Londonistan [Hardcover]

Melanie Phillips (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 8, 2006

When London was hit by suicide bombers in July 2005, the dirty little secret was finally out. Great Britain had been the European hub of Islamist extremism for more than a decade. Under the noses of British intelligence, a network of terrorists and their sympathizers had used Britain to plot, finance, recruit and train for atrocities in the United States and around the world. The scale of this activity was so large that exasperated European security agencies dubbed Britain's capital city Londonistan.

Editorial Reviews

Review

In this groundbreaking study, Melanie Phillips shows how Britain's imperial policy of "benign neglect" towards radical Islamist groups in the 1980s and 1990s came close to malign complicity in the activities of some of the most determined terrorist organizations ever to emerge in Europe. -- Amir Taheri

"In this book, the British journalist Melanie Phillips documents not only the establishment and growth of Muslim extremist groups in London but the administrative incompetence and cultural weakness that permitted it to happen. Some pusillanimity that she records would be funny if it were not so deeply disturbing." -- Theodore Dalrymple, The American Conservative

"Melanie Phillips's Londonistan is a last-minute warning for Britain and for much of the free world ... This book is powerful and frightening, but also courageous. In dictatorships, you need courage to fight evil; in the free world, you need courage to see the evil." Natan Sharansky -- Natan Sharansky

"Londonistan" is a courageous exposé of what is happening in Britain as well as a last minute wake up call for the British to act now before it is too late. -- Isi Leibler, Israeli Insider

Londonistan...is an eloquent warning of the dangers of "multicultural paralysis" and appeasing what Miss Phillips calls "clerical fascism -- Washington Times --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From the Publisher

In this groundbreaking study, Melanie Phillips shows how Britain’s imperial policy of "benign neglect" towards radical Islamist groups in the 1980s and 1990s came close to malign complicity in the activities of some of the most determined terrorist organizations ever to emerge in Europe.

—Amir Taheri, author of Holy Terror and other books

"In contrast to the overwhelming majority of her British compatriots, who prefer to avert their eyes from the radical Islamic horror growing in their midst, Melanie Phillips has compiled a unique record that fearlessly, brilliantly and wittily exposes this problem. Londonistan builds on and goes beyond her prior work by showing the role of what she calls the British ‘spiral of decadence’ in permitting Islamist ideas and demands to ride roughshod over the UK’s traditional ways. Phillips rightly warns Americans of the acute dangers for them, too, from Britain’s being a source of Richard Reid–like terrorists to the ending of the two countries’ special relationship."

—Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum and author of Militant Islam Reaches America

"Londonistan is one of the most compelling books you will ever read on the ascendancy of Islamic fundamentalism, violence and intimidation in the West. Melanie Phillips exposes the scandalous appeasement of militant Islam by British officials, the media, even the Church of England, capturing in extraordinary detail how British society and institutions have either ignored or actively fostered the growth of extremist groups on British soil. This book will both enlighten and enrage. Although its story is focused on the United Kingdom, it could be applied to any European capital or to the United States."

—Steven Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism and author of American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: Encounter Books; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (May 8, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594031444
• ISBN-13: 978-1594031441
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (131 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #434,176 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

366 of 394 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly written; must read, May 14, 2006

By 

Orianna "never forget" (Midwest USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Londonistan (Hardcover)

This is, in my opinion, the single most important book for Americans to read today. Phillips is a brilliant writer, and her book reads like a thriller, except that it most unfortunately contains nothing but shocking truth, not entertaining fiction.

The recent events in the U.K. are almost incomprehensible. It appears that a strong and consistent but maddenly unspoken policy of appeasement has been put into place by the elites of the U.K. It appears that Labor now believes that although Muslim voters are still a minority, they are the critical or crucial swing voters that Labor thinks it needs to win. Combine this position of Labor with the well-organized and well-funded campaign for Islamicification of Britain and you have the disaster that is Britain today.

Melanie Phillips deftly and with a surgeon's precision describes how this diabolical state of affairs came about.

Americans date assume that they are immune from Islamification here in the U.S. It has begun to happen here from the collapse of noise control legislation in the face of Islamic demands for broadcasting the call to prayer 5 times a day, 7 days a week, to demands made for co-ed gyms to create separate exercise facilities for women, despite the fact that women only gyms already exist. This is how it started in the U.K. The slow and piecemeal establishment of sharia and the displacement of the local culture. It could happen here also. There certainly is plenty of Saudi money pumped into libraries, education and American mosques to see that it does just that.

136 of 148 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A warning for us all, August 30, 2006

By 

William Muehlenberg (Melbourne Australia) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Londonistan (Hardcover)

This is a very important book. It is also a very frightening book. Its thesis is that Britain has largely created a culture which breeds Islamic terrorism. British authorities have certainly done very little to discourage it, and in many ways have actually aided and abetted home-grown terrorism.

Indeed, "London has become the epicentre of Islamic militancy in Europe". That is, it has "become the major European centre for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism".

This book examines how and why this has happened. Two broad reasons are given: First, Britain no longer believes in itself, no longer cherishes its founding values, and no longer thinks it has a role to play in the world.

Second, British authorities have seriously misjudged the threat of Islamic terrorism. Therefore Britain is engaged in a policy of denial, appeasement, blaming itself, and hiding its head in the sand. These two major factors have led to London becoming the "hub of European terror networks".

Says Phillips, "Britain is currently locked into such a spiral of decadence, self-loathing and sentimentality that it is incapable of seeing that it is setting itself up for a cultural immolation." A nation that helped give the world such values as freedom, democracy and rule of law is now in the process of routing those very values.

In this volume well-documented chapters provide the evidence for this alarming situation. Phillips examines numerous factors that have contributed to the demoralisation of England. Large numbers of Muslim migrants, multiculturalism, rampant anti-Americanism, secularisation, the victim culture, and postcolonial guilt have all led to a loss of national self-belief. The Judeo-Christian heritage has largely been scuttled.

Coupled with this national social suicide is the inability of British authorities to comprehend Islamic extremism, and how it flourishes in such an environment. Even after 9/11, they have largely failed to appreciate the threat that is among them. Indeed, al Qaeda was actually formed as a movement in Britain. Yet the leadership and intelligentsia of the nation refuse to acknowledge that what they are up against is a religious ideology.

The ideology of holy war will not be appeased by turning Muslim immigrants into clients of the welfare state. In spite of tax-payer subsidised housing, health care and other social benefits, Muslim communities in Britain remain enclaves. Assimilation has been eschewed, while the maintenance of a separate identity, culture and lifestyle has been pursued.

British values have been rejected, and many Muslims seek to implement Sharia law across the land. While perhaps most Muslims just want a peaceful life in a peaceful country, Islamists in Britain are quite specific about their goal: turning it into a Muslim nation.

Phillips has very incisive chapters on some of the main culprits: the rights industry, multiculturalism, unchecked anti-Semitism, etc. Consider what she calls the human rights jihad. By denigrating the host nation, and granting every conceivable right to immigrants who often despise the British way of life, the rights ideology has contributed to the hollowing out of British society and has created conditions which breed Islamist extremism.

Commonsense security measure and anti-terrorism laws have been dismantled, weakened, or prevented from proceeding in the name of human rights. In the hope of not offending the Muslim minority, Muslim groups are treated with kid gloves, even as victims, and fear of Islamophobia has become the main obsession amongst Britain's' elite.

Phillips documents how the rise of judicial activism and the human rights culture has led to a diminution of British sovereignty, a self-loathing of British values and the collapse of national security. And concepts such as multiculturalism have simply compounded the problems. The reigning British thinking now is that all cultures and values are equal, and any attempt to impose the majority (host) culture and its values on the minorities is inherently `racist'.

Assimilation has been renounced as chauvinistic, racist and oppressive. The education system, for example, teaches the value and worth of all non-Western cultures, while the achievements of the West are ignored or ridiculed.

Anti-Semitism is indeed a big factor in all this, argues Phillips. The British have in the main swallowed the Arab/Muslim propaganda concerning Israel and the Jews. Instead of seeing Israel as the sole democracy in a part of the world filled with dictatorships and oppression, and the front line of defense in the war against the West, Israel is viewed as the enemy, the cause of the world's ills.

Taken together, the effect of all this has been to "create a climate in Britain that has alarming echoes of Weimar in the 1930s. There is the same combination of amorality and appeasement, of decadence and denial."

At bottom Britain in particular and the West in general are in a war against a fanatical religious ideology. The Islamist terrorists have a non-negotiable agenda: the destruction of Israel, America and the West. Until Britain and the West acknowledge and understand the ideological basis of the terrorism they face, they will never be able to successfully challenge it.

Religious extremism cannot be ignored, denied or appeased. It must be confronted. But an anaemic Britain which has abandoned it heritage and embraced its enemies is in no condition to fight. Fear of Islamophobia and a loss of belief in itself has paralysed Britain, preventing it from taking the sensible and necessary steps to defend itself.

Phillips concludes by offering some practical steps as to how Britain can turn things around. It is a nation at the crossroads. It can learn from its mistakes, regroup, and move on. Or is can continue down the past of appeasement and denial, and simply wither on the vine. A choice must be made, and a book like this helps us all to decide which way we will proceed.

86 of 94 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Londistan capitol of Eurabia, May 22, 2006

By 

Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Londonistan (Hardcover)

Author and journalist Melanie Phillips has written a searing exposure of the British political and educational establishment. In it she shows how a policy of appeasement has led to the growth of radical Islam within Great Britain itself. Her argument is that the Society as a whole has gone through a transformation of values in which the British deny their own national identity and traditional values and support a kind of multiculturalism which has fostered through benign neglect the growth of a kind of autonomous Islamic world within Britain.
Phillips has written in the past on the educational and moral crisis of British Society, and her knowledge of British social structures is strong. She also provides historical background and traces the whole policy of appeasement as it has intensified through the years.
This book is a warning cry like those of Baat- Yeor, Claire Berlinski, Bruce Bawer, Oriana Fallaci against the danger of an Islamic takeover of Europe. It is an effort to wake British society from its present slumber, and reenergize to defense of its own identity and culture.