Terry Eagleton

In an essay entitled The Age of Horrorism published last month, the novelist Martin Amis advocated a deliberate programme of harassing the Muslim community in Britain. "The Muslim community," he wrote, "will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? 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..."

Amis was not recommending these tactics for criminals or suspects only. He was proposing them as punitive measures against all Muslims, guilty or innocent.…  Seguir leyendo »

There is an insuperable problem about introducing immigrants to British values. There are no British values. Nor are there any Serbian or Peruvian values. No nation has a monopoly on fairness and decency, justice and humanity. Some cultures cherish one kind of value more than others do (Arabs and hospitality, for example, or the British and emotional self-discipline), but there is nothing inherently Arab about hospitality, or inherently British about not throwing a hysterical fit. Tolerance and compassion, like sadism and supremacism, can be found anywhere on the planet.

It was one of the mighty achievements of the radical Enlightenment to reject the idea that virtue or vice depend on your ethnic background.…  Seguir leyendo »