Ever see
American History X?It's a 1998 movie about a Nazi kid who is following in the footsteps of his older Nazi brother -- who eventually repents from his racist ways. One of the interesting parts of the movie occurs at the beginning, when the original subject of the movie tells of how his father was killed, the driving factor which made his older brother become a Nazi, complete with a "video clip" of the scene. The older brother goes on a rant, after which the mother justifies his behavior by saying he was just an angry kid who missed his father.
Now we have this.
From the
Guardian (UK) Book Review:
What do you make of the following statement: "Asians are gaining on us demographically at a huge rate. A quarter of humanity now and by 2025 they'll be a third. Italy's down to 1.1 child per woman. We're just going to be outnumbered."
While we're at it, what do you think of this, incidentally from the same speaker: "The Black community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order."
Or this, the same speaker again: "I just don't hear from moderate Judaism, do you?" And (yes, same speaker): "Strip-searching Irish people. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole Irish community and they start getting tough with their children."
The speaker was Martin Amis and, yes, the quotations have been modified, with Asians, Blacks and Irish here substituted for Muslims, and Judaism for Islam - though, it should be stressed, these are the only amendments.
Yes, strip-searching. "Discriminatory stuff".
The speaker was Martin Amis and, yes, the quotations have been modified, with Asians, Blacks and Irish here substituted for Muslims, and Judaism for Islam - though, it should be stressed, these are the only amendments.
Terry Eagleton, professor of English literature at Manchester University, where Amis has also started to teach, recently quoted the remarks in a new edition of his book Ideology: An Introduction.
Amis, Eagleton claimed, was advocating nothing less than the "hounding and humiliation" of Muslims so "they would return home and teach their children to be obedient to the White Man's law".
...Amis's views are symptomatic of a much wider and deeper hostility to Islam and intolerance of otherness. Only last week, the London Evening Standard felt able to sponsor a debate entitled: Is Islam good for London? Do another substitution here and imagine the reaction had Judaism been the subject.
As Rabbi Pete Tobias noted on Comment is Free, the so-called debate was sinisterly reminiscent of the paper's campaign a century ago to alert its readers to the "problem of the alien", namely the eastern European Jews fleeing persecution who had found refuge in the capital.
...Martin Amis should have been taken to task by his peers for his views. He was not.
This is all the more remarkable when you look closely at what Amis has been saying about Muslims and Islam. To the Dougary interview first. Eagleton drew particular attention to a passage that argued for collective punishment: "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not let them travel. Deportation - further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan ... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children."
And what did British academia say? Nothing. No one "took him to task", no one protested.
These are the same academicians who are boycotting Israel. I say it time and time again, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are tightly-knit first cousins. (It is for this reason that I can't understand why some religious communities support parties that support people like this.)
So this is what it has come to. We fear terrorism, so we want to catch terrorists ahead of time. So we strip search everyone with melanin and straight hair? So we have debates entitled "Is Islam good for London?" Who do these people think they are? This is a travesty for anything which could even call itself a "democracy", and the fact that British academia, supposedly the think tanks of society, are
not saying anything is quite disturbing.
ONE PROFESSOR is speaking out against this guy? Like the one Rabbi said on the Guardian blog, this is horribly reminiscent of Eastern European Jews, and back then no one spoke out either.
Not that I'm saying that Muslims are facing a holocaust, G-d forbid. I'm saying that whatever European Muslims are facing and going to face, they're going to be facing it alone unless there is a greater outcry against racism.
Because once you allow racism against one group to be legislated, no one is safe.
Anti-racist, pro-unity, intelligent action NOW.