...a return to a distant age, one characterized by religious purity, in which all dissent will necessarily be absent. It is an imagined past, of course, and an impossible political program. And it supposes the ideal intellectual posture to be “supine.” Furthermore, “in a modern political world shaped by the rise of the Islamists,” Berman writes, “even some of the most attractive of thinkers tend, if they have come under an Islamist influence, to have a soft spot for suicide terrorism. And a soft spot for anti-Semitism.”
On the question of anti-Semitism, Berman writes about [Tariq] Ramadan’s “brief and angry essay” of 2003 in which he attacked a group of intellectuals he designated as Jewish, criticizing them for forsaking their vocation as intellectuals in favor of support for Israel, and of Zionism. Berman demonstrates that the criticism is bogus, three times over.
First, Ramadan went looking for Jews and made mistakes — not all the named intellectuals were in fact Jewish. Second, he muddled support for Israel with the recognition of a growing contemporary anti-Semitism, a “new Judeophobia.” And third, since he is not himself a Benda-style intellectual, but rather the spokesman for a specific community, it is not open to him to adopt Benda’s universalist perspective.
Actually, it is far worse than that. Ramadan’s own “commitment to ethical thinking,” Berman concludes, “turns out to be worthless.” “What is surprising,” remarked one of the intellectuals Ramadan attacked, “is not that Mr. Ramadan is anti-Semitic, but that he dares to proclaim it openly.” (Ramadan would no doubt say in response that he has spoken out against anti-Semitism before both Western and Muslim audiences.)
See here too.
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