Book review of 'Londonistan' by Melanie Phillips

          Cover of Londonistan by Melanie Phillips

God Save the Queen, InshAllah

That Britain is facing a monumental crisis with respect to its Muslim population is clearly the ominous message of the book Londonistan by Melanie Phillips; that Oxford-educated Melanie Phillips is one of the few people to realize it seems to be the more portentous message. Readers are left to wonder, however, if the situation is really as dire as Phillips claims it is, being that she quotes just three percent of a population of sixty million belong to her class of personas non grata (viii), or up to one/tenth of the London population. Nonetheless, readers are taken through a still-frightening litany of signposts, along with a dubious cast of characters that reads like a bad biblical story, only this is no parable. This story is real, as real as the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and as real as the 2005 London subway bombings. Phillips lays out her provocative arguments for why the heretofore pusillanimous Britons must wake up to the realities of radical Islamic fundamentalism brewing in its midst. From the prevailing Muslims’ victim mentality, to the shocking realization that the 2005 Tube bombers were homegrown British boys, Phillips presents a compelling picture of a major catastrophe waiting to happen—of another Islamic-inspired terrorist attack that’s almost certainly imminent if Britain fails to heed Phillips’ polemic warning.

[Please note the views expressed in this book review are those of Londonistan's author Melanie Phillips and not my own. This is merely a review of her book.]

For example, one of Phillips’ main points of contention is that there is an erroneous tendency to separate Islam-the-religion from Islam-the-terror-path. This, she tells readers repeatedly, is a grave mistake. It is understandable and perhaps even correct that the British, once a mighty Imperialistic power who spread their own culture over three-fourths of the entire world, is today much more sensitive to the diversity within its own borders. That would be fine, says Phillips, save for the violence advocated by the radical Islamic groups, and their ultimate goal of Islamism (this is a somewhat dated link, but I find it explains the term "Islamism" well).

Phillips explains that this means the Muslim community desires to spread their religion (read as ideology) across the entire globe, their rationale being that they are under siege by the West, and thus might fight back against their [perceived] oppressors. Stunning was the tale Phillips related in her introduction to Londonistan that in February 2006, Muslims demonstrated against the Danish cartoons depicting their not-to-be-likened prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him).  Public protesting is, ironically, a uniquely Western way of getting a message out to the masses. What was unnerving, however, was that the demonstrators carried signs blatantly inciting violence against “those who slander Islam” (xiv).

In the United States, we are taught that we may enjoy freedom of speech up to a certain point; the example usually given is that we cannot yell “fire” in a crowded theater due to the possibility of putting people in harm’s way. Certainly we could not carry signs while demonstrating that encouraged our brethren to “exterminate” others (xiv). In Britain, this was apparently tolerated.

To add insult to injury, not only did the Muslim demonstrators carry such signs—and one reportedly even went so far as to dress like a suicide bomber—but the British police actually protected the Muslim demonstrators’ right to do so. Make no mistake; this protestation was indeed based on their religious dogma. It seems a bit disingenuous to allow this sort of activity, and in fact to protect it, when one is facing a very real threat from said demonstrators waving violence-laden placards. To date, this same community certainly has demonstrated their ability to wreak violent havoc on British society. It’s incredibly incongruous that these same Muslim demonstrators, who are in this case unquestionably enjoying the Western world’s cherished freedom of speech, are simultaneously condemning others for doing the very same thing, i.e. the Danish cartoonist, and the other Western countries that boldly reprinted the cartoon in a show of solidarity (of which Britain was notably absent).

Indeed, the Muslim demonstrators even called for the others enjoying their right to free speech to be “beheaded” (xiv). According to Phillips, these were not simply politically motivated assertions, the violence notwithstanding, but instead were founded in their religion of Islam, or what is conspiculously called the “religion of peace.”

    Union Jack hijab: Future of London? 

With this in mind, readers might wonder: how did this happen—how is it that one group is allowed to carry on public demonstrations encouraging violence against those who might disagree? Phillips introduces her carefully researched explanations in Chapter One, “The Growth of Londonistan.” From her point of view, the London population now sounds very similar to the United States’; that is, it’s become a melting pot of sorts. Among the many different cultures and languages one finds in modern London, it is the stark appearance of the traditional Muslim female dress, the hijab, or even the full head-to-toe Islamic coverings that Muslim women are prescribed to wear in the name of Islam that alerts the existing social order to the colossal disparity, both in culture and religion.

The difference here, however, is that Phillips avers that these women may not be wearing what would be an otherwise welcome sign of their religious devotion, but rather they are donning a form of austere political grandstanding, or making an unmistakable political anti-statement if you will. While this may be disconcerting to the general population, it is the seemingly self-imposed segregation of the Muslim community itself that seems especially out of kilter. Where is the proverbial “melting pot”? Admittedly it is somewhat difficult to fathom that this is so monumental an issue as Phillips concludes when one considers Phillips’ statistics for the population in Britain —that just 1.6 million out of a whopping 60 million are estimated to be Muslims (2). Still, Phillips does point out that Islam is now Britain’s second-largest religious community after Christianity, and that more people attend mosque than church in Britain’s native secular society.

Added to this statistic is the fact that the Muslim community appears to house a disproportionate number of known troublemakers who, paradoxically, have been kicked out of their own countries. For example, the Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt by Hassan al-Banna, and is well-known in political circles to be virulently anti-Semitic. Ultimately, the Muslim Brotherhood was officially thrown out of Egypt, a largely Muslim country (though it “unofficially” still exists there), and unbelievably has been allowed to regroup in Britain. How can anyone say that this movement is anything but religiously motivated, when this global movement proclaims itself deeply religious, and in fact states its mission in Islamic terms? Their own public credo is: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope” (Ikhwanweb). Their goal is Islamic, i.e. religious, law and a caliphate system of government. Where is the logic that this has nothing to do with religion, and why did Britain accept known Muslim terrorists into its borders that had been deemed unacceptable by their own people? The explanation for this seemingly non sequitur has its origins in Britain’s liberal immigration policy, and also perhaps in Britons’ deeply-felt collective guilt over centuries of Imperialism.

A hand is placed on one of the 52 memorials in Hyde
Park, London, Monday, July 6, 2009, to commemorate
the victims killed in the London terror attacks on July 7,
2005. A striking monument to the 52 people killed in the
July 7 bombings was officially unveiled Tuesday, July 7,
2009, on the fourth anniversary of the attacks. Those killed
in the 2005 bombings are remembered on 52 stainless
steel columns. (AP Photo/Fiona Hanson/PA)

Accordingly, Phillips refers to this phenomenon as the “victim mentality,” or “victim culture,” currently permeating London. She discusses this at length in Chapter Four, “The Multicultural Paralysis.” Due to the incredibly diverse nature of the London population, a backlash of sorts has been felt against the majority culture, where the so-called minority cultures feel victimized by the more powerful majority. Interestingly, Phillips notes that the Muslim community is the only one to feel this victimization so intensely that they demand various special accommodations. And, it appears, the British powers-that-be are all too eager to give it to them.

Could it be that the national guilt over centuries of British rule, and what some would call oppression, gave birth to the judiciary’s “doctrine of moral equivalence,” whereby the government seeks to redress past—and current—grievances? Were Londoners too Eurocentric in the past? It does seem a bit hypocritical for Muslims to call Christians racist for wanting to educate their children in Christian, Western-style, English-speaking schools, as Phillips informs us in Chapter Four, when the Muslims themselves seek to Islamify the entire world (57). That Phillips has disdain for the doctrine of multiculturalism is blatantly apparent; she notes that attempting to assimilate immigrants into the majority—presumably via the Anglo-Western tradition—is deemed racist. To Phillips’ chagrin, the British people once possessed a robust sense of pride in their culture; however, this pride has been eroded by two developments: the incredible influx of immigrants, many from Asian and African Muslim countries, who rocked the demographics that had been relatively stable for a thousand years; and the fact that the native British population began to sense their fallibility after a series of notable events, namely the modern collapse of the British Empire, and the cognizance of their vulnerability as a consequence of events such as the Suez Canal fiasco in 1956 where the once mighty British were humiliated by Egypt.

Thus did London evolve into a not-so-proud-anymore populace, and certainly a not-so-invincible one. Perhaps the guilt associated with centuries of world domination engendered these collective feelings of guilt, and soon the majority, should they remain prideful, were seen as racist or even xenophobic, while the minority groups were viewed as repressed and powerless. In this volatile atmosphere, it is no wonder that the native population did not assert their majority culture. To do so would be seen as an almost obscenely virulent throwback to their Imperialistic days. Enter into this equation the mounting migration, and we have a boiling pot, not a melting pot. The government entered into the social-consciousness foray by mandating affirmative action plans and quotas. Multiculturalism would ultimately be dictated and governmentally sanctioned, and due to the guilt feelings, or perhaps fear, did not appear to meet much public resistance. Those minority groups who have come to call London home are viewed, and tout themselves, as victims, which begs the question: Who really suffers from the so-called victim mentality -- the Muslim community, or the native British community? 

Please go on to the conclusion to my book review of Londonistan by Melanie Phillips. Also, a post-UK visit analysis with respect to this book's assertions.

Works Cited:
Brotherhood, The Muslim. Official English Web-site. 18 April 2008. <http://www.ikhwanweb.com/>. 

Phillips, Melanie. Londonistan. New York: Encounter Books, 2006. 

For more info: Please see the BBC’s “Islamic London.”

For opposing viewpoints, please see “Lionheart: The blood-thirsty Islamic beast in Great Britain,” and the New York Times’ “London’s Muslims frightened by message of hate.”

I enthusiastically welcome comments from readers, in particular from our Muslim friends, regarding Londonistan and Ms. Phillips message: Is it antagonistic? Is it provocative? Is it too sensational?

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