The Terrorist Tattoo
The gym I go to is out in the western suburbs, in Parramatta, and it’s attended largely by men of Middle Eastern heritage. Like most men in gyms, they’re there to work with the weights. Body-building as body beautiful. There’s one guy, big, muscled, sculpted, who weaves through the place exuding threat, a tough guy. Body-building as weapons deployment. I was, however, taken aback one day to notice he had “al qaeda” tattooed down one arm, in English, no less, using gothic script, even. Obviously, he is not displaying affiliation, membership, just sending a message, a message of intimidation, anger, hate. Arabic characters would say one thing about him, Roman lettering says another.

He’s a serious creep, and an idiot.

So what’s with Martin Amis? Christopher Hitchens splits hairs and counts angels to form a defense, and generally practices the typical denial tactics of the committedly anti-Muslim. (“In which known world” do antiwar protesters become al Qaeda sympathizers? I hear about it quite regularly. Perhaps Mr. Hitchens needs to read more broadly or get out more often.)

We need to be able to talk about and to each other. To take Hitchens’ point about discrimination, we need to be able to distinguish between the good and the bad without being misunderstood. This is where Amis’ remarks and subsequent clarifications have failed and where the defense from Ian McEwan and Hitchens also fails. They attempt the fine distinctions but disingenuously, obscuring Amis’ failure to discriminate and communicate in a manner that progresses the debate instead of allowing it to continue to degenerate into polarization and police-state bedwetting.

I’m not about to ask “al qaeda” boy at the gym out for a coffee to discuss the matter. He’s too clearly on the muscle; I’m too much a soft old fat white man to get away with it, and I’d likely end up with a broken nose for my effort. But in the public debate, I have to be able to say Muslims are killing others in terrorist actions and it has to stop. It’s not every Muslim, and stopping every person of “Middle Eastern appearance” or disallowing women to go veiled isn’t going to help anything. I’m not intimidated by the burqa or hijab any more than I am by sidecurls and yarmulkes or little gold crosses on a necklace. I also don’t want to have to be on the lookout for unattended baggage or to be forced to take my shoes off at the airport or disallowed from carrying toothpaste in my carry-on luggage. I do blame Muslims for this – the ones who want to blow me up, anyway, equally with the hysterical politicians whose do-nothing approach these last six years have left us all so vulnerable and debased the conversation we have to have.

“al Qaeda.” What a moron.