Of course not. Because Islam is not a race, but a violent ideology in the guise of religion.
Ian McEwan has insisted that criticising Islam is not racist and blamed far- left stinkers for “closing down the debate”.
What race is this?
The Booker Prize winner said those who claimed judging Muslims was “de facto” racism were playing a “poisonous argument”.
McEwan, 61, the best-selling author of novels including Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday, thought many in the left wrongly took this position because they had an anti-Americanism shared with Islamists.
In an interview with today’s Telegraph Magazine, McEwan said: “Chunks of left-of-centre opinion have tried to close down the debate by saying that if you were to criticise Islam as a thought system you are a de facto racist. That is a poisonous argument.
“They do it on the basis that they see an ally in their particular forms of anti-Americanism,” he said.
“So these radical Muslims are the shock-troops for the armchair Left who don’t want to examine too closely the rest of the package – the homophobia, the misogyny and so on.”
McEwan first entered the fray in 2007 to defend his friend Martin Amis against charges of racism.
Amis had been accused of Islamophobia after writing an essay criticising the “extreme incuriosity of Islamic culture”; arguing that Islam had “proved responsive” to the influence of Hitler and Stalin; and labelling Islamism a “cult of death”.
The essay itself attracted little attention, but in a subsequent interview Amis made the incendiary comment: “The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.”
Muslims would have to undergo “discriminatory stuff” like stopping them from travelling, he said.
Prof Terry Eagleton, the Marxist literary critic, subsequently compared him to a British National Party “thug”.
Amis maintained throughout that he was not Islamophobic, but detested Islamism, the religion’s fundamentalist branch.
He later said that he had only been “conversationally describing an urge” in his comments about discriminatory measures for Muslims, “an urge that soon wore off”.
“I hereby declare that ‘harassing the Muslim community in Britain’ would be neither moral nor efficacious,” he added.
However, Ronan Bennett, who wrote the screenplay to the film The Hamburg Cell, later deplored Amis for making “an odious an outburst of racist sentiment as any public figure has made in this country for a very long time”.
At that point McEwan got involved, writing a letter in defence of Amis. He was himself then decried as a member of the “clash-of-civilisations literary brigade”.
McEwan said he consequently became the victim of hate messages on jihadist websites.
In today’s interview McEwan stressed that his political views were “incredibly unexciting”, being “just left of centre”.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Great Read
Barack Hussein Obama vs Israel
The manifold organs of the ObamaMedia are abuzz with outrage over what they are calling Israel’s “insult” to the United States. But what was the nature of this awful and outrageous insult? Did Israeli officials pull off V.P. Biden’s rug to show off his bald head underneath. Did they ask him why the suit of his pants is so shiny. Did they make him sit at the kiddie table?
More to the point did Israeli TV air calls for a Jihad against America, as Palestinian Arab TV did? Did Israel name a square after the murderer of an American photographer, as the Palestinian Authority did? Did an Israeli Anchorman do a skit in blackface during Obama’s visit, as a Turkish anchorman did during Obama’s visit to Turkey? Are Israeli religious institutions issuing Fatwahs against America, as Al Azhar University, which Obama visited and spoke at, has done? Are Israeli leaders funding terrorism against America, as the Saudi King, before whom Obama bowed, does?
…
American diplomats have not usually described Israeli policies they dislike as an “insult”– that is a term much more commonly used by Muslims, who are obsessed with perceived slights to their honor. Complaints over an “insult” is a common feature of Honor-Shame societies. America is not an honor-shame society. However the White House is currently occupied by a man bred in an honor-shame society. It is Obama that feels “insulted” by Israel, both out of the sensitivity of his Muslim heritage and his own egotism, which regularly motivates him to humiliate Republicans, while triumphantly celebrating his own greatness.
It is natural enough for Barack Hussein Obama to rely on such cheap honor-shame gambits. They are what he grew up with. And it is natural enough for him to keenly feel the loss of face of Muslims. After all his father’s family was Muslim. And Muslims are keenly “insulted” when they conquer territory and then cannot hold it. Whether that territory is in Jerusalem, Israel or Spain or India. They cannot stand to suffer the loss of face. And neither can Obama.
http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2010/03/barack-hussein-obama-vs-israel.html
I seem to be on the wrong page or something.
The article was Tagged as: “Criticizing Islam is not racist”
What has that got to do with Obama vs. Israel?
Is something corrupting the files in this website?
Offt-opic but here is another case of a muslim resorting to force to control a female relative – what loosers these male islamists are.
http://www.care2.com/causes/womens-rights/blog/canadian-woman-trapped-in-saudi-arabia/
al Kidya
I thought the article was very good, but could find no appropriate thread to place it.
I trust Sheikh will move or remove it if he so desires.
I am familiar with the information contained in the link given by DP111. In fact, you will find this information and more alluded to in various parts of the historical novel “Exodus” by Leon Uris, and more reputable histories of the middle east. The arab muslims were scum then, just as they are now, and one cannot help wonder at why close association with Obama drives peoples IQs down to absolute zero (a comment on Hillary). On another point, the low IQ muslim morons who regularly waste their time trying to convert us seem to have lost their voices after the massacre of women and children by muslim scum in Nigeria. My Oxford New Dictionary: Muslim: a viral parasite, Islam: another definition of evil. But I digress…
The article represents an accurate history of the early (very) part of the time just before the formation of the state of Israel. For those who have little knowlege – the Jewish resistance armies (Hg.. and Irgun) fought both the UK and the arab world, defeated them both, and created a country out of nothing – something the useless twits from the muslim world have yet to do – here I am talking about the creation of a nation. The muslims will always go and execute the students in a kindergarden and call it a great victory – Beslan comes to mind. I think that the article is relevant and it shows some of the conditions under which Israel was formed and is useful in analysis of what passes for the arab muslim mind.
No one will ever be Judged by Almighty God for critizing the devil and his satanic cult. The men and women who belong to this cult, sacrifice their birth right and are no longer considered human, but pigs, filthy scum.