Paul Berman--an idiosyncratic liberal whose
Power and the Idealists is probably the
best single volume on the psychology of European Left's grasping,
not always consistent with their own self-declared "1968"
principles response to radical Islam--had a
fine op-ed in the New York Times this
weekend. Here 'tis in part:
In today's Middle East, the various radical
Islamists, basking in their success, paint their liberal rivals and
opponents as traitors to Muslim civilization, stooges of crusader
or Zionist aggression. And, weirdly enough, all too many
intellectuals in the Western countries have lately assented to
those preposterous accusations, in a sanitized version suitable for
Western consumption.
Even in the Western countries, quite a few Muslim
liberals, the outspoken ones, live today under a threat of
assassination, not to mention a reality of character assassination.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch legislator and writer, is merely
an exceptionally valiant example. But instead of enjoying the
unstinting support of their non-Muslim colleagues, the Muslim
liberals find themselves routinely berated in the highbrow
magazines and the universities as deracinated nonentities,
alienated from the Muslim world. Or they find themselves pilloried
as stooges of the neoconservative conspiracy - quite as if any
writer from a Muslim background who fails to adhere to at least a
few anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist tenets of the Islamist
doctrine must be incapable of thinking his or her own thoughts.
Berman, by the by, also wrote one of the great Che takedowns.
topics:
Islam, Books
