Ian McEwan on the Burka and Freedom of Speech – BBC Newsnight

Author of the Children Act Ian McEwan gives his take on religious freedom v freedom of speech.

Ian McEwan: ‘Brexit Was a Huge Mistake’ - BBC Newsnight

Evan Davis interviews author Ian McEwan on Brexit, the Labour Party and his writing, and McEwan reads extracts from his new book, 'Nutshell'.

Ian McEwan: Criticising Islam Is Not Racist
THE TELEGRAPH: Ian McEwan has insisted that criticising Islam is not racist and blamed left-leaning thinkers for "closing down the debate".

The Booker Prize winner said those who claimed judging Muslims was "de facto" racism were playing a "poisonous argument".

McEwan, 61, the best-selling author of novels including Amsterdam, Atonement and Saturday, thought many in the left wrongly took this position because they had an anti-Americanism shared with Islamists.

In an interview with today's Telegraph Magazine, McEwan said: "Chunks of left-of-centre opinion have tried to close down the debate by saying that if you were to criticise Islam as a thought system you are a de facto racist. That is a poisonous argument.

"They do it on the basis that they see an ally in their particular forms of anti-Americanism," he said.

"So these radical Muslims are the shock-troops for the armchair Left who don't want to examine too closely the rest of the package – the homophobia, the misogyny and so on."

McEwan first entered the fray in 2007 to defend his friend Martin Amis against charges of racism. >>> Stephen Adams, Arts Correspondent | Saturday, March 13, 2010

Ian McEwan: I Despise Militant Islam
THE TELEGRAPH: The award-winning novelist Ian McEwan has launched an outspoken attack on militant Islam, accusing it of "wanting to create a society that I detest".

The author said he "despises Islamism" because of its views on women and homosexuality.

But predicting a backlash against his comments, which were made in an Italian newspaper, he insisted he was not a racist.

The writer of Atonement and Enduring Love condemned religious hardliners as he defended his friend, the writer Martin Amis, against charges of racism.

Amis was accused last year of being Islamaphobic after he said that "the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order".

In an essay written the day before the fifth anniversary of the bombing of New York's Twin Towers, the novelist suggested "strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan", preventing Muslims from travelling, and further down the road, deportation.

In The Age of Horrorism, Amis argued that fundamentalists had won the battle between Islam and Islamism.

McEwan, 60, said it was "logically absurd and morally unacceptable" that writers who speak out against militant Islam are immediately branded racist.

"As soon as a writer expresses an opinion against Islamism, immediately someone on the left leaps to his feet and claims that because the majority of Muslims are dark-skinned, he who criticises it is racist," he said in an interview in Corriere della Sera.

"This is logically absurd and morally unacceptable. Martin is not a racist. And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on - we know it well." Ian McEwan: I Despise Militant Islam >>> By Nicole Martin, Digital and Media Correspondent | June 22, 2008

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