In a time when even the conservative imprints of corporate publishing houses are under pressure not to accept books that are too offensive to “woke” sensibilities (witness the widening protest against Penguin Random House’s contract with Amy Coney Barrett), the New English Review Press, based in Nashville, Tennessee, and London, is a priceless cultural institution.
In recent years, it has put out books by first-rate writers such as Theodore Dalrymple and Phyllis Chesler—books that otherwise might never have seen the light of day.
Warraq? Really? Outrageous. Born in British India, raised in Pakistan and the UK, and resident now in the United States, Warraq—a pseudonym—is one of our most eloquent, courageous, knowledgeable, and important writers about Islam. A student of Arabic, he’s written such books as “The Origins of the Koran” and “Defending the West.” His 1995 work “Why I Am Not a Muslim” is a modern classic. And “Why the West Is Best” (2011) is a richly human expression of gratitude for Western freedom.
And “The Islam in Islamic Terrorism”? As I wrote in a 2017 review, it provides a definitive answer to everyone who insists “that Muslim terrorists have hijacked a peaceful faith.” No, jihadist violence isn’t motivated by poverty, the Palestinian question, America’s Middle East policy, Western imperialism, or the Crusades. It’s an essential part of Islam, present from its birth—“a duty incumbent on all Muslims,” Warraq wrote, “until Islam covers the whole surface of the earth.”
As for McLoughlin, I wasn’t familiar with him or with his book about grooming gangs until I heard about Amazon’s ban. I’ve perused his book now. It turns out to be an invaluable study of the mass rapes of thousands of English girls, most of them white or Sikh working-class children, by gangs consisting almost exclusively of Pakistani Muslim men. These rapes have been going on for decades, but until relatively recently, they were ignored by social workers, police officers, teachers, judges, journalists, charity organizations, feminist groups, and politicians at every level for fear of being labeled racists, provoking Muslim riots, or damaging British multiculturalism.
McLoughlin covers his topic from a variety of angles in a thoroughly sober and responsible fashion. It’s clear to see, however, why his book offends some woke sensibilities. McLoughlin refuses to use the British media’s standard euphemism, “Asian,” to describe the members of the rape gangs. He’s frank about them being Muslims and their victims being non-Muslims. He calls out the British media for the circumlocutions and outright lies with which they’ve obscured the geographical extent of the grooming gangs’ offenses, the number of victims involved, the length of the time period during which these crimes have been going on, and, above all, the distinctly Islamic roots of the rapists’ common belief that it’s acceptable to sexually abuse the children of infidels.
Neither of these two NER Press books is a polemic. Both are solid, scholarly presentations of objective facts. And both confront the widespread refusal of mainstream Western institutions to face up to certain dark realities of Islam. That both books have been pulled by Amazon is a profound irony, because by taking this action, the online bookseller is engaging in precisely the kind of head-in-the-sand denial that these books criticize so passionately.
Amazon’s refusal to make these books available to its customers isn’t only an affront to believers in free speech and open debate. It’s a slap in the face—and worse—to everyone who ever lost a loved one in an Islamic terrorist attack or whose child has been sexually exploited by a Muslim gang. And like so many other recent attempts to cancel the un-woke, it’s yet another triumph of reality-denying progressive ideology over the plain and simple truth.
Friends Read Free