Muhammad Idrees Ahmad

In his unpublished preface to Animal Farm, Orwell wrote that it is easy to satirize Soviet Union, but things at home aren’t all that different. Whereas in the USSR it takes coercion and the threat of violence to keep people from voicing dissenting opinions, in Britain people don’t do it because they know ’it will not do’.  ’Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness’ he wrote.’ A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.’

So here we have the case of Martin Amis, a known racist with particularly intolerant views towards Muslims, being called on his Islamophobia by Terry Eagleton, one of the world’s finest literary critics. How does the UK establishment respond? In a disgraceful decision Eagleton faces the axe from Manchester University, whereas Amis is being rewarded with a plum position receiving £80,000 for 28 hours a year of teaching! Eagleton ought to have know better: ‘it will not do’ to criticize a practice engaged in by everyone from the (former) Prime Minister to the Littlejohn. It is also interesting how Amis’s original vile comments failed to generate any controversy; it is only when he was called on it did it make headlines.

Racism apparently runs in the family. Kingsley Amis, the father, had this advice for Apartheid South Africa: ‘You should shoot as many blacks as possible.’ Eagleton couldn’t have been nearer the mark when he wrote: ‘Amis fils has clearly learnt more from him than how to turn a shapely phrase‘. 

I believe it was Mark Twain who said, free speech is great, so long as you are not using it.