Martin Amis - the official angle
Regular readers will known that Martin Amis has some wacky views on Muslims and people who 'look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan'. In short he has an urge to curtail their freedoms, have them strip-searched...well read it allHere’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.
When I last wrote about his repugnant views, I expressed scepticism that it was possible to 'deport' a British Muslim citizen, as they are after all British, and there is nowhere to deport them to. However Amis is a celebrated novelist, and so presumably had some grounds for suggesting that, so I asked the Border & Immigration Agency whether it was possible. A very kind spokesman, called Ms Newman, has replied:
Please be advised that it is not possible to deport a British Citizen
from the UK.
So this confirms the difficulty in what Amis is suggesting. There seems a number of options. It could be that he is unaware that deportation of British citizens from Britain is not possible, but that seems unlikely. It could be that he is talking of only those Muslims who live here but are not British citizens, but that doesn't fit in well with the mention of the 'Muslim community' or that they have children. I suppose he could be demanding an Act of Parliament, though the practical difficulties of the deportation (to where?) suggest this too is not what he meant.
Labels: Decent Left, Martin Amis
posted by Matthew @ 4/03/2007 07:52:00 PM
Comments: 7
