Melanie Phillips and the "France Insurrection"

Notorious Daily Mail columnist Melanie Phillips has been having a field day with the past month's rioting in parts of France. Never slow to twist facts in service of her often racist (and certainly Islamophobic) viewpoints, Melanie has written one Daily Mail article, another for the Jewish Chronicle, and entry after entry after entry after entry in her online Diary, all mining the same thread: that France is burning, an Islamist jihad movement is attempting to overthrow the Republic, and that the whole of Europe (or "Eurabia" as the ridiculous Spectator headline had it last week) was about to be subsumed by an Islamic caliphate.

Baiting Melanie Phillips is not a particularly onerous task, as she writes with such fire-and-brimstone apocalyptic verve that a sane individual would be unable to take anything she says even remotely serious. Yet she receives an audience in the millions through her work in the Mail, and it is disturbing to think that percentage - however small - of that readership will be won over by her noxious opinions.

I have made a habit of writing to her for around a year now, and occasionally she responds, which I'll admit is good of her as she most likely receives a large bulk of mail responding to her work. Below is a letter I have sent her based on her recent columns and my own experience of the "French intifada" during a trip to Paris last weekend. I'll post her reply if and when it comes.

Hello Melanie,

I hope you are well.

I see that you continue to vent on the "French Intifada", or the "French Insurrection", on your diary (although, admirably, you have limited your published articles on the subject to just two). I'm wondering, have you been to France yet to report first-hand as Europe falls to the hordes of Islam? Or are you still going by second-hand reports, such as the hilarious (and I understand already a collector's item amongst fans of black comedy) 'Eurabian Nightmare' edition of the Spectator?

I have just returned from a long weekend in Paris, visiting an ex-girlfriend. A great time I had, too. Oddly, I didn't see any rioting myself - strange for a city that is supposedly "burning". I'm sure you will be heartened to hear that I managed to avoid being apprehended by any Muslim and have my head sawn off as an infidel, and thankfully I was able to escape any suicide bombings in buses or restaurants. In fact I was unable to find evidence of any beheadings, no any suicide bombings, in the whole city. Strange for a country that - according to you - is facing an intifada by crazed jihadists.

I regretfully admit that my French is almost non-existent, and thus I was grateful that almost everybody I met over the course of the weekend knew at least rudimentary English. A great many things were discussed, and one of the subjects that occurred frequently was the rioting of recent weeks. One thing I noticed was how none of the people voluntarily brought up the supposed 'Muslim angle' of the riots. When I ventured that a great many in the UK had viewed the clashes as the equivalent of the 2000 Palestinian intifada, I was greeted by laughter and horrified cries. My new friends - young, intelligent French, from a variety of ethnic and religious backgrounds - were united in their appraisal: while many of the rioters were indeed Muslim, the idea of the entire thing being an Islamist movement was more than ridiculous - it was in fact a dangerous untruth, an example of the villification that has led to the state of unrest in the impoverished banlieus in the first place. They worried that this type of barefaced lie - that Muslims were trying to overthrow the Republic - would only lead to a further shift to the right, one that Sarkozy or, ominously, Le Pen could exploit.

I do hope, Melanie, for the sake of your journalistic reputation, that you try to visit France and see the situation on the ground and speak with some French people before continuing to draw erroneous and self-serving conclusions.