Christian Human Rights organizations are justly praising British foreign secretary David Miliband for condemning the Iranian Parliament for their draft apostasy bill:

[W]e deplore the way in which the Iranian Parliament is also now discussing a draft penal code that would set out a mandatory death sentence for the “crime,” of apostasy. If adopted, that would violate the right of freedom of religion, which is also an important basis of any civilized society.

Miliband was responding to questions in the House of Commons. Moments before that, however, he responded to this lovely question:

Sir Gerald Kaufman: Would my right hon. Friend, on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, make it clear that an attack on Iran by Israel would trigger off uncontrollable, convulsive and irreversible consequences that would damage not only the region, but the entire global system, and that such an attack must not take place? It would be an attack on one of the nastiest regimes in the world by another of the nastiest regimes in the world.

David Miliband: I do have genuinely huge respect for my right hon. Friend, but I cannot associate myself with that last sentence which he uttered.

Miliband then went on about the importance of diplomacy and economic incentives in dealing with Iran. British reserve, and all that, I suppose. Too bad. Miliband missed an opportunity to swing away at the idiotic moral equivalence assumed by the questioner.

Leave aside, for a moment, the lunacy of President Ahmadinijad. Iran’s parliament is seriously considering a law that would require the execution of apostates—those who convert to another religion from Islam—and this guy thinks Israel is just as nasty as Iran.

The rot in British culture and politics is deep indeed.