Melanie Phillips’ hand-wringing shrill polemic Londonistan seeks to sketch the radical Islamic underbelly of the nation’s capitol. Phillips who has no links to the Muslim community, has conducted no research or polling of her own, nonetheless seeks to interpret this diverse community to the world, and in doing so paints it in the worst possible light.
Her polemic against Muslims is so sustained, so virulent that I look forward to her weekly rants in the Daily Mail and to the deliciously nasty ones on her blog that Fleet Street dare not publish. Her latest tome Londonistan is a work of such high emotion that leaves one feeling drained and begging for respite. A sample of her somewhat disturbing intensity can be sampled here.
Phillips has had her latest submission to the Spectator adjudicated by one of its readership as:
Terror seems to have worked on Melanie Phillips. So desperate is she that we take the Islamist militants at their own estimation that she sets up a series of straw men and dances about them shrieking…”
A more credible assessment of Muslim attitudes in Britain has been made by the Gallup organization which has sampled Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Its findings should be surprising to those people brought up on a steady diet of Phillips et al.
Among the many attitudes it finds:
Loyalty to Britain was high: 74 per cent (compared with 45 per cent of non-Muslims). So too was respect for other religions: 82 per cent, compared with 54 per cent
and:
Some 81 per cent also condemn violence even if used in a noble cause — a figure that is 9 per cent higher than the general public’s view.
Which begs the question, who does need to demonstrate their loyalties more vocally?