March on Berman on Ramadan
Andrew March's review of Paul Berman's book about Tariq Ramadan in The American Prospect is now available here.
I'm told that quite soon Berman and March will be tearing strips off each other on the Dissent website, but my guess is that March will come out of the exchange somewhat better, as he knows a bit about what he's talking about (i.e. Islam), and Berman just doesn't.
I'm told that quite soon Berman and March will be tearing strips off each other on the Dissent website, but my guess is that March will come out of the exchange somewhat better, as he knows a bit about what he's talking about (i.e. Islam), and Berman just doesn't.
posted by The Couscous Kid at 5/17/2010 10:55:00 PM
11 Comments:
Wrong link, go here
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=whos_afraid_of_tariq_ramadan
Well, any time there's a fight on the order of Foo vs Berman you know Foo is going to win, because Berman could not argue his way out of a paper bag, even with a scissor provided.
Link corrected, thanks hardindr.
Ouch.
Are all good and decent people destined to converge on the same secular, Enlightenment principles? Is every encounter with strangers about sizing them up as friends or enemies once and for all? How should outsiders seek to influence the moral struggles of other communities, especially religious ones? These are not easy questions, and Berman is hardly the first to blink in the face of them and choose comforting pieties over curiosity, complexity, and
humility.
That last sentence is positively elegant. A handy anatomy of Decency, too; I'm not sure "comforting pieties" is exactly right ("the consolation of self-righteous anger" maybe?) but treating "curiosity, complexity and humility" as virtues is precisely what it's not about.
Reviews of this new Berman book are really odd - it doesn't seem to have been worth writing at all, because if you disagree with the thesis it appears to be enormously unconvincing (one fairly charitable NYT reviewer points out that the book has no bibliography or footnotes) - or witness March; whereas if you agree with the thesis, then you think it's teh aces (eg Anthony Julius's NYT review).
Saying that, the March review is a hell of a lot better-written than any that agree with Berman. It does seem like an odd topic for a standalone book, as opposed to a book chapter.
By the way... Jenny Diski is interesting, writing about Melanie Phillips in the LRB.
On topic because of this.
Also of interest:
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/politics/2626/the_political_excesses_of_religion/
In case you can't see the url above:
http://tiny.cc/m60xc
And if this post is becoming a round-up of Berman-themed URLs, then this one is very good, too:
http://www.observer.com/2010/culture/who%E2%80%99s-right-who%E2%80%99s-left-who-cares
This idea of "gateway drugs" to extremist ideologies seems to be a favourite of Berman's - he used the same line on Walt and Mearsheimer, arguing that The Israel Lobby would be used as justification by anti-Semites (which it perhaps would) and therefore Walt and Mearsheimer should be considered guilty of enabling anti-Semitism (which is bollocks).
He seems to have a Mary Whitehouseish outlook on the world, where perfectly reasonable people are continually a hair's breadth away from being irrevocably corrupted by some sinister piece of media. Aside from anything else, it seems very shallow for a supposed intellectual to be judging books and thinkers by their fans, rather than the substance of what they're saying. I have to say, if I was a purported liberal who was read almost exclusively by neoconservatives, it wouldn't be the line of argument I'd use.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=356
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=357
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