Paul Berman on Tariq Ramadan: Part 11

Salman Rushdie

Noting our failure of nerve?

(Image from Wikipedia)

The last 15 pages of Paul Berman's long article contrast the gentleness with which many Western intellectuals such as Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash have treated Tariq Ramadan the reformist defender of Islam to the harshness with which these same intellectuals have treated Ayaan Hirsi Ali the reformist critic of Islam.

For an analysis of this, Berman turns to the French writer Pascal Bruckner, one of the French intellectuals, along with figures such as André Glucksmann, Alain Finkielkraut and Bernard Henri-Lévy known as the New Philosophers, famous for their critique of communism and totalitarianism nearly 30 ago. Bruckner was known for his critique of "Third Worldism," a romanticized leftist view that looked to the postcolonial world as a source of authentic revolution because it was not Western. "This was the doctrine," Berman notes, "that venerated revolutionary leaders such as Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro not because they were communists but because they were the leaders of the Third World revolution" (page 58). Leftist veneration for such 'leaders' has a way of turning to leftist denigration of those who criticized them, especially those who came from the same Third World places where these 'leaders' ruled. Such critics were seen as traitors, lackeys of the West. More recently, as the left has shifted toward a multicultural postmodernism, the leftist critics of people like Hirsi Ali have accused her of being just as fundamentalistic as those Muslims whom she criticizes. Bruckner thinks that this leftist critique is nonsense but that Buruma and Ash have fallen for it. Berman summarizes:

Buruma and Garton Ash, Bruckner concluded, had fallen for the intellectual miasmas of the postmodern sensibility, and the miasmas had led, via the errors of relativism and an indiscriminate multiculturalism, to the simplest of philosophical mistakes. This was the inability to draw even the most elementary of distinctions. In the postmodern idea, the Enlightenment has come to be looked upon as merely one more set of cultural prejudices, no better and very likely rather worse than other sets of cultural prejudices -- a zealotry that is unable to control its own excesses. From this point of view, someone like Hirsi Ali, who grew up in an atmosphere of Islamist radicalism and the Muslim Brotherhood in Africa and has taken up a new outlook committed to rationalism and individual freedom, has merely gone from one fundamentalism to another -- not much different, seen in this light, from [Theo] van Gogh's murderer[, i.e., Mohammed Bouyeri]. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 59)

This means, argues Berman, "that Hirsi Ali's critics have lost the ability to distinguish between a fanatical murderer and a rational debater" (page 59). And Berman contrasts this response to a rather different response that he saw in the case of Salman Rushdie:

Eighteen years ago, when Rushdie came under threat, and one of his translators was killed and another was knifed and a couple of Norwegian bookstores were bombed and a British hotel was attacked by a suicide bomber, not to mention the more than fifty people killed in anti-Rushdie rioting around the world--at that terrible moment, when the dangers were obvious, a good many intellectuals in Western countries, people without any sort of Arab or Muslim background, rallied instinctively in Rushdie's defense. A good many reached out to their endangered Arab and Muslim counterparts and colleagues, and celebrated the courage of everyone who declined to be intimidated. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 64)

Berman is correct to note that far more people of the left spoke out clearly in defense of Rusdie's right to free expression. There was more of that back then. But I was living in Berkeley at the time, and I recall a different reaction among some on the left. In speaking with one of my housemates, who placed herself on the left, I discovered an argument more critical of Rushdie for making waves and less vigorous in defending free speech because it incited violence. I specifically recall my housemate faltering in a defense of free expression by couching her position as a defense of the "workers" in bookstores who might suffer violence if those stores carried Rushdie's book.

I doubt that she would have made the same argument against women's choice to abort because some radically fundamentalist Christians had threatened to bomb abortion clinics. In that case, free choice would surely have trumped.

As an aside, let me add that she happened to have a pair of shoes with Arabic writing on them, the cursive script as decoration being in fashion at that time, and as she was waiting for the light to change at a crosswalk, an Arabic man pointed to her shoes and commented, "You realize that those are verses from the Qur'an, don't you?" She never wore the shoes again, which I could understand. I could even understand her concerns about endangering the lives of the people who worked in bookstores.

And yet, if we fail to stand up for free expression, where are we headed? The issue is not merely academic, as Berman shows:

When I met Hirsi Ali at a conference in Sweden last year, she was protected by no less than five bodyguards. Even in the United States she is protected by bodyguards. But this is no longer unusual. Buruma himself mentions in Murder in Amsterdam that the Dutch Social Democratic politician Ahmed Aboutaleb requires full-time bodyguards. At that same Swedish conference I happened to meet the British writer of immigrant background who has been obliged to adopt the pseudonym Ibn Warraq, out of fear that, in his case because of his Bertrand Russell-influenced philosophical convictions, he might be singled out for assassination. I happened to attend a different conference in Italy a few days earlier and met the very brave Egyptian-Italian journalist Magdi Allam, who writes scathing criticisms of the new totalitarian wave in Il Corriere della Sera -- and I discovered that Allam, too, was traveling with a full complement of five bodyguards. The Italian journalist Fiamma Nierenstein [sic: Nirenstein], because of her well-known sympathies for Israel, was accompanied by her own bodyguards. Caroline Fourest, the author of the most important extended criticism of Ramadan, had to go under police protection for a while. The French philosophy professor Robert Redeker has had to go into hiding. I have no idea what security precautions have been taken by Flemming Rose, the cultural editor of the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which published the Muhammad cartoons. And van Gogh.... ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," pages 63-64)

And what of the Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh? Why, he went about the Amsterdam streets on bicycle, without bodyguards, and died a particularly brutal death: shot, stabbed, nearly decapitated.

And yet if someone like Pascal Bruckner mumbles a few words about the need for courage under these circumstances, the sneers begin -- "Now where have we heard that kind of thing before?" -- and onward to the litany about fascism. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 64)

Really? The F-word? Yes, really. It begins -- as Berman reports -- when Bruckner remarks that:

"A culture of courage is perhaps what is most lacking among today's directors of conscience." This sort of remark is not Buruma's cup of tea. The word "courage" leads him into thoughts of fascism. In reply to Bruckner's call for a bit of courage, Buruma tut-tutted, "Now where have we heard that kind of thing before? The need to defend Europe against alien threats; the fatigued, self-doubting, weak-kneed intellectuals...." Buruma wanted his readers to recognize the fascist rhetoric of Europe from seventy years ago, the kinds of phrases that used to pour from the mouths of Nazi intellectuals. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 63)

Why are anti-fascist being accused of fascism? Why the current need for this "culture of courage"? Why the silence on so much of the left only 18 years after the Rushdie affair? "Two developments," says Berman, "account for it. The first development is the unimaginable rise of Islamism since the time of the Rushdie fatwa. The second is terrorism" (page 65).

On this note, and with these words, Berman's article ends.

Paul Berman on Tariq Ramadan: Part 4

Sayyid Qutb

Family Friend?

(Image from Wikipedia)

In his article "The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," Paul Berman notes that Tariq Ramadan, when asked by Ian Buruma to describe what current of Islamic thought he would call his own, specifies "Salafi Reformist" (page 19).

That's somewhat surprising to hear directly from Ramadan himself, if one knows anything about some of the eddies within this current of Islamic thought, but Buruma, as Berman notes, indulges Ramadan and finds an innocuous definition:

Buruma came up with a definition by plucking a sentence out of Ramadan's Western Muslims and the Future of Islam. A "salafi reformist," Buruma explained, quoting Ramadan's book, is someone who aims at the following goals: "to protect the Muslim identity and religious practice, to recognize the Western constitutional structure, to become involved as a citizen at the social level, and to live with true loyalty to the country to which one belongs." ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 19)

Berman locates this quote on page 27 of Ramadan's Western Muslims book -- and also notes some interesting things on page 26.

Before we turn to those interesting things, let's reflect on the quote. The word "recognize" has a troubling ambiguity, for it can imply either "genuinely accept" or "intellectually acknowledge." Which does Ramadan mean? Knowing the French original might help here, but I don't have access to that, nor does Berman raise the issue (though perhaps some reader could enlighten us).

I'd also like to know what "true loyalty" implies. Ramadan -- or his translator -- doesn't simply advocate loyalty to one's country but qualifies that loyalty as true loyalty. What does that mean?

Perhaps recognizing the Western constitutional structure and living with true loyalty to one's country are subordinate to protecting Muslim identity and religious practice. In Ramadan's view, what would that mean? Isn't Islamic religious practice defined by Islamic law, i.e., shariah? This raises a question posed to Ramadan in his debate with Sarkozy -- yes, that Sarkozy, the new Monsieur Le President. Ramadan was asked for his views on the huddud punishments set forth in shariah. He replied that he favored a moratorium on such punishments as stoning (which he prefers to call lapidation). One has to wonder -- as I have previously wondered -- how long such a moratorium would be intended to last.

But leave that for another time. Let's turn to those "interesting things" that Berman notes in determining who other salafi reformists might be:

Here, on page 26 [of Western Muslims and the Future of Islam], is Hassan al-Banna; and Abul Ala Mawdudi from the South Asian subcontinent, whose activities Tariq's father, Said Ramadan, coordinated with the Muslim Brotherhood; and Ali Shariati, Ayatollah Khomeini's fellow thinker in Iran. And here is Sayyid Qutb, one more influential reformist among the others, listed without comment--even if Qutb's legacy, in one of its offshoots, did lead to Al Qaeda. In Ramadan's usage, salafi reformism turns out to be the philosophical underpinning for modern Islamism in the sundry versions that descend from al-Banna's (and Mawdudi's) original idea. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 20)

Berman notes of salafi reformism that its "sundry versions do not always chime with one another" (page 20), so we shouldn't assume that Ramadan agrees with each and every person or movement listed. For the record, in fact, Ramadan mentions one variant with evident distaste:

Ramadan somewhat ruefully cites still another sub-current that flows from the salafi reformist source--though, in his view, this final tendency has emptied salafi reformism of almost all of its original content. This final tendency, he tells us, has gone over to "strictly political activism," joined to "a literalist reading" of the sacred texts, leading to "radical revolutionary action." Ramadan describes this tendency as "political literalist Salafism" .... [and] explains that political literalist salafism has attracted "a lot of public attention" ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," pages 20-21)

Berman then observes:

As to why the political literalist salafists should have attracted "a lot of public attention," Ramadan says nothing at all in his main text. Only in a footnote does he mention "violent and spectacular actions," and not even there does he remark on any sort of radical departure from basic morality. Nor does he define any relation that might exist between this sort of thing and the legacies of Qutb. A veil of timidity and euphemism hangs over the entire discussion, which could lead a sleepy reader to miss his meaning altogether.

And yet it is obvious what Ramadan is talking about in this particular passage. Political literalist salafism is the doctrine underlying the terrorism that has emerged from salafi reformism -- the vast wave of random murder, the vogue for "violent and spectacular actions," that has swept across so many regions of the Muslim world and beyond. That is what he means by "radical revolutionary action." ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 21)

In short, such "violent and spectacular actions" as the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. Ramadan is against that sort of salafi reformism.

Yet ... there's that worrisome connection to that figure who partly inspired al-Qaeda, Sayyid Qutb, the contemporary to Ramadan's grandfather al-Banna, a fellow Egyptian and fellow foundational figure within the Muslim Brotherhood whom al-Banna never met -- as Ramadan emphasizes. Never met, true, but as Berman notes, al-Banna came to respect Qutb from a distance as Qutb moved away from secularism and toward Islamism, and "in 1948 [as] Qutb and Mahfouz and a few other people launched a magazine, with Qutb as editor" (page 22), al-Banna showed considerable interest:

Al-Banna tried to woo the magazine for the Muslim Brotherhood. The next year, al-Banna was assassinated. Qutb happened to be in the United States at the time, and, in one of the stranger passages of his report on his American experience, he recounted that Americans were jubilant over al-Banna's death -- which has got to be a fantasy, given that in 1949 hardly anyone in the United States had heard of Hassan al-Banna [a point that I noted in "Sayyid Qutb's Dishonesty"]. The fantasy nonetheless suggests that al-Banna's late-life appreciation for Qutb had begun to be balanced by Qutb's appreciation for al-Banna as a world-historical figure, even if they never met. Then Qutb returned to Egypt and enlisted in the Muslim Brotherhood, and found his way to al-Banna's son-in-law, "the little Hassan al-Banna," Said Ramadan, the editor of Al-Muslimun. Said Ramadan's magazine presented the ideas of Abu Ala Mawdudi to the Arabic-speaking world, and Qutb adopted some of these ideas for what now became his own ultra-revolutionary doctrine. ("The Islamist, the Journalist, and the Defense of Liberalism," page 22)

In other words, Qutb knew Tariq Ramadan's father, even sought him out, which suggests that there is rather more to this story than Ramadan would prefer to acknowledge.

Paul Berman on Tariq Ramadan: Part 1

Ramadan: Intellectual Feast or Famine?

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That honorable man of the left Paul Berman has recently published in The New Republic an interesting, many-part article: "The Islamist, the journalist, and the defense of liberalism. Who's Afraid of Tariq Ramadan?" (June 4, 2007).

Some will recall my own, various ruminations on Ramadan, including one earlier this year on Ian Buruma's New York Times article, "Tariq Ramadan Has an Identity Issue" (February 4, 2007). In my blog entry, "Ian Buruma on Tariq Ramadan" (March 7, 2007), I noted Buruma's conclusion:

Ramadan offers a different way, which insists that a reasoned but traditionalist approach to Islam offers values that are as universal as those of the European Enlightenment. From what I understand of Ramadan’s enterprise, these values are neither secular, nor always liberal, but they are not part of a holy war against Western democracy either. His politics offer an alternative to violence, which, in the end, is reason enough to engage with him, critically, but without fear.

In response, I wrote this:

Engage Ramadan in dialogue, yes -- on that, I agree -- but I would emphasize "critically" in any such engagement with him, for I'm not entirely convinced by his reassurances that he is 'European,' for one can be European in some rather disturbing ways, as we know from Europe's history.

Berman remarks on the same passage in the Buruma article:

All in all, Buruma judged that, despite the controversies and accusations, Ramadan the philosopher offers, in Buruma's words, "a reasoned but traditionalist approach to Islam" based on "values that are as universal as those of the European Enlightenment." He judged that Ramadan's values, although "neither secular, nor always liberal," offer "an alternative to violence, which is, in the end, reason enough to engage with him, critically, but without fear." This was not quite a ringing endorsement. Still, it was an endorsement. It conveyed the unmistakable implication that Ramadan, the worthy interlocutor, stands for more than himself, which is why engaging him might be useful -- in order to discover the human and philosophical principles that Western and Muslim hearts and minds might share in common, and to bridge the divisions, and at last to achieve, between the West and Islam, a cultural peace: the goals that every reasonable person yearns to see achieved, even if not everybody would assent too quickly to a vision of the world that consigns the West to one corner and Islam to another.

Berman is more careful, less cautious, more critical than Buruma, for though I've not finished this article of 65 pages (in my downloaded file), I've read enough to see where Berman is going, as his following remark indicates:

Tariq Ramadan, by acquiring a brilliant fame and refracting its rays in one country after another, has succeeded in brightly illuminating two very different, murky, and related developments during the last few years: a large new development among select circles of pious Muslims in Europe, and not just in Europe; and an equally new and still more remarkable development among the normally impious journalists and intellectuals of Europe and America.

I'm guessing that Berman intends to intensify the rays shining on these two murky developments by sketching an illuminating portrait of how ideas emanating from the Muslim Brotherhood have influenced the intellectual leaders of European Islam and by examining in the light of critical reason the remarkably indulgent reaction of secular Western intellectuals to this sort of Islam as it grows and gains power in the West.

I'll have more to say on this as I read futher in Berman, but I've been putting off -- for over a week now! -- my reading and posting on his views, so I wanted to at least direct people's attention to the article.