'Barbarism Begins At Home'

Some of you may be aware of the spat between novelist Martin Amis and critic Terry Eagleton, over Amis's incredibly ill-judged 'thought experiments' (i.e. racist and reactionary comments) about Muslims in Britain and the War on Terror. The opinion piece by Ronan Bennett in the Guardian on this was very good, and the virtually incoherent response by Christopher Hitchens wasn't. Following these two pieces, the Guardian interviewed Eagleton (see URL below) and the resultant article is well worth reading, despite the rather arch tone adopted by the journalist and a certain amount of self-romanticising. His warning to the liberal left on the neo-imperialism implicit in its rationalism is timely:

'The implication from Amis and McEwan - and from Hitchens and Richard Dawkins - is that civilisation and atheist rationalism go together, and I think that is a very dangerous argument to make. The debate over God - Muslim or Christian - is for them increasingly becoming code for a debate on civilisation versus barbarism. I think one needs to intervene and show the limitations of that.'

Read the full interview at:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2228092,00.html