Last week in the Guardian Ronan Bennett accused Martin Amis of racism. Here the writer rejects the charge, insisting his views on Islam are a question of ideology, not ethnicity

I want to talk about the discourse, and about the kind of public conversation we should be hoping to have. But before I do that, I will pay my Islamic readers - and I know I have a few - the elementary courtesy of saying that I DO NOT "ADVOCATE" ANY DISCRIMINATORY TREATMENT OF MUSLIMS. AND I NEVER HAVE. And no one with the slightest respect for truth can claim otherwise.

On November 19 the arrival of "the new racism" was eagerly heralded on the cover of G2 - tricked out, for the occasion, to resemble some scabrous, illiterate hate-sheet of the 1930s (Julius Streicher's Der Stürmer, for example). Well, this is what's new about the new racism: it isn't racist. Ronan Bennett writhes and toils in the coarsest of category errors. The question before the house is not about race. It is about ideology.