Mark Steyn is the bestselling author of many books, including America Alone, After America, and Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and The Twilight of the West. His previous incarnations include broadcaster, film and theatre critic, and jazz musician. But for the purposes of this interview, it’s his role as a campaigner for free speech where I think Steyn deserves the most credit. He was the man warning us about demographic decline and the dangers of Islamic immigration two decades ago. He successfully campaigned for the repeal of Canada’s Section 13 hate speech law and, more recently, has been a voice of sanity against COVID restrictions, vaccine injuries, and climate change, all of which he’s paid quite a high price for.
I’d like to start with the issue of Islam, specifically in relation to Britain. It’s been a major thorn in the side of the Conservative Party. We’ve had former home secretaries stating that basically ‘Islamism’—which is their preferred term because it allows you to pretend it’s totally separate from Islam—is running Britain. And we had Lee Anderson chucked out of the Tory Party for saying the same about London. But whatever the official Downing Street line, the fact is that our elected representatives, the police, the judiciary, and faith leaders, by their actions, all seem to suggest that either appeasement or downright homage is the only viable response to Islam. To what extent do you think Islamic extremism is running Britain at the moment?
Well, let me just say, I was surprised to see that ‘Islamism’ is still the preferred term. I’m not sure I had actually heard that in a decade and a half, or maybe longer. Because it’s a term I associate with the immediate post-9-11 period when George W. Bush was anxious to distinguish between what he called a ‘religion-of-peace Islam’ and this teeny, tiny, incy wincy, barely detectable sliver of Islam that is into blowing things up. And so I recall using the word Islamism circa 2001–2002, but I really haven’t had much use for it in the past twenty years because I quickly concluded it was an evasion. So it’s disturbing to me that the evasion is somehow still the preferred currency in the UK.