Christopher Hitchens

May 13, 2007 - 2:54 PM by Stephanie

I like Christopher Hitchens. His acerbic, no-nonsense style sometimes brushes up against a reader like sandpaper but that’s part of his appeal.

In the June issue of Vanity Fair, Hitchens editorializes on growing Islamic Extremism in his home of London in Londonistan Calling.

The British have always been proud of their tradition of hospitality and asylum, which has benefited Huguenots escaping persecution, European Jewry, and many political dissidents from Marx to Mazzini. But the appellation “Londonistan,” which apparently originated with a sarcastic remark by a French intelligence officer, has come to describe a city which became home to people wanted for terrorist crimes as far afield as Cairo and Karachi. The capital of the United Kingdom is, in the words of Steven Simon, a former White House counterterrorism official, “the Star Wars bar scene,” catering promiscuously to all manner of Islamist recruiters and fund-raisers for, and actual practitioners of, holy war.

In this interview with Walter Owen, Hitchens previews the June column and explains some of his views.

When the soft Blair-ites say the problem is not Islam, or the problem is not religion, I have to say very firmly, “To the contrary. It is an absolutely identical fit between the two.”

Between terror and Islam?

Yes.

Even though the Koran doesn’t advise murder and intolerance? Or does it?

The Koran shows every sign of being thrown together by human beings, as do all the other holy books. I was not there, but I will take my oath that it is not the word of the archangel Gabriel to the prophet Muhammad obeying the word of god. And like all the other holy books, the Koran is replete with contradiction and incoherence.

thanks, jewlicious for the reference

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