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Martin Amis: 'It Is Not a Racial Question'

by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 29 Jan 2008 at 5:15 PM

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Martin Amis, the author and close cohort of Christopher "The Hitch" Hitchens, has tried to set the record straight in a television interview with the BBC about seemingly anti-Muslim remarks he has made since September 11, 2001. Naturally, these set alight the highly sensitive cultural environment in Great Britain, where he still reigns as one of the most iconic authors alive.

Specific offense was caused by an interview with Ginny Dougary of the Times of London in 2006, in which Mr. Amis said that the Muslim community as a whole should suffer because of jihadist terrorism. He suggested travel limitations, deportation "further down the road," and the strip-searching of anyone with a Middle Eastern appearance.

But Mr. Amis told the Beeb that the desire to respond harshly to terrorism was not a function of race prejudice. "… [Y]ou get into the territory of racism because the people who are doing this are from the Middle East and Pakistan, so of course you would target them. It is not a racial question," he said.

Of his comments in the Times, Mr. Amis said that people should be judged on what they write, not what they say. All the same, Mr. Amis has been impressively outspoken about moral relativism and its parasitic hold on Western culture, specifically with reference to the Middle East and Islamic terrorism. At a talk last year at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, he got into a tiff with the comedian, Chris Morris, who accused him of calling all members of the Muslim Brotherhood murderers. "No," he countered with typical clarity, "but I believe the ideology they subscribe to is murderous."

Mr. Amis has just published a new collection of essays in response to September 11, 2001, "The Second Plane," which has earned him favorable reviews. His political combatant and colleague at Manchester University, the Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton, has said that we should listen to a writer like Mr. Amis on these mighty subjects no more than to a window cleaner. He has also likened Mr. Amis's recent work to the rantings of "a BNP thug."

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