Londonistan

by Melanie Phillips

Book Overview

When London was hit by suicide bombers in July 2005, the dirty little secret was finally out. Great Britain had been the European hub of Islamist extremism for more than a decade. Under the noses of British intelligence, a network of terrorists and their sympathizers had used Britain to plot, finance, recruit and train for atrocities in the United States and around the world. The scale of this activity was so large that exasperated European security...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594031444
• ISBN13: 9781594031441
• Release Date: May 2006
• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A warning for us all

This is a very important book. It is also a very frightening book. Its thesis is that Britain has largely created a culture which breeds Islamic terrorism. British authorities have certainly done very little to discourage it, and in many ways have actually aided and abetted home-grown terrorism. Indeed, "London has become the epicentre of Islamic militancy in Europe". That is, it has "become the major European centre for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism". This book examines how and why this has happened. Two broad reasons are given: First, Britain no longer believes in itself, no longer cherishes its founding values, and no longer thinks it has a role to play in the world. Second, British authorities have seriously misjudged the threat of Islamic terrorism. Therefore Britain is engaged in a policy of denial, appeasement, blaming itself, and hiding its head in the sand. These two major factors have led to London becoming the "hub of European terror networks". Says Phillips, "Britain is currently locked into such a spiral of decadence, self-loathing and sentimentality that it is incapable of seeing that it is setting itself up for a cultural immolation." A nation that helped give the world such values as freedom, democracy and rule of law is now in the process of routing those very values. In this volume well-documented chapters provide the evidence for this alarming situation. Phillips examines numerous factors that have contributed to the demoralisation of England. Large numbers of Muslim migrants, multiculturalism, rampant anti-Americanism, secularisation, the victim culture, and postcolonial guilt have all led to a loss of national self-belief. The Judeo-Christian heritage has largely been scuttled. Coupled with this national social suicide is the inability of British authorities to comprehend Islamic extremism, and how it flourishes in such an environment. Even after 9/11, they have largely failed to appreciate the threat that is among them. Indeed, al Qaeda was actually formed as a movement in Britain. Yet the leadership and intelligentsia of the nation refuse to acknowledge that what they are up against is a religious ideology. The ideology of holy war will not be appeased by turning Muslim immigrants into clients of the welfare state. In spite of tax-payer subsidised housing, health care and other social benefits, Muslim communities in Britain remain enclaves. Assimilation has been eschewed, while the maintenance of a separate identity, culture and lifestyle has been pursued. British values have been rejected, and many Muslims seek to implement Sharia law across the land. While perhaps most Muslims just want a peaceful life in a peaceful country, Islamists in Britain are quite specific about their goal: turning it into a Muslim nation. Phillips has very incisive chapters on some of the main culprits: the rights industry, multiculturalism, unchecked anti-Semitism, etc. Consider what she cal

A hard nosed perspective on Islam untainted by the deceits of PC

I came late to this book mistakenly believing that it pertained exclusively or mostly to England and more specifically London. And of course, while Melanie Phillips addresses the problems of the Islamic assault on Britain, her powerful resounding insights are applicable to all of Western Civilization. I've read 10 to 20 books dealing with Islam and its myriad of attendant problems for the West. This book was equal to, if not superior to, Oriana Fallaci's in the depth of its analysis and its nearly utter disregard for the pernicious deceits of political correctness. It was refreshing to read someone who nearly entirely disregards the sirens call of PC. Melanie Phillips' chapter "The Human Rights Jihad" and "Multicultural Paralysis" just may be the best flinty eyed analysis of Islam that I've yet read. In Melanie Phillips own words: "Since radical egalitarianism meant that all lifestyles were of equal value, the very notion of a majority culture or normative rules of behavior became suspect as innately exclusive, prejudiced or oppressive. Moral judgments between different lifestyles or behavior became discrimination; and prejudice, the term for discrimination between lifestyles became the sin that obviated the moral codes at the heart of Judaism and Christianity, which had formed the bedrock of Western civilization. . . . Democracy became effectively redefined from majority rule among equal citizens to power-sharing among ethnic and other interest groups. Multiculturalism became the orthodoxy of the day, along with nonjudgmentalism and lifestyle choice. The only taboo now was the expression of normative majority values such as monogamy, heterosexuality, Christianity or Britishness. . . . "A trend that has transformed the whole of British life during the past four decades - one which has drastically weakened it from within to the threat from without. That trend is multiculturalism, the doctrine that is the orthodoxy throughout all the institutions of British public life. Put at its simplest, it holds that Britain is now made up of many cultures that are all equal and therefore have to be treated in an identical fashion, and that any attempt to impose the majority culture over those of minorities is by definition racist. . . The expression of British majority values therefore became synonymous with racism. Multiculturalism and anti-racism were now the weapons with which minorities were equipped to beat the majority. . . . "Multiculturalism is said to promote equal treatment for all cultures. But this is not true. There is one culture that it does not treat equally at all, and that is the indigenous British culture. What purports to be an agenda of equality actually promotes the radical deconstruction of majority culture, the idea of the nation itself and the values of Western democracy - in particular its understanding of morality and truth. . . "In other words, "diversity" is a fig leaf. What is clearly not part of diversity, ho

Londistan capitol of Eurabia

Author and journalist Melanie Phillips has written a searing exposure of the British political and educational establishment. In it she shows how a policy of appeasement has led to the growth of radical Islam within Great Britain itself. Her argument is that the Society as a whole has gone through a transformation of values in which the British deny their own national identity and traditional values and support a kind of multiculturalism which has fostered through benign neglect the growth of a kind of autonomous Islamic world within Britain. Phillips has written in the past on the educational and moral crisis of British Society, and her knowledge of British social structures is strong. She also provides historical background and traces the whole policy of appeasement as it has intensified through the years. This book is a warning cry like those of Baat- Yeor, Claire Berlinski, Bruce Bawer, Oriana Fallaci against the danger of an Islamic takeover of Europe. It is an effort to wake British society from its present slumber, and reenergize to defense of its own identity and culture.

Brilliantly written; must read

This is, in my opinion, the single most important book for Americans to read today. Phillips is a brilliant writer, and her book reads like a thriller, except that it most unfortunately contains nothing but shocking truth, not entertaining fiction. The recent events in the U.K. are almost incomprehensible. It appears that a strong and consistent but maddenly unspoken policy of appeasement has been put into place by the elites of the U.K. It appears that Labor now believes that although Muslim voters are still a minority, they are the critical or crucial swing voters that Labor thinks it needs to win. Combine this position of Labor with the well-organized and well-funded campaign for Islamicification of Britain and you have the disaster that is Britain today. Melanie Phillips deftly and with a surgeon's precision describes how this diabolical state of affairs came about. Americans date assume that they are immune from Islamification here in the U.S. It has begun to happen here from the collapse of noise control legislation in the face of Islamic demands for broadcasting the call to prayer 5 times a day, 7 days a week, to demands made for co-ed gyms to create separate exercise facilities for women, despite the fact that women only gyms already exist. This is how it started in the U.K. The slow and piecemeal establishment of sharia and the displacement of the local culture. It could happen here also. There certainly is plenty of Saudi money pumped into libraries, education and American mosques to see that it does just that.