19/1/2007 - Strong opinions - Martin Amis in The Independent

Martin Amis: You Ask The Questions - The Independent, 15 January 2007

Are you an Islamophobe? ALISDAIR GRAY, Edinburgh

No. What I am is an Islamismophobe. Or better say an anti-Islamist because a phobia is an irrational fear, and there is nothing irrational about fearing someone who professedly wants to kill you. The form that Islamophobia is now taking - the harassment and worse of Muslim women in the street - disgusts me. It is mortifying to be part of a society in which any minority feels under threat. On the other hand, no society on earth, no society imaginable, could frictionlessly absorb a day like 7 July.

Can the war on terror be won? AMBER ALWAN, by email

When historians come to write about this era, I persistently imagine, they will begin by saying that, at first, the West panicked and wildly overreacted, and that the strategy for prevailing was slow to crystallise. Remember the axiom: the danger of terrorism lies not in what it inflicts but in what it provokes. September 11 could be contained and survived; the ramifications of the Iraq war are still unknowable, and are already vast and multiform. Islamism has received a great boost from its rejection of reason and its embrace of death, both of which are hugely energising, as Lenin and Hitler well understood. But Islamism is simply too poisonous to survive for very long. What happened within Islam was not a civil war (between the moderates and the radicals); it was more like a revolution - a revolution which is already starting to devour its children. We won't "win", exactly. But there will come an end to the Age of Vanished Normalcy.

What is the most depressing thing about Britain you have observed since your return? And the best? GRANT MULLIN, Surrey.

The most depressing thing was the sight of middle-class white demonstrators, last August, waddling around under placards saying, We Are All Hizbollah Now. Well, make the most of being Hizbollah while you can. As its leader, Hasan Nasrallah, famously advised the West: "We don't want anything from you. We just want to eliminate you." Similarly, when I went on Question Time the other week, a woman in the audience, her voice quavering with self-righteousness, presented the following argument: since it was America that supported Osama bin Laden when he was fighting the Russians, the US armed forces, in response to September 11, "should be dropping bombs on themselves!" And the audience applauded. It is quite an achievement. People of liberal sympathies, stupefied by relativism, have become the apologists for a creedal wave that is racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperialist, and genocidal. To put it another way, they are up the arse of those that want them dead.

The best thing has been to find myself living in what, despite its faults (despite a million ills), is an extraordinarily successful multi-racial society. This is a beautiful idea, with a good chance of becoming a beautiful reality, too.

For the full article, see http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2154795.ece

With thanks to The Australian for mentioning and quoting from the article