Amis accuses British Muslims of sheltering ‘miserable bastards’

martin amisMartin Amis has launched an attack on “miserable bastards” in the British Muslim community, accusing them of trying to destroy multicultural society by failing to “fit in” with other faiths.

Young men in late adolescence were being targeted and brainwashed by extremists into joining the “death cult” that was behind last year’s London bombings, he said.

The comments, to an audience at the Cheltenham Festival of Literature, came after Amis, 57, son of the writer Kingsley, was asked to describe his recent return to London, after two and a half years living in Uruguay, where his wife, the writer Isabel Fonseca, has family.

“When I come back to Britain I see a pretty good multicultural society,” he said. “The only element that is not fitting in is Islam. Who else isn’t fitting in?”

Independent, 9 October 2006