Time Out has just confirmed that it is not a magazine of theology.
Before revealing that the Church Times is not the place for nightclub-listings, or that the lavatory-arrangements of bears are largely woodlands-based, it is worth mulling an extraordinary article in the current issue of Time Out which suggests that the magazine should be re-titled. Perhaps ‘Way Out’. Or just ‘Nuts’.
In ‘Is London’s Future Islamic?’ the author (one ‘Michael Hodges’) begins with a heavy-handed parody of what he thinks critics of Islamism think an Islamic Britain might look like. But stick with it, because it’s only after the attempt at parody that the real hilarity gets under-way.
Among the benefits the writer seriously argues an Islamic Britain would enjoy are: greater green-ness, better health-care, better education, better food, and better arts. He also concludes that an Islamic London would be ‘a little less cruel.’
It’s all a bit amazing, and of course evidence-light.
For instance, the author says that banning alcohol would benefit the NHS because ‘turning all the city’s pubs into juice-bars’ would save money currently spent on treating alcohol-related diseases…
Ignoring for a moment the excellence of the health services in Islamic countries, what exactly does he propose doing to stop us enjoying a drink or two?
It gets stranger.
The claim that Mohammed said ‘The world is green and beautiful’ is expanded into a passage which rather bemusingly portrays Islam’s founding prophet as the first big recycler. Of course, the fact that the Bible and Torah have plenty ‘green’ messages has never meant that Jews and Christians are especially more ‘green’ than anyone else. But perhaps the writer thinks that green-ness, like going ‘dry’, will be enforceable in the Islamic city. Perhaps it will be.
Anyhow: so far, so nuts. Dodgy assumption piles on top of thinner than thin research (see especially the entry under ‘Arts’). But even the oddest passages can’t make up in laughs for what the entry on ‘Inter-faith relations’ asserts through prejudice and ignorance.
The writer claims:
‘Although England has a long tradition of religious bigotry against, for instance, Roman Catholics, it is reasonable to assume that under the guiding hand of Islam a civilised accommodation could be made among faith groups in London.’
Evidence in Britain alone would tend to suggest otherwise. And while it’s true that Muslim extremists globally are presently engaging Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, Jews, Animists and atheists in fairly impressive numbers, this ‘inter-faith’ action is generally agreed to be quite far from ‘dialogue’.
All in all, the serious part of the article is closer to satire than the ‘satire’ with which the article tries to open. Additionally, the author seems unaware that even as he lambastes the ‘reactionary and often ill-informed press’ which he claims portrays Islam negatively, his own ill-informed ideas have led him into supporting laws and ideas of the most reactionary kind imaginable.
As he dreams of public gardens as green as those in the Middle East, and public schooling as developed as that in North Africa, it becomes noticeable that the author has failed to consider what Islamic London’s press might look like. Perhaps we might imagine for him.
There will be fewer listings in Time Out. The ‘gay’ section in particular will thin. After a while the listings of straight all-male juice-bars won’t appeal to enough readers. Sales will slump. A desperate rebrand will be launched. ‘Time In’ will flop, and after a while the whole enterprise will close.
No Time Out magazine? Perhaps Islamic London would have certain upsides after all…
It's a disgraceful article. My thoughts here.