Screenwriter Ronan Bennett cri­ti­cises Martin Amis for his ques­tion­able pos­i­tion­ing on present day inter-cultural rela­tions (and oth­er com­ment­at­ors for essen­tially giv­ing him a free pass):

As a nov­el­ist, Amis is free to do whatever he wants with his char­ac­ters, but the hijack­ers’ steps on the road to 9/11 repay invest­ig­a­tion. Reducing the motiv­a­tion of the enemy to blood­lust leads nowhere, as the exper­i­ence of the British in Ireland proved. The res­ult will be wrong and it will be cliché. It may be, giv­en Amis’s spec­tac­u­lar powers, flam­boy­ant, but that will only make it flam­boy­ant cliché. Horrorism. Death cult. Thanatoid. Striking words but poor sub­sti­tutes for under­stand­ing, reas­on and real knowledge.

I am a big fan of Amis’ writ­ing but I con­fess to being uncom­fort­able with some of the pos­i­tions he is tak­ing at the moment.