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The Flight of the Intellectuals

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According to the New Yorker, when George Packer asked Tariq Ramadan two questions at a recent ACLU-sponsored event in New York "the general picture was surprisingly, reassuringly bright: reconciling Islamic faith with liberal values is easy; the views of Muslims are basically the same as everyone else's; the oppression of Muslim women is a third-order issue." But George Packer's questions were drawn explicitly from or, it seems to me, were hugely influenced by Paul Berman's The Flight of the Intellectuals and, as a result, they were uncomfortable questions. George Packer wanted to know why Tariq Ramadan never disassociated himself from his grandfather, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood (and who is quoted in Hamas' Charter), from the Mufti of Jerusalem, his grandfather's ally and a man allied with Nazis, or from Sheikh Qaradawi, the man who passed a fatwa allowing women to carry out suicide bombings. George Packer also wanted to know if Tariq Ramadan felt that human rights were universal or if they could be determined by religious authorities. When it came to his grandfather's alliance with Nazi sympathizers, Tariq Ramadan asked the audience to consider the "context". The second question he dodged. And still more questions (this time from the audience) kept coming. Questions about women's oppression; questions about Hirsi Ali. And Paul Berman's book was not yet out.

But it seems to me quite right that this book should have such influence. To begin with, in it, Paul Berman provides the reader with context in spades. Here is Hassan al-Banna (Tariq Ramadan's grandfather) lavishing extravagant praise on the mufti of Jerusalem. Al-Banna declares, "Germany and Hitler are gone, but Amin Al-Husseini will continue the struggle. He is but one man, but Mohammed was also one man, and so was Christ..." (p. 106). High praise for a man who collaborated with Walther Rauff. Walter Rauff was the Nazi who put together the Einsatzgruppe Agypten, a group of seven SS officers (one of whom was liaison to the mufti al-Banna likened to Christ). The Einsatzgruppe Agypten was to carry out the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem in the Middle East once Rommel broke through. But the praise for Rauff's ally makes sense in light of what Hassan al-Banna wrote in "To What Do We Summon Mankind?" Here, in the course of arguing that "over the course of history, tiny movements led by charismatic figures have triumphed more than once" (p. 30), al-Banna cited various examples from the history of Islam. He also provided one non-Muslim example: "And who would have believed that that German workingman, Hitler, would ever attain such immense influence and as successful a realization of his aims as he has?" (p. 31) The context then is more than opposition to the formation of a Jewish state (as Tariq Ramadan implied in New York). But there is still more to the story.

There is how al-Banna thought Muslims ought to live, for example. Paul Berman quotes from al-Banna's "Toward the Light" on this issue and I will select a few of Berman's quotes: "the imposition of severe penalties for moral offenses," "the prohibition of dancing and other such pastimes," "the expurgation of songs," "punishment for all who are proved to have infringed any Islamic doctrine or attacked it" (p. 44) and so on.

Tariq Ramadan's father propagated al-Banna's ideas and those of the Muslim Brotherhood thinkers in Europe and Asia, first as editor of al-Banna's magazine and later in his own magazine al-Muslimun. Ideas like Hassan al-Banna's notion about "the art of death" and "death is art" (p. 32). Al-Muslimun also introduced Urdu-language ideas of Mawdudi's sister movement to an Arabic-speaking audience" (p. 34). And, after a while, these ideas enabled "Himmler's Islam" to emerge victorious from its battle with "its arch-rival, the Islam of generosity and civilization" (p. 97). Certainly that is the position of Muslim liberals like Abdelwahab Meddeb (and Paul Berman makes quite clear that Muslim liberals have ever been Tariq Ramadan's fiercest opponents). So that is Tariq Ramadan's family; his context. But Tariq Ramadan is not his family. Still, since in his "The Roots of Muslim Renewal," Tariq Ramadan spends some two hundred pages writing about his grandfather in a "gusher of adulation" (p. 36) that context matters.

Consider: here is Tariq Ramadan condemning terrorist attacks against civilians in general but making an exception for terrorist attacks against civilians who happen to be in Israel (p. 195); here is Tariq Ramadan endorsing the Taliban (p. 194); here is Tariq Ramadan denouncing as Jews and as "knee-jerk defenders of Israel" six intellectuals whose crime lay in pointing out that violent anti-Semitism in immigrant neighborhoods in France is on the rise (pp. 157-8); here is Tariq Ramadan campaigning to cancel Voltaire's play "Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet" and campaigning to add a touch of creationism to the teaching of evolution (p. 16); and here is Tariq Ramadan refusing in a televised debate to denounce the stoning of women (pp. 214-215). This is not an exhaustive list but it gives you an idea of the sort of consequences that arise from Tariq Ramadan's context. And then Paul Berman points out something else.

He points out that a great many Western intellectuals assure us that Tariq Ramadan is a moderate; even a liberal. These intellectuals decry Ramadan's detractors; especially if those detractors happen to be Muslim. These Western intellectuals, Berman explains, have adopted Islamists' categories of judgment. And by Islamist's lights, it is possible, I suppose to see a man like Tariq Ramadan who (unlike his brother) does not explicitly favor stoning women to death but who would prefer to debate the issue, as a kind of moderate. Far more moderate than Hirsi Ali who opposes such things, certainly.

Here, I think, Paul Berman misses a great opportunity. He does not point out that the biggest mistake many of us make is thinking that Muslims are any more pious than anyone else. It seems to me that, based on the evidence Paul Berman himself provides in his book, Muslims are no more likely to make their day-to-day decisions based on their faith, than most Christians. Consider: if Muslim girls were as devout as so many Western intellectuals seem to assume they are, would they sneak even a peek at a book titled Infidel? And yet Paul Berman suggests that they do peek.

This is not the only argument I have with this book. The arguments I have with the book are, in fact, part of its charm. It is a book that makes you think. And, if only for that reason, I urge you to read it.

You don't find many theoreticians, politicians or historians these days who are willing to challenge the conventional wisdom of left-wing European intellectuals--most of whom who appear consumed with their own rage and jaundiced viewpoints of the Middle East conflict, cultural antagonisms, and religious extremism. This fellow Berman convincingly skewers the proponents of one-sidedness and exposes their sneaky methods and hidden agendas. A surprisingly thoughtful, concise and well documented treatise.

A very careful and meticulous analysis, it is expanded from the author's June 4, 2007 "Who's afraid of Tariq Ramadan?" article in The New Republic.

The article, which is pretty long (I printed 37 pages), is available online for free if you want to check it out before you buy this important book.

In "Flight of the Intellectuals," Paul Berman presents an extensive critique of the thought of the Swiss philosopher Tariq Ramadan, and his kid-glove treatment by western intellectuals. The book is a trenchant exposure of Ramadan's tendency to speak out of both sides of his mouth, and the acceptance of violence as a political strategy, even among alleged "moderate" voices, that lies at the heart of the Islamist movement in Europe and America. Although Berman is cautious about giving credibility to the concept "Islamo-fascism," (he backs off from this), he nevertheless agrees that one can understand why people might want to use that phrase. He then unfolds, with wonderfully crafted prose, the very real fascist (specifically Nazi) influences on the Islamist movement since the 1930s down to the present day, and how accepting the alleged "moderate Muslim" Ramadan is of these principles.

The greater percentage of the book is a critique of Ian Baruma's article on Tariq Ramadan that appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 2007. This extensive critique of a specific writer discussing a leading Swiss Muslim philosopher illuminates Berman's assessment of western intellectuals' response to radical Islam, which he describes as "a coverage animated by earnest good intentions, but, then again, by squeamishness and fear. And by less-than-good intentions."

Berman clarifies the intellectual line of descent in Ramadan's thought from Hassan al Banna (Ramadan's grandfather)through Jerusalem's Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini and Sayid Qutb. Berman challenges Ramadan to explain why he refuses to clearly reject the violent extremism of such figures, and why, when writing of them, Ramadan dances around such a lurid anti-semitism and exterminationist agenda as was embraced by the the Mufti. And why doesn't Baruma press the point while interviewing Ramadan for his NYT article? As far as Ramadan is concerned, Berman notes that Ramadan's whole intellectual tradition "is precisely the milieu that bears the principal responsibility for generating the modern theory of religious suicide-terror."

Along the way, Berman calls our attention to some promising further reading, most notably a novel by the Algerian writer Boualem Sansal entitled "The German Mujahid," translated into English from the original French in 2009. In Sansal's story, the sons of a former German SS officer who has moved to Algeria and converted to Islam, discover the truth concerning their father. The dramatic thread of the novel is rooted, significantly, in the harmonious relationship between Nazi anti-semitism and the officer's new Islamist version of the Muslim faith. The boys come to the "alarming recognition that Nazism and Islamism have something in common."

The ninth and final chapter of the book, which recapitulates the title of the book itself, is worth the price of the book (and it's expensive). In this chapter, Berman expresses moral outrage at the cowardly and twisted responses of western intellectuals to a woman of great courage and intellect--Ayaan Hirsi Ali. While Ramadan gathers sychophantic admirers among western intellectuals, Hirsi Ali's advocacy of womens' rights and individual liberty draws their scorn and ridicule, some of which is itself clearly sexist in nature. The intellectuals manifest a now-familiar guilt and disgust of their own western civilization, and seem to wallow in the "pleasure of self-hatred." Quoting Pascal Bruckner, Berman notes that "it is astonishing that sixty-two years after the fall of the Third Reich and sixteen years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, an important segment of Europe's intelligentsia is engaged in slandering the friends of democracy."

Berman expresses the view that the Salman Rushdie affair has now "metastasized into an entire social class. It is a subset of the European intelligentsia--its Muslim free-thinking and liberal wing especially, but including other people, too, who survive only because of bodyguards and police investigations and because of their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe since the fall of the Axis. Fear--mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip of a bizarre ideology--has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life." Thus it is that western intellectual life is threatened by the intellectuals themselves, who refuse to discuss or even acknowledge "the Nazi influence that has turned out to be so weirdly venemous and enduring in the history of the Islamist movement."

This is a book that should be on the recommended reading list of college students throughout America. But I wouldn't hold my breath on that, for that would require courage far beyond the conventional "multiculturalist" bromides that now put them to sleep.

"Flight of the Intellectuals" endeavors to make two major (or as Berman might term it, "big, really big") points through an exposition of the elliptical writings of Tariq Ramadan and the reactions of certain representatives of the Western intelligentsia to his work. These points are that: 1). Modern "public intellectuals" (two of them, anyway, specifically Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash) endorse Ramadan due to a spurious equivalence between a fashionable ethnic/religious identity (Islam, in this case) and political authenticity and, 2). That Tariq Ramadan conceals a strict Islamist agenda beneath a confusing veneer of double-talk, dissimulation, prevarication and misrepresentation. As a coda, Berman deals with the contrasting case of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the famous apostate from Islam, now a member of the "free-thinker" set. Due to her disaffection from Islam and her whole-hearted embrace of Enlightenment values, Berman contends that the left-leaning intellectual set (personified by Ash and Buruma) have derided, demeaned, belittled and dismissed her work. In short, he accuses Ramadan of intellectual dishonesty in the service of an Islamist agenda and Buruma/Garton Ash of endorsing that agenda because its "comme il faut" to do so, or to borrow a phrase from Lance Morrow ("Time" magazine), "toleration of intolerance -- the toleration of evil intentions or atavistic tribal or sectarian angers...": Islamism.

The focus on a largely obscure dispute, at least to the general public (narrowly defined as outside the strictured confines of the readership of "The New York Review of Books" [NYRB] and "The New Republic" [TNR]) might strike the potential reader as a very arcane and parochial effort, one unworthy of the time and concentration needed to read it. Maybe so, but Berman's arguments are worth considering. The immediate parallel, to my mind at least, is between the alleged endorsement of a "sanitized" version of Islam (Ramadan) coupled with the enthusiastic endorsement given to his agenda by modern intellectuals of the leftist variety and, on the other hand, with the credulous support given by American and European "fellow travelers" to the Stalinist program in the 1930s and 1940s. Is this, in fact, a fair comparison? In the former case, Ramadan's writings (some of which I have read) are obscure and deal with matters that simply are not of general interest. I will venture to presume that his writings are so oblique and vague as to fail to engage the interest of many thoughtful Muslims. Outside a small circle in the US and a modestly larger group in the EU, they certainly had not created much of a stir until the US State Department barred Ramadan entry to this country and Berman published his article in TNR. Nonetheless, there is a certain congruence between the embrace of one ideology (the revealed truths of Communism) and that of another (Islamism, as opposed to Islam). The corollary of that is the attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali, whose books (all of which I have read) are explicitly clear, concise demolitions of Islamism (Islam too), which are based on direct personal experience rather than a thrice removed, completely vicarious contact (Ramadan was born in and resided in Switzerland; has never lived under an Islamic regime; he is related to prominent Islamic thinkers; Buruma and Garton Ash are Westerners without specialty qualifications in Islam or the quagmire of the Middle East). In other words, her books with their "unfashionable" stance and clear arguments, are not worthy of consideration by "serious", sensitive and sophisticated thinkers such as Buruma and Garton Ash in the West and utterly beyond the pale of major Islamic intellectuals everywhere. Berman's book notes these contradictions, but the process of discovery is very slow, lost as it is in a prolix restatement of the original TNR article.

My prinicpal issue with "Flight" is the writing style. Berman is incessantly coy (sometimes deliberately childish or, more generously, too artful) and the writing style is contrived. Clearly, he is capable of trenchant, intelligent, lucid and sophisticated prose as is very nicely illustrated in his print debate with Marc Lynch (see "Foreign Affairs", Sept/Oct 2010 issue). In "Flight", Ramadan's dissimulations are abundantly illustrated (perhaps repetitively so). Berman's indictment of Buruma and Ash is also convincing and compelling. His demolition of their dishonest posturings regarding Hirsi Ali is also well argued. In the interests of fairness and for a different perspective on this than mine, see the four page-long article in the current NYRB (April 19, 2010) by Malise Ruthven or Lynch's "Foreign Affairs" article (July/August, 2010). Buruma and Garton Ash (I have, in fact, read the relevant books and articles authored by both of them) are very fond of reading all sorts of nuances into all sorts of relatively strident Islamist writings as they search for "currents" (hyper-subtle ones) of accommodation with "the West" and its values.

In conclusion, Tariq Ramadan may be and likely is covertly advancing an Islamist agenda, but I really doubt that anyone much is listening, that is beyond the narrow confines of a tiny segment of a very small academic part of the larger intellectual community, even including NYRB and TNR readers (I am guilty on both counts). Certainly, Buruma and Garton Ash are glossing over many damning points in Ramadan's writings and public statements. Equally certain, both of them find Ayaan Hirsi Ali unpardonably unfashionable and have treated her in a dismissive, high-handed and patronizing fashion. They appear, in other words, as apologists for a thinly veneered Islamist agenda purveyed by Ramadan. What I can't quite grasp is why, outside of commercial interests, this matter merits a book-length extension of an otherwise interesting TNR article

Tariq Ramadan, Arab but Swiss-born, Francophone but professor at Cambridge, has two faces. The first is that of the liberal, thoroughly European and Westernized liberal, charming and a good conversationist at cocktail parties at the Guardian and New York Review of Books. The other face is that of an insistently loyal grandson to Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood and exponent of Hitler and the Mufti al-Husseini. It is the first face that has so much impressed the writers Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, but it is with his second face that Ramadan has written an article so anti-Jewish that the leftist press in France could not print it, and it is also with his second face that Ramadan has endorsed suicide attacks against the Israeli public.

Berman, to his great credit, has waded his way through this morass of two faces, and he has his written his report with tremendous intellectual verve. It is a cautionary tale. Berman rightfully points to the deadly danger we face from the terrorist Islamists, but also, and perhaps even more deadly, from their sophisticated, leftist, voguish fellow-travelers. He gives due credit to some European writers who have preceded him in this -- Pascal Bruckner and Caroline Fourest in France and Ulrike Achermann in Germany -- but it is Berman's book that is immediately accessible to the American reader. Berman has been rewarded by an appreciative reception from thoughtful people. And he has also been rewarded, as were the pioneers of anti-Stalinism some sixty years ago, by sneers and hostility from fellow-travelers and their apologists.

A brilliant book. Berman obviously read reams of books and publications when researching this book, and he distilled the essentials from all his research into this intelligent and often gripping analysis. It was a major eye-opener for me. For one thing--among many eye openers--I never before knew that the mufti of Jerusalem during WW II, Haj Amin al-Husseini, actually persuaded the Nazis not to free thousands of Jewish children that they were set to free, and insisted the children be killed instead. And because of al-Husseini's intervention, those children were sent to the gas chamber. What's more, after being freed from prison in France after the War, al-Husseini was welcomed in Cairo as a hero! (With info like that in this book, be sure that the one-star review I see below--and any that will follow--tells more about the reviewer than it does about this book!) A fantastic book. P.S. Paul Berman answered the critics of this book in an editorial in the 7/10/10 WSJ. Visit link to read it: [...]

This book basically expands and extends Berman's arguments from his (thirty-seven page long) magazine article "Who's Afraid of Tariq Ramadan?", as printed in the New Republic. Go read that, and if you really feel the need for more afterward, you can buy this longer version.

Paul Berman, "Flight of the Intellectuals" (2010)

In earlier books, Paul Berman has made critical analyses of the new left of 68 ("Power and the Idealists") and political Islam and its connections to fascism and communism ("Terror and Liberalism"). These books are brilliant In his latest book, "Flight of the Intellectuals", he returns to the phenomenon of Islam.

The book starts (chapter 1) with observations on the muslim intellectual Tariq Ramadan, by many in he West regarded as a moderate muslim defending universal values. A bridge between the West and Islam, a champion of European Islam. But Berman doesn't trust Ramadans views of the history of Islam, especially the history of the connections between political Islam and nazism (chapter 2-5). Ramadans granddad, Hassan al-Banna, founded the Muslim Brotherhood. Berman uses recent research to describe how the nazis planned to fuse nazi ideology with Islam, and how persons like the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem became useful in this. Together with the nazis, the Mufti campaigned against the jews and "zionism", and Hitler was an admired ally. Because of this, anti-semitism in its most weird forms spread throughout the Middle East. After the 2nd world war, al Banna used his influence to get the Mufti released from prison in France, and he returned as a hero. Berman shows how while the rest of the world became anti-fascist/anti-nazist and condemned anti-semitism, this was not the case in the Middle East. Instead, conspiracy theories about the Holocaust, Israel and nazism won ground. A problem that is enormous today.

So, after 100 pages of history about the nazi-Islam connection, Berman returns to Tariq Ramadan and the question "What does he stand for?" (p 127). Ramadan obviously has tried to cover up the connection between al Banna and the Mufti, and thereby the nazi-Islam connection. Also: Ramadan likes to point out connections West-East, for example that universal values did exist in the muslim world. Maybe even before it came to the West. Berman asks if this means that there is a muslim version of univerasl values and rationality, and a western version. In other writings Ramadan makes the case that Muslim universalism is not the same as Western universalism. He seems to use a "double discourse" to deceive Western liberals, saying one thing to them and another to his Muslim audience. His "salafi reformism" turns out to be a variant of political Islamism. The result is a reformed Islam, matched to modernity; the "idea is to construct an Islamic counter-culture within the West" (p 148). (Berman puts a question mark about what this would mean in practice for secular Europe. Even today muslim immigration has made an impact on Europe, not only for the good, for example demands of religious censorship and gender-apartheid.)

Thereafter, in chapter 6, we get a recount of the 2003 confrontation between Ramadan and six Jewish intellectuals (Glucksmann, Lévy, Finkelkraut etc, (Berman likes the French 'New Philosophers'), with Ramadan accusing them for being defenders of Israel, and therefore of their narrow ethnic interest instead of universalism - and them accusing Ramadan for being anti-semitic. And some outlooks on the Islamist movements in France in the 1980s and 90s, and the crisis and confusion this meant for the liberal anti-racist Left (like Baathists and Trotskyists in Paris in a peace demonstration together with the liberal left, and physically attacking Jews...). The remainder of the chapter deals (after some interesting criticism of Ian Buruma) with Ramadans complex views on violence and resistance (in Afghanistan and Palestine, for example).

Chapter 7 deals with Ramadans stance on women rights, his "Islamic feminism". Veils and gender-apartheid is seen as equality, the difference between the sexes is important. Ramadan uses liberal arguments for womens "right" to use the veil, etc. That is: without problematizing women being forced to wear veils, or the problem of islamism (and the use of veils) growing stronger in Europe. A political movement making demands uncompatible with democracy, liberalism and secularism. And demands that women, women under Islam, should have limited access to education. And more demands: limited (female) access to health care, refusal to take part in certain classes... And Muslim women and girls being pressured to accept these limitations. This led to the law against religious symbols, and veils and burqas, in France - a law criticised by Ramadan among others. It became a question of womens rights not to wear a veil. Worse still: Ramadan have refused to clearly condemn the practise of stoning unfaithful women. He had the chance to make a forceful statement in French TV in 2003, in a debate with Sarkozy, but didn't take the chance (the whole exchange is transcribed, p 214-5).

In chapter 8 Berman presents Ayaan Hirsi-Ali and her detractors Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, who denounce her as an "Enlightenment fundamentalist". Here, Berman makes a brilliant defense of Hirsi-Ali, and criticises Buruma's and Ash's campaign against Hirsi Ali, and admiration for Ramadan. Hirsi-Ali is the one with the true "insider" perspective on Islam (having experienced actual repression), while Ramadans' knowledge comes mainly from books. Berman concludes that such a "reactionary turn" is something new and deplorable.

(This "reactionary" and paradoxical turn is recognisable in Sweden, where I live. Here we now have "leftist" debaters arguing for insane things, for example the leader of the "Feminist" party (Fi) (former leader of the Left Party) who wants "more burqas" in Sweden.)

In the final chapter Berman goes on discussing the phenomenon of Western self-hatred and masochism among intellectuals (with Buruma and Garton Ash being the latest example). Here he refers Pascal Bruckners thesis about the tyranny of Western guilt to understand what is happening.

If you have the slightest interest in things like the ideological evolution of the Left in the West, since 68 and Islam in the West, you should read not just this book, but also Bermans earlier books.

Berman's book is exceptionally well researched and always enlightening. It is a book calling on liberals of all stripes to call a spade a spade. That Islamism is a fascist movement. That Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Salman Rushdie, and others willing to question Islamism are to be celebrated as heroes. While those "liberals" that apologize for fascists are to be ridiculed for their inconsistency and fuzzy sense of morality. The book tends to meander through many discussions that, at first glance, seem cursory to his main thesis. However, in the end he manages to bring all his arguments together into a compelling final chapter. Below is an example of Berman eloquent outrage at the foolishness being peddled by many western intellectuals.

"And so, Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class. It is a subset of the European intelligentsia--its Muslim free-thinking and liberal wing especially, but including other people, too, who survive only because of bodyguards and police investigations and because of their own precautions. This is unprecedented in Western Europe since the fall of the Axis. Fear--mortal fear, the fear of getting murdered by fanatics in the grip of a bizarre ideology--has become, for a significant number of intellectuals and artists, a simple fact of modern life. And yet, if someone like Pascal Bruckner intones 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. In The New York Times Magazine Ian Buruma held back from hinting even obliquely at the genuinely fascist influences on Ramadan's grandfather, the founder of the modern cult of artistic death--Hassan al-Banna, who spoke highly of Adolf Hitler and helped the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem escape from getting tried at Nuremburg. Yet Pascal Bruckner, the liberal--here is somebody, Buruma would have us think, on the brink of fascism" (Location 3713)!

This book was a joy to read.