8.09.2006
Douglas Murray on Fox News.
[Posted 11:59 AM by Emily Ghods]
Douglas Murray, described by The New Criterion’s James Panero as a “Bright Young Thing,” will be interviewed this afternoon at 12:48 by Bill Hemmer of Fox News. The subject of the interview is the crisis in the Middle-East, and specific topics to be addressed are: European opinions of the Israel and Hezbollah conflict; Is this conflict about terrorism?; Should we negotiate with terrorists?
Recently, Mr. Murray wrote an illuminating piece to this effect for the Social Affairs Unit. In it, he chides the “undeniable issue of pusillanimity” and “cowardice” in British publishing firms that have effectively censored important books that discuss the challenges posed by fundamentalist Islam to European nations. Luckily, the books have found other outlets from which to be published.
Tony Blankley (Editorial page Editor of the Washington Times) has compounded the idea, with his grand-sweep narrative The West’s Last Chance. Blankley concedes that there is still a fight to be had over Europe’s soul. But – as his book is published only in the US – it is not a fight which the publishers of Europe are engaging in. Even all the American books critical of Islam up until recently have been published by only a couple of US publishers. Foremost for some time has been Prometheus, an anti-theist US publisher who first brought out the works of the great Ibn Warraq in the 1990s, though others – notably Regnery and Encounter – have joined in.The importance of stressing that there are still people in Europe willing to speak out is now not only a matter of pride – it is vital, for Europe’s future and for America’s too. The perception that Europe can no longer be saved has been so continuously argued – with greater or lesser subtlety – that many Americans now believe the fight is over. The perception has hardly been helped by Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s transfer to the AEI (American Enterprise Institute).
The first book of her writings to appear in English is an important – and too-long delayed – event. But the force already seems less. It is in Europe that Hirsi Ali is needed, and events like her exile continue the perception that the stage is set, and all that the good people in Europe can do now is to get out.Which is why the publication in Britain of Michael Gove and Melanie Phillips’ books would be an important event even if they weren’t such superb works. Both Londonistan and Celsius 7/7 are coolly argued and extraordinarily comprehensive analyses of the British establishment’s misunderstanding of the Islamist threat, and the process from misunderstanding terror to bowing before it.
If there is any reason at all to be hopeful that Britain at least may get to grips with the problem we face it lies in these books. However hard it was to get them into print, they are at least now published and accessible to the public. The censorship imposed by the craven and the cowardly has palpably been cracked. A leading writer and a leading politician have said what needs to be said. It should be a cause for celebration that even if many people in America have given up on us, and though vast swathes of Europe have given up on themselves, there are still some who are willing to stand between the cowards and the barbarians and plant the flag of reason.
Mr. Murray’s latest book, Neoconservatism: Why We Need It, has recently been published in the United States by Encounter Books.