British author Martin Amis has described Islamists as 'anti-Semites, psychotic misogynists and homophobes.'
Martin Amis launches fresh attack on Muslim faith saying Islamic states are 'less evolved'
By LAURA CLARK and TAHIRA YAQOOB
18th October 2007
Daily Mail
The author Martin Amis has claimed he feels 'morally superior' to Muslim states which are not as 'evolved' as the Western world.
Responding to long-running accusations that he is Islamophobic, Amis launched a fresh invective against the Muslim faith and many of its followers.
He admitted his late father and grandfather had been racist but then claimed radical Muslims were the real racists, misogynists and homophobes.
Courting controversy: Amis described Islamists as 'anti-Semites, psychotic misogynists and homophobes'
The 58-year-old defended a proposal he made last year that Muslims be deported and strip-searched in a crackdown on terrorism.
His latest comments came in a TV news interview last night and during the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week.
The Muslim Council of Britain branded them racist and 'shameful'.
In an interview with Jon Snow on Channel Four News, Amis declared: 'I feel morally superior to Islamists, by some distance. I feel an intellectual distance to Islam.
'There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women.
'The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.'
Days earlier, Amis shocked festivalgoers in Cheltenham with claims that Muslim states are less 'civilised' than Western society.
'Some societies are just more evolved than others,' he said. 'I am not saying these people are genetically incapable of not being terrorists.
'These societies are arming themselves with weapons like the AK47 and blowing people up on buses and Tubes.'
When one member of his audience suggested not all Muslims were terrorists he retorted: 'No one else is doing it.
'Here in the West we have the most evolved society in the world and we are not blowing people up.
'I am just saying some societies are more evolved than others. Young men in those kinds of societies are growing up full of loathing and hatred. Something has to be done about it.'
'Morally superior': Martin Amis with wife Isabel in June
He added: 'I do not mean British Muslims - they are part of our society. I mean Muslim states.
'They used to be more evolved than us, but now we are more evolved than them.
'There is no inoffensive way to put this - by evolved, I mean more civilised. We have more respect for civil society.'
These remarks echo the controversial comments he made during an interview in 2006. On the subject of curbing terrorism, he said: 'There is a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say, "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".
'Not letting 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.'
Since that interview Amis, the author of London Fields and eight other novels, has taken up a post as professor of creative writing at Manchester University.
A colleague at the university, the Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton, recently attacked Amis and his father in the preface to his book Ideology.
'Bit dodgy': Martin Amis's father Sir Kingsley in 1975
He described Sir Kingsley Amis as a 'racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drinksodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals' and compared his son to a 'British National Party thug'.
At last week's literature festival, Amis admitted that racist tendencies run in his family, declaring: 'My grandfather was racist, my father was a bit dodgy and I consider myself pretty free of it but get little urges and impulses now and then.'
In the Channel Four interview, he tried to draw a distinction between Islamists - the radical followers - and Islam, the religion.
'I blame Islamists, the ideology within a religion,' he said.
'All the perpetrators, with a few exceptions, are young men from Pakistan.
'Islamism will be a sink for every Walter Mitty of murder, every functioning schizophrenic, every rampant anti-Semite.
'There is a rage which has been building for the past century which is hoping to rebuild its (Islam's) superiority through violence.'
He went on to insist: 'I do not believe in any persecution of the Muslim community. I think that would be counter productive.'
Condemning his comments, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: 'Amis clearly seems to believe many Muslim communities are primitive.
But just because some extremists have committed terrorist acts does not give him licence to denigrate an entire faith community.
'He should be ashamed of himself.'
dailymail.co.uk
Martin Amis launches fresh attack on Muslim faith saying Islamic states are 'less evolved'
By LAURA CLARK and TAHIRA YAQOOB
18th October 2007
Daily Mail
The author Martin Amis has claimed he feels 'morally superior' to Muslim states which are not as 'evolved' as the Western world.
Responding to long-running accusations that he is Islamophobic, Amis launched a fresh invective against the Muslim faith and many of its followers.
He admitted his late father and grandfather had been racist but then claimed radical Muslims were the real racists, misogynists and homophobes.
Courting controversy: Amis described Islamists as 'anti-Semites, psychotic misogynists and homophobes'
The 58-year-old defended a proposal he made last year that Muslims be deported and strip-searched in a crackdown on terrorism.
His latest comments came in a TV news interview last night and during the Cheltenham Literature Festival last week.
The Muslim Council of Britain branded them racist and 'shameful'.
In an interview with Jon Snow on Channel Four News, Amis declared: 'I feel morally superior to Islamists, by some distance. I feel an intellectual distance to Islam.
'There are great problems with Islam. The Koran recommends the beating of women.
'The anti-Semites, the psychotic misogynists and the homophobes are the Islamists.'
Days earlier, Amis shocked festivalgoers in Cheltenham with claims that Muslim states are less 'civilised' than Western society.
'Some societies are just more evolved than others,' he said. 'I am not saying these people are genetically incapable of not being terrorists.
'These societies are arming themselves with weapons like the AK47 and blowing people up on buses and Tubes.'
When one member of his audience suggested not all Muslims were terrorists he retorted: 'No one else is doing it.
'Here in the West we have the most evolved society in the world and we are not blowing people up.
'I am just saying some societies are more evolved than others. Young men in those kinds of societies are growing up full of loathing and hatred. Something has to be done about it.'
'Morally superior': Martin Amis with wife Isabel in June
He added: 'I do not mean British Muslims - they are part of our society. I mean Muslim states.
'They used to be more evolved than us, but now we are more evolved than them.
'There is no inoffensive way to put this - by evolved, I mean more civilised. We have more respect for civil society.'
These remarks echo the controversial comments he made during an interview in 2006. On the subject of curbing terrorism, he said: 'There is a definite urge - don't you have it? - to say, "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".
'Not letting 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.'
Since that interview Amis, the author of London Fields and eight other novels, has taken up a post as professor of creative writing at Manchester University.
A colleague at the university, the Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton, recently attacked Amis and his father in the preface to his book Ideology.
'Bit dodgy': Martin Amis's father Sir Kingsley in 1975
He described Sir Kingsley Amis as a 'racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drinksodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals' and compared his son to a 'British National Party thug'.
At last week's literature festival, Amis admitted that racist tendencies run in his family, declaring: 'My grandfather was racist, my father was a bit dodgy and I consider myself pretty free of it but get little urges and impulses now and then.'
In the Channel Four interview, he tried to draw a distinction between Islamists - the radical followers - and Islam, the religion.
'I blame Islamists, the ideology within a religion,' he said.
'All the perpetrators, with a few exceptions, are young men from Pakistan.
'Islamism will be a sink for every Walter Mitty of murder, every functioning schizophrenic, every rampant anti-Semite.
'There is a rage which has been building for the past century which is hoping to rebuild its (Islam's) superiority through violence.'
He went on to insist: 'I do not believe in any persecution of the Muslim community. I think that would be counter productive.'
Condemning his comments, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain said: 'Amis clearly seems to believe many Muslim communities are primitive.
But just because some extremists have committed terrorist acts does not give him licence to denigrate an entire faith community.
'He should be ashamed of himself.'
dailymail.co.uk
