point informing the police about this, because they will then perhaps be slightly less forward in taking action.” And I thought that, “If it really has come to the point that you can be arrested for saying these words, then don’t tell them who originally said it, and let them prosecute you — arrest you, prosecute you — and just to show the rest of the world how utterly sunk this poor old country of Britain is today.”

Q: Interesting; I agree with that. Among the people that were there when you started, did you have any supporters? That were listening?

A: We did. We had — you know, there were — we got passers-by initially, and a small crowd formed, but this was literally all over within three minutes. And by the time it ended, we had people shouting from the crowd, “What are you arresting him for? There’s nothing wrong with what he’s saying!” Which was probably about 80% of the people, with that view. And the 20%, of course, were shouting things like, “You’re a bunch of Nazis,” and, you know, the usual stuff that either the hard Left, or the totally uninformed about Islam, come out with.

Q: What is the charge that you believe is going to be levelled at you?

A: Well, in the beginning, they said to me that, because my words were causing concern and distress, I should immediately cease. When I said that I wasn’t going to do that, they said, “If you don’t cease, we will arrest you under something called a ‘breach of the Section 27 Dispersal Notice’.” And I said, “Well, that’s fine, but I am standing for an election in this constituency. I have the right to free speech. I will continue speaking.” I picked up the megaphone again; I think I got about two words out, and that was it. I was manhandled down the steps, and then searched and chucked into the back of their police van. When we got to the police station, I wasn’t fingerprinted, my DNA wasn’t taken, because a Section 27 is not necessarily a criminal offence. So they said, “We’re not going to fingerprint and DNA you.” They put me into a cell, and they kept me there, I think, for about five hours, and then a policeman came in and said, “We’re dropping the original thing” — which was this Section 27 breach — “We are re-arresting you in the police station now under the ‘incitement of racial hatred’”, and specifically they are getting me with “racially aggravated crime under Section 4 of the Public Order Act.” Which I’ve had a look at, and it’s rather nasty: it says that you can go to gaol for two years under that one.

Q: Major media in the UK: has there been any interest in this? Any requests for interviews by BBC, or even The Daily Mail, or anything?

A: No, there has been absolutely nothing. I got a phone call earlier from The Southampton Echo, which also covers the Winchester area, and I — Well, I didn’t get a phone call, I got a message saying, can I phone the journalist. And I was expecting an antagonistic bloke, and that’s exactly what I got. He was not horrified about the idea you can be arrested for quoting Churchill in Britain today. He wanted to know why I did it, what I thought I would achieve, was I aware that by doing that I would be causing offence and distress, and all the buzzwords they come out with. So that’s the only British media outlet that has come anywhere near me. And it was immediately antagonistic. Apart from that, there has been nothing.

Q: What would you say that the attitude of the police was that were dealing with you? Both in the police station, and the initial arrest? Did you get any sense of their view of this?

A: Well, the two policemen that initially arrested me were very young. They didn’t really have the faintest idea what was going on. It was only when I got to the police station that that was then dropped, and a senior policeman then brought in the charges of racially aggravated crime. But, despite that, they were — I can understand they’re following orders. The actual policemen themselves were very polite, very civilised. One of them even talked to me for half an hour after the interview, because I had a taped interview in the interview room, and I was supposed to go back to the cells, and he said, “Look, we’re going to arrange bail for you. You don’t need to go back to the cell. We can sit in here and have a cup of coffee and a sandwich and have a chat off the record.” And, off the record, he said to me that, “We are essentially at war in this country, but of course I’m not in my official capacity allowed to say anything about that.”

Q: What would you like to see happen? What do you expect to happen next? There’s going to be a trial, then? Like, you’ve been formally charged. Or, at least you’re going to be formally charged. Do you know anything about when there will be a trial?

A: Well, the — I’ve been bailed for three weeks. I’m due to go back to the police station on May the 24th. And I am assuming that, in the interim period — what the investigating officer said to me at the time was, he will forward everything, including the — obviously, because they don’t have video of me doing it. They are just responding to a report from the crowd; they heard a few words that I said. But what they have said, they have taken a copy of the Churchill transcript, and they are sending that on to the Crown Prosecution Service with the recommendation that I be prosecuted under this racially aggravated Section 4. So somewhere between now and May the 24th, if the Crown Prosecution Service says, “Yes, we’re going to go ahead and prosecute him,” then I’m assuming that when I go back to the police station on May the 24th I will be arrested and held.

Q: So, for the benefit of people that don’t live in the UK, what level of court, and meaning of court — the court system is a little different than it is either in Canada or the States. This would be in front of a magistrate or a judge? This is a criminal proceeding, right?

A: It’s a criminal proceeding, but criminal proceedings can be dealt with in magistrates’ courts. But I would imagine, because clearly, if they are intending to prosecute, then we are obviously going to mount a proper defence, so it would probably go to a Crown court hearing with a judge, which is similar to — I’m sure you heard about the whole Tim Burton “taqiyya” trial recently, and of course Tim got off on that one, and the Crown Prosecution Service must have been aware that he was probably going to get off, but they are — you know, the Crown Prosecution Service was taken over by the cultural Marxist Left a long time ago, twenty years ago now. They will prosecute anything they possibly can, even if they know they’re going to lose it, simply because they think that by prosecuting, they will deter anybody else from doing it, even if they win in court; they still don’t want to have to go through that pretty unpleasant situation, especially when the power they have on their side is the fact that if you are found guilty, the sentence is two years.

Q: Is there anything that people both inside or outside the UK could do to help you? Are you fundraising, or do you just want to raise awareness of this? Or what is it that you would like to see people do?

A: Well, I think at the moment it’s just to raise awareness, because I know that — I always knew before this happened that the probability of my being arrested was very high, and the probability of the English, British media taking any interest in it was very low. And I thought that, this is where we need — and thank God they exist — a country, America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, where you can actually still say these things and get away with it. And my initial thought was, if we can get this into — I mean, for example, I think I’ll be with Michael Coren next week, and Erick Stakelbeck is trying to organise something for Fox News and Glenn Beck. So if we can make it big enough in America, that the media over here are simply forced into having to report it, then that would basically satisfy every single reason for why I did this in the first place.



Thanks to Vlad Tepes for the video and Gates of Vienna for the transcript.

Liberty GB’s Paul Weston, Arrested in Winchester for Quoting Churchill, Could Face 2 Years in Jail

The leader of the Liberty GB party Paul Weston, who was arrested yesterday for breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice, is now possibly facing imprisonment for 2 years.

Mr Weston, a candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, was arrested on 26 April in front of Winchester Guildhall for quoting in public a passage critical of Islam written by Winston Churchill, using a megaphone.

He spent several hours in a cell at Winchester Police Station, after which the original charge of breaching a Section 27 Dispersal Notice was dropped and Mr Weston was "re-arrested" for a Racially Aggravated Crime, under Section 4 of the Public Order Act, which carries a potential prison sentence of 2 years.

He was then fingerprinted and obliged to submit to DNA sampling, following which he was bailed with a return date to Winchester Police on May 24th.

Had the woman who complained to the police made an official statement, Mr Weston would not have been released last night, but fortunately for him she did not.

The case is now being presented to the Crown Prosecution Service. If the CPS decides to prosecute, then Mr Weston will be arrested, awaiting trial, when he presents himself to the police on May 24th.

Winchester: Churchill Quotation Gets Liberty GB Leader Paul Weston Arrested

Yesterday Paul Weston, chairman of the party Liberty GB and candidate in the 22 May European Elections in the South East, has been arrested in Winchester.

At around 2pm Mr Weston was standing on the steps of Winchester Guildhall, addressing the passers-by in the street with a megaphone.

He quoted the following excerpt about Islam from the book The River War by Winston Churchill:

How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live. A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property – either as a child, a wife, or a concubine – must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the faith: all know how to die but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."

Reportedly a woman came out of the Guildhall and asked Mr Weston if he had the authorisation to make this speech. When he answered that he didn’t, she told him “It’s disgusting!” and then called the police.

Six or seven officers arrived. They talked with the people standing nearby, asking questions about what had happened. The police had a long discussion with Mr Weston, lasting about 40 minutes.

At about 3pm he was arrested. They searched him, put him in a police van and took him away.

Rationality in a Godless World Leads More Easily to Unethical Behaviour

Can human beings behave ethically in the absence of a belief in God?

First of all, we have to distinguish between individuals and societies. The short answer is individuals can, societies cannot.

I'll leave societies to another article. In this I want to concentrate on individuals.

Although it's possible for many non-believers (but not for all, that's why societies cannot function without a religious foundation) to have an ethical system that guides their conduct, it's undeniable that this desirable state of affairs is more difficult to maintain for them than for those who truly believe in the Christian God.

Let's give an example. Arthur is an atheist who thinks that people should be nice to each other and behave decently and honestly simply because it creates a better environment for everybody and, purely using his reason, he arrived at the conclusion that all benefit from social interactions conducted according to the principle of looking at things from the others' perspectives, putting yourselves in their shoes (well expressed in the Golden Rule "Do unto others as you would have them do to you").

We all know that not everyone behaves this way. One day Arthur hires a building firm, Smith, to do extensive external repair works to his house, which cost him a lot of money but could not be avoided or postponed. He treats the company well, doesn't complain about the job done unless necessary, pays all his invoices immediately, doesn't protest too much about the price asked. He is assertive when it comes to protecting his rights and is not a pushover, but other than that he doesn't make things difficult for the firm.

Arthur then finds out that Smith has carried out similar works for one of his own neighbours, Bob, a very grumpy and unlikeable chap. Bob has acted in exactly the opposite manner. He and his wife made life hell for the builders during their work, finding faults with everything and anything they did. In addition, they didn't pay some of the invoices and, two months after the job was finished, are still refusing to pay in full, giving several pretexts.

But what shocks Arthur most is Smith's response. The company people, although privately despising Bob and callig him names, treat him with respect and go out of their way to accommodate him. They even offer him delayed payment options and discounts they never even mentioned to Arthur.

Now, Arthur is only human after all. Rational, striving to be a moral person, but with emotions of anger, envy, self-doubt and resentment always boiling under the surface and close to pouring out at the first provocation.

This particular provocation is not small either. Now we have Arthur battling within himself, against himself.

The first thing he thinks is that behaving nicely doesn't pay, whereas being a bully does. So, the rational basis for his choice of decent conduct seems shaky now.

What in this case has been the outcome of a moral choice of action, if you have to calculate it in terms of self-interest, although a rational, enlightened self-interest, enlarged to comprehend the interest of the whole society to which you belong?

There are times when pure rationality, if you are atheist, doesn't lead you to an ethical choice. Benefit scroungers who live off the others make a perfectly rational choice. So do criminals who know they won't be caught.

And in many other cases, like the one of my example of Arthur, even ordinary, decent people who sincerely desire that an ethical path is the same as a path of justice, that doing the right thing results in a reward and not a punishment, have to give up in desperation, abandoning the hope that we can square this circle in this life.

But if they could believe that justice always triumphs - if not in this, then in the next world - because there is a giver of justice who also gave life to everything that exists, this belief could act as a great help at times when being ethical may not seem so rational after all.

Our life is made up of so many banal examples as that of Arthur's predicament. It's perhaps not too much to bear for our shoulders, or maybe it is. Either way, it's overwhelmingly obvious that a belief in a just God like the Christian God greatly helps people maintain an ethical outlook and behaviour in even the most difficult circumstances.

If you don't believe, you may think that whatever is good and expedient for you is OK, as long as nobody can see you. If you believe, you know that there is someone who always sees you.

But that is not to be taken in the sense of a CCTV camera. Because, if that someone is merciful, understands and forgives, you don't feel under an external control: you just feel less alone in your constant struggles.


Photo courtesy of the website Human Health and Animal Ethics

The Da Vinci Code: Devious Ways to Create Doubts

The Da Vinci Hoax: Exposing the Errors in The Da Vinci Code

In a blog I used to have I've found an article about The Da Vinci Code. It was written in May 2006, but the tacticts employed by those who wish to attack Christianity with devious means are still the same, making the piece still relevant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If I want to make a lot of money by writing an absurd story with no evidence to support it, disproven by historians, art historians and archaelogists, a story intended to attack Christianity which is an easy target because it is already under siege, a story that will treat Jesus Christ in the same way that Hello! and other gossip magazines treat celebrities, what shall I do?

Wait a minute, someone else has already done it.

They have written The Da Vinci Code.

First of all, Da Vinci is not a surname. Leonardo was illegitimate, and "da Vinci" simply means "from Vinci". It's the same as calling St Francis of Assisi just "of Assisi". A bad start for a writer.

Secondly, the book relies on the widespread ignorance of Christian matters among the general public. To list all the gross errors, inaccuracies, disproven hypotheses, reliance on false documents, distortions in history of art, “elaborate hoaxes”, falsified history, and so on contained in the book would take much more than an article.

Historians, art historians, archaelogists have conclusively demonstrated that the whole story of the book is a lie (you could call it a work of fiction, if it weren't for the ambiguity of its status), not a fact.

Some of this is revealed in the book The Da Vinci Code: Fact or Fiction? by Hank Hanegraaff and Paul L. Maier.

And, if this were a book (and film) offensive to Buddhism, Judaism, Sikhism, Hinduism, it would be considered a hate crime. If, God forbid, it were offensive to Islam, on top of being labelled a hate crime it would also make book author, movie director and producers’ fear for their lives (in fact, a film about Islam would be even too dangerous to make).

But to offend Christianity is “art”, as in the case of Chris Ofili's painting of the Virgin Mary covered in elephant dung and surrounded by cut-outs from pornographic magazines.

The omnipresence of the much over-used words "Islamophobic" and "anti-Semitic" obviously shows that certain groups are protected by political correctness, but one group is not.

Do you have doubts whether to believe the story of The Da Vinci Code?

Try this.

With a little intelligence, logic and thought, you may be able to solve your doubts.

Why do you think that The Da Vinci Code was intended by its author as a work of fiction?

Truth and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code : A Historian Reveals What We Really Know about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Constantine

For one very simple reason: because it contains accusations and claims against a real organization, the Catholic Opus Dei.

If these charges had been expressed in a declared non-fiction work (an expose, for example), the organization concerned could have sued the book’s author for libel and defamation.

Now, if the author had felt sure of his own accusations against the Opus Dei, he wouldn’t have had any trouble with this possibility of being sued, actually he would have welcomed a court case where his claims would be vindicated.

He obviously knew that he did not have a case against them, as it is expounded in the book.

So, he decided for the fiction label of his book.

At the same time, in true gutter press hack style, he did not want the truth to stand in the way of a good story.

So what did he do?

He wanted to have his cake and eat it.

He wrote a book, allegedly fiction, but by using historical figures, real organizations and true paintings as his book’s subjects, he could maintain an ambiguity that, while protecting him from possible legal actions, gave nonetheless the impression that he was talking about reality and historical events, making a gullible public believe what he wanted them to believe.

He did not have the guts to challenge his targets directly, face to face, and have his claims refuted during a lawsuit.

This is the work of a coward, who is afraid of a legal action for libel and defamation, but is not afraid of spreading lies.

In fact, the parallel with tabloid gossip journalism is not coincidental. The way that book treats Jesus Christ is not very far from the way the gutter press treats celebrities.

Some people have pointed out that works like Independence Day are not real accounts of an alien invasion because the screenwriters used real organizations like the Air Force and the President of the US, or The Red Badge of Courage was not about a real soldier because the character was in the Union Army.

But not every historical novel or period drama film, or any other work of fiction with a historical or real background, is the same as The Da Vinci Code.

In it, historical figures and institutions are the main characters in the (allegedly fictional) story, and not just part of the backdrop that “the screenwriters used”. They are the story, so anything that is said about them in the plot is either historically accurate or - if not - should be considered as fiction by the readers or movie-goers. But is it? Therein lies the ambiguity.

History is what The Da Vinci Code is about, unlike those other examples, where history and reality are the pretext or background.

The last time I checked, aliens trying to invade the earth were not part of the history curriculum.

And no, The Red Badge of Courage wasn't about a real soldier, and that's exactly what makes a comparison between the two books irrelevant: he was a fictional character; but Jesus Christ is not.

This explains why many people believe that The Da Vinci Code is true, whereas not many - fortunately - believe that aliens have tried to invade the earth. You wouldn’t see an online comment about alien stories, Independence Day and The Red Badge of Courage such as this:

The damn book is fiction but a great story. If there is any good to come out of all of this I hope it is that Christians will try and find the truth about the historical, factual Jesus. For far too long we 'little folk' have allowed ourselves to believe that which has been preached to us without question. Faith may be nice but even Christ Himself encouraged His contemporaries to search for the Living God. The majority of Christian Doctrine today has been sanitized, distilled and manufactured to fit the mold of a handful of power mad despots who used the story of Jesus to advance their own interests.

The examples of fiction books or films set against a historically true background - or in which the imaginary characters are surrounded by real figures and events - are irrelevant, because there was no intention in those works' authors to mislead the public into believing something untrue.

The ambiguity in The Da Vinci Code's status (fact or fiction), on the other hand, is manifest, and has been observed and remarked upon innumerable times.

Those who cannot see the difference are disingenuous or simply not clever.