Melanie Phillips’ article in last week’s Observer stating that Islam in Britain has become “fused with an agenda of murder” has prompted the following letter in response:
Melanie Phillips (Comment, last week) may be right about the radicalising impact of The Satanic Verses and the Bosnian war on many Muslims, but her continued penchant for blaming the religion of Islam and depicting all Muslims as extremist murderers is a disgrace. Imagine her horror if someone wrote that Judaism had become fused with murder. It is naked incitement to argue that Islam and all Muslims in Britain are intent on killing when this only applies to a very small, albeit very extreme, minority.
If Phillips’s nonsense was even partially accurate, we would have mass murders and bombings every day as one million British Muslims fulfilled their divinely ordained mandate. This anti-Islamic invective is no less despicable than the anti-semitism that Phillips regularly castigates others for.
Chris Doyle
London EC4