Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2008, pages 36-37

European Press Review

British Novelist Tells Italy’s Corriere della Sera He “Despises Islamism”

By Lucy Jones

In June, the British Booker Prize-winning novelist Ian McEwan made a strong attack on Islamism, saying he “despises” it and accused it of “wanting to create a society that I detest.”

In an interview published in the June 21 edition of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, McEwan leapt to the defense of fellow British writer Martin Amis, after the latter’s attack on Muslims brought down charges of racism on his head.

“A dear friend had been called a racist,” McEwan said. “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 criticizes it is racist.

“I myself despise Islamism,” he continued, “because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance toward homosexuality and so on—we know it well.”

McEwan told Corriere della Sera that he finds hard-line schools of thought within Christianity “equally absurd.” “But those American Christians don’t want to kill anyone in my city, that’s the difference,” he said.

Writing in Britain’s Independent of June 26, columnist Adrian Hamilton said it was not the “triteness” of the views of McEwan and “the rest of the clash-of-civilizations literary brigade” that he found “objectionable,” but “the way that they present them as if they were somehow brave and outspoken, a courageous gesture against the norms of political correctness.

“In reality,” Hamilton argued, “they are simply the mirror image of the views propagated by the worst of the mullahs, and playing directly into their hands.

“There is nothing more that the ‘preachers of hate,’ as they are called, could wish for than for Western celebrities to come out with vituperative condemnation of their faith, in cartoons, on the screens, across the airwaves or in the press,” Hamilton continued. “It feeds their strongest assertion that Islam is under attack from a secular West that rejects every tenet not just of their belief but of their way of life.”

Muslims Feel Like the “Jews of Europe”

Britain’s first Muslim minister attacked the growing culture of hostility toward Muslims in the U.K., saying many felt targeted like “the Jews of Europe,” Britain’s Independent reported on July 4.

Shahid Malik, whom Prime Minister Gordon Brown appointed as a minister in the Department of International Development last summer, said it has become legitimate to target Muslims in the media and society at large in a way that would be unacceptable for any other minority.

Malik made clear that he was not equating the situation with the Holocaust, The Independent said, but instead warned that many British Muslims now felt like “aliens in their own country.”

A “Dispatches” documentary on Britain’s Channel 4 television outlet, shown on the third anniversary of the July 7 London bombings, put forward the view that negative attitudes toward Muslims have become legitimized by think-tanks and newspaper commentators, who use language that is now being parroted by the far right.

According to an ICM poll taken in conjunction with the documentary, 51 percent of Britons blame Islam to some degree for the 2005 attacks, while more than a quarter of Muslims now believe Islamic values are not compatible with British values. While 90 percent of Muslims said they felt attached to Britain, 8 of 10 said they felt there was more religious prejudice against their faith since the July bombings.

Top Judge Says Shariah Could Be Used in Britain

Controversy over shariah law was reignited by the Lord Chief Justice when he argued on July 3 that the Islamic legal code could be used to resolve disputes between Muslims in the U.K.

Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, the most senior judge in England and Wales, ruled out the possibility of shariah courts sitting in Britain or handing down penalties. But he suggested that the body of religious principles used by many Muslims to govern their everyday lives could be used to settle family disagreements and arguments over money, as long as it did not clash with English law. His remarks follow those made recently by Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who said adoption of some aspects of shariah law in Britain seemed “unavoidable” (see April 2008 Washington Report, p. 40).

Columnist Matthew Paris, writing in the July 5 London Times, argued that such a system would be “a charter for male dominance.” “It’s a charter for cultural bullying; for peer-group pressurizing; for self-oppression. It’s a charter against women and teenagers who cannot make wholly free choices because they have nowhere else to go; a charter against individuals whose circumstances have made it difficult to think outside the cultural box,” he said. “I am sorry to hear the Lord Chief Justice endorsing it.”

As columnist Madeleine Bunting, writing in the previous day’s Guardian, pointed out, however, “Shariah courts are up and running [in the UK] and have been for decades; no secret there, it’s just few paid much attention to them before.

“If we don’t want such jurisdictions—and they are very, very limited—to coexist with English law, then it will require losing the pretty fundamental option of mediation outside the legal system when agreed by both parties,” Bunting said.

“That option would mean the state would be monopolizing all arbitration on all issues in a way which many—for example, in civil cases involving marriage or business arrangements—would see as nonsensical. In short, if we don’t want shariah in this country, it will require a pretty radical reform which would stir up a lot of opposition.”

Israeli Military Said to Systematically Target Journalists

Writing in the July edition of France’s Le Monde Diplomatique, independent journalist Dahr Jamail contrasted his journey back to San Francisco from London, where he received the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism, with that of his Palestinian colleague Mohammed Omer, with whom he shared the award (see August 2008 Washington Report, p. 15). “My biggest problem was an hour’s delay for the flight back to my home country, the United States, which last year gave Israel $2.38 billion in military aid,” said Jamail. “On his return home, Omer was badly beaten up and physically and psychologically abused by Israel’s security forces, Shin Bet” (see Omer’s account on p. 10 of this issue).

“Attacking journalists is not new,” wrote Jamail. “This appears to be part of systematic targeting of journalists by the Israeli military.” But, Jamail went on to say, he “cannot reconcile the disparity in our experiences.”

“Israel is high in an international league table for its murder of journalists, especially Palestinian journalists,” wrote veteran journalist John Pilger (who presented the Gellhorn Prize) in the July 2 Guardian.

“While Mohammed was receiving his prize in London, the new Israeli ambassador to Britain, Ron Proser, was publicly complaining that many Britons no longer appreciated the uniqueness of Israel’s democracy. Perhaps they do now,” Pilger added.

Turkish Islamic Scholar Voted World’s Top Intellectual

A Turkish Islamic scholar, Fethullah Gulen, in June was voted the world’s top intellectual in a poll organized by the British magazine Prospect and Foreign Policy, a U.S. publication, to find the world’s leading 100 thinkers.

The top 10 individuals were all Muslim and included two Nobel laureates: the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk, at No 4, and the Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, in 10th place. More than 500,000 people voted in the poll.

“The result surprised organizers, who attributed it to a sustained campaign by Gulen’s followers, known as the Gulen Movement, after Turkey’s biggest-selling newspaper, Zaman, publicized the poll,” reported London’s Guardian on June 23.

According to the newspaper, Prospect’s editor, David Goohart, admitted to not previously having heard of Gulen and said the scholar’s supporters had “made a mockery” of the poll. But, Goohart said, the result flagged up significant political trends in Turkey.

The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), allied to Gulen, is contesting a case brought by Turkey’s chief prosecutor to shut it down and ban it from politics for allegedly trying to usher in Islamic rule, in breach of the country’s secular constitution, The Guardian said.

The newspaper described Gulen, 67, as known for a modernist brand of Islam. He was cleared in 2005 of trying to topple the state after being charged over footage in which he apparently urged civil service supporters to await his orders to overthrow the system. He said the film had been doctored, the newspaper reported.

Gulen, who has lived in the U.S. since 1998, is credited with establishing a global network of schools which preach Islam in a spirit of tolerance. He has been praised in the West for promoting dialogue, and condemned Osama bin Laden as a monster after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Lucy Jones is a free-lance journalist based in London.