Martin Amis came under heavy fire from the liberal left in particular when his book The Second Plane was published.
It is a collection of articles and essays written in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in America on September 11 2001.
He was accused of bigotry, of being anti-Islam, and even of using the language of "British National Party thug."
After reading a couple of extracts from his book Mr Amis expanded on some of the points in the essays in conversation with Christopher Cook and answered questions from the audience.
He said Islamist hatred of America was as much abstract as historical and the acts of terrorism were dictated not so much by religion as an ideology.
"Ideology is a system that seems to explain everything. If you sign up to it you are signing up to delusion."
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He said: "This particular ideology crushes the value of human life and rejects morality and reason."
Bath Festival of Literature
Sat Feb 23 - Sun March 2
He made particular references to some of the barbaric practices against women under Islamic extremism.
He said whenever the dictators Hitler, Stalin or Lenin used the word "reason," "they always had some jeering adjective in front of it."
He said: "We are right to value human life highly and reason is reality."
He also said it was time we stopped being terrified of making moral judgements
Mr Amis was opposed to the invasion of Iraq. "Afghanistan was enough. There we had the opportunity to create a shining model of what the West could do for the East."
He made a clear distinction between multi-culturalism and multi-racism, saying the former was a very muddled area. He thought Britain should follow the America example of multi-racism in which immigrants accepted they were Americans first, which created no conflict with their individual race, but made them part of a whole society.
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