Novelist Ian McEwan has rushed to the defense of his friend, Martin Amis, and offered his own critique of Islamism for its persecution of women and homosexuals. McEwan goes on to assail the intellectual environment in Britain and across Europe for allowing chilling accusations of racism to be leveled against anyone who has the temerity to speak up for human rights.
McEwan, 60, said it was “logically absurd and morally unacceptable” that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist. “As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist,” he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera. “This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on — we know it well.”
If Muslim special interest groups criticizing the likes of Amis spent half as much time identifying and rebuking radical clerics in Europe who inspire Islamic youth to betray their own countries, then we’d be a lot better off.
