An Open Letter to Martin Amis
Dear Martin,
I am writing to you about a matter of great concern to myself. It has been brought to my attention that in an interview for the Sunday Times entitled 'The Voice of Experience' published last year (September 9 2006) you stated the following:
“What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community 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. They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs – well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people. It’s a huge dereliction on their part. I suppose they justify it on the grounds that they have suffered from state terrorism in the past, but I don’t think that’s wholly irrational. It’s their own past they’re pissed off about; their great decline. It’s also masculinity, isn’t it?”
I am Muslim, and as such, you are calling for the curtailing of my freedom, deportation, suffering etc. I would like to seek clarification on this quote from yourself. Have you been misquoted?
Atif Imtiaz
I am writing to you about a matter of great concern to myself. It has been brought to my attention that in an interview for the Sunday Times entitled 'The Voice of Experience' published last year (September 9 2006) you stated the following:
“What can we do to raise the price of them doing this? There’s a definite urge – don’t you have it? – to say, ‘The Muslim community 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. They hate us for letting our children have sex and take drugs – well, they’ve got to stop their children killing people. It’s a huge dereliction on their part. I suppose they justify it on the grounds that they have suffered from state terrorism in the past, but I don’t think that’s wholly irrational. It’s their own past they’re pissed off about; their great decline. It’s also masculinity, isn’t it?”
I am Muslim, and as such, you are calling for the curtailing of my freedom, deportation, suffering etc. I would like to seek clarification on this quote from yourself. Have you been misquoted?
Atif Imtiaz
posted by Atif Imtiaz at Thursday, October 11, 2007
