«I JUST READ EVERYTHING»

(Journalist Melanie Phillips author of Londonistan)

So what inspired you to write Londonistan?

Phillips: I was just appalled by the fact that, not only had Britain become the key European hub of Islamist extremism and terrorism during the 1990s under the noses of the British authorities, but even after both 9/11 and last year's suicide bombings in London the British political and security establishment is still appeasing Islamist extremism, and remains in a state of denial about the threat to the west. After the London bombings, when home-grown British Muslim boys set out to murder as many of their fellow British citizens as possible, a senior London police officer went on TV and said that the words Islam and terrorism did not go together. If a threat is so badly misunderstood in this way, it will not be defeated.

FP: Can you talk a little bit about the collapse of traditional British identity and of the destructiveness of multiculturalism?

Phillips: This is absolutely a key issue. Multiculturalism has turned Britain's values inside out -- and the root cause of the problem is the deconstruction of Britain's identity. For decades, the British elite has been consumed by loathing of its national identity and values which it decided were racist, authoritarian and generally disagreeable. Much of that was due to our old friend, post-colonial guilt. The elite was therefore vulnerable to the predations of the left, which had signed up to Gramsci's insight that a society could be suborned by replacing its normative values by the mores of those who transgressed them or were on society's margins.

This gave rise to multiculturalism and minority rights, which held that all cultures were equal to each other and which thus provided minorities with an enormous weapon with which to force the majority to give in to their demands. One of the consequences of this was moral inversion, which holds that since minorities are weak they must always be victims of the majority because it is strong. So even when minorities behave badly, it's always the majority's fault. Translate that onto the world stage, and you arrive at the view that even when third world people commit terrorist outrages against the west it must be the west which is to blame. That's why multicultural Britain said, after 9/11, that America 'had it coming to them' -- and why, after the London bombings last July, it said the reason British Muslim boys had blown up the London transit system was because of Britain's support for the US in Iraq.

FP: What is your perspective of the alliance of the Left and radical Islamism?

Phillips: It's remarkable, to put it mildly, that the left -- with its obsessions with issues like gay rights, equality for women and sexual licence -- should have forged an alliance with radical Islamists who preach death to gays, the subjugation of women and the stoning of adulterers. It is an eye-opener to see, on the streets of London, so-called 'progressives' marching shoulder to shoulder with radical Islamists under the metaphorical banner of human rights and the literal banners of Hamas. Both the left and the radical Islamists have put aside their differences because they recognise the value of using each other in pursuit of their common objective, the destruction of western society.