Bennett's terrible exaggerations

There's a terrible piece by Ronan Bennett in the Guardian today, on Martin Amis' views about Muslims and Islamists.

It's made all the worse by the fact that Bennett's central thrust - that some of Amis' remarks about dealing with Muslim terrorism might verge of racism - is worth exploring. But rather than deal with the nuances or the issues which Amis has raised (whether Western civilisation is more advanced, whether Islam needs some kind of reformation, etc.), he makes a series of grotesque exaggerations and uses them to trot out the usual drivel about Islamaphobia:Muslims who argue for Muslim schools are criticised by journalists who send their children to Christian or Jewish faith schools. Muslim women who choose to wear the niqab are upbraided by powerful politicians who claim to feel "intimidated". Those who point to the illegality of Israeli occupation are antisemites. Those who protest against the war in Iraq are al-Qaida sympathisers and moral relativists.What drivel. I challenge Bennett to name one journalist who sends his or her own children to a faith school and who criticises Muslims who argue for faith schools.

As for the idea that anyone who argues against the war is routinely called an al-Qaida sympathiser: pathetic. I have been, and remain, one of the most passionate advocates of the war. I think the opponents of war were dangerously wrong-headed. And yes, it stands to reason that some of them are al-Qaida sympathisers - namely, er, those who, um, are al-Qaida sympathisers. But no one I know of thinks that the overwhelming majority of opponents were al-Qaida symapthisers. They were just plain wrong.