“You mustn’t let facts get in the way of a good story,” Boris Johnson was reported to have once told the French journalist Jean Quatremer in the early 1990s. It is a claim that defined much of his journalistic career and also appears to shape his pronouncements on the Muslim faith. In an essay written by Johnson in 2007 and unearthed by the Guardian this week, he claims that the Muslim world is “centuries behind” the west, because of a “fatal religious conservatism” that prevented the development of liberal capitalism and democracy. According to Johnson “virtually every global flashpoint you can think of – from Bosnia to Palestine to Iraq and Kashmir” is defined by “some sense of Muslim grievance”. Echoing his hero Winston Churchill’s view that there was “no stronger retrograde force” than Islam, Johnson believes “that the real problem with the Islamic world is Islam”.
Johnson has been here before, with his attacks last year on the Muslim faith as “bizarre and unattractive”, and likening women in burqas to “letterboxes” and “bank robbers”. This clearly played well with the Tory grassroots: a recent poll of party members found that 56% believe Islam is “a threat” to the “British way of life” (whatever that is). But Johnson’s 2007 essay – an appendix to a later edition of his book praising the Roman empire – reveals a level of historical ignorance shocking even for such a political opportunist. » | Jerry Brotton* | Saturday, July 20, 2019
* Jerry Brotton is professor of Renaissance studies at Queen Mary University of London
