Radical Islam's Fellow-Travellers

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September 2010

The BBC provided an example of what replacing argument with respect means in practice when it invited him to debate the burqa and niqab with the Anglo-Egyptian campaigner for women's rights Mona Eltahawy. She complained that Western governments had abandoned Muslim liberals and allowed Wahhabi and Salafist ideologues to impose their dehumanising ideas on Muslim women. To shroud them in black. To make them invisible. Europe left the public sphere "completely uncontested to the Muslim right wing which does not respect anyone's rights whatsoever except for this one right to cover a woman's face. No one has pushed back against the Muslim right wing. I detest the political right wing [she meant European nativist and racist parties] but I equally detest the Muslim right wing and I will not sacrifice women to it."

Ramadan's response was instructive. He refused to accept that there was a reactionary strain in Islam — the "Muslim right wing" to use Eltahawy's term — and brushed her complaints away with impatience. Some scholars supported covering up women, he said. He disagreed with them. He was, after all, an Oxford don and darling of the ACLU and PEN crowd. However, he insisted that not only was it illiberal for states to legislate against the burqa, a position I have sympathy with, but that it was wrong to take on the "Muslim right wing" or even to admit that a "Muslim right wing" existed. Contrary to Jefferson, Eltahawy could not engage in argument and "maintain opinions in matters of religion". Respect prohibited it.

Accusations of betrayal, of selling out or of becoming a craven compromiser flow too readily from leftish lips. Tony Blair was on the receiving end of this kind of abuse when he was in power. Barack Obama is now getting the same treatment from American liberals. In matters of violent religion, however, large swathes of liberal opinion are desperate to sell out. Ever since Khomeini's fatwa against Salman Rushdie and the murders and atrocious injuries Islamists inflicted on the translators of The Satanic Verses, they have known that standing up for liberal values takes a physical courage they are not sure they possess. Since 9/11, they have noticed how widespread support for elements of Islamism has become not only in the Middle East and Asia but in European immigrant communities too. They know that there are many people out there who might take a shot at them if they stuck their heads above the parapet. They rarely admit it, but they are frightened of what challenging conspiracy theories and the oppression of women might entail.

They welcome Ramadan because he gets them out of the hole. He gives them liberal-sounding reasons in reassuringly clunky PC language to excuse the abandonment of liberal causes. Just as pleasingly, he helps them find novel ways to condemn those who stay true to liberal values as culturally insensitive neo-cons, who are close to being racists.

Berman maps the consequences. With a justifiably brutal relentlessness he shows how fear of Islamism leads liberals to turn on men and women. As a case study, Berman contrasts the indulgence offered to Ramadan with the treatment of Ayaan Hirsi Ali by Timothy Garton Ash and Ian Buruma in the pages of the New York Review of Books and the New York Times.

Unlike Ramadan, Hirsi Ali is straightforward. You do not have to consult a dictionary or phone a friend before trying to guess her meaning. She is a liberal feminist, and does not attempt to hide it. She has no need for artifice or double-talk. The clarity of her writing reflects the clarity of her purpose.

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Ibn Rushd

October 5th, 2010
10:10 AM

Sad, sad piece of work. Ramadaan's actions, thought and work is not analysed in its own right, but in relation to others and what others have done. So, it is not surprising that it starts of with the Russian Revolution, Trotsky and communists and the supposed comparisons for Ramadaan and his supporters. Ramadaan is not criticised for what he says or writes, but in terms of what others say and his lack of commenting on matters that Cohen would like him to comment on. Cohen puts up a number of strawmen and finds Ramadaan guilty in terms of them. The agrument becomes vague and nebulous and does not deal with the merit of Ramadaan's own thought. Vague and crude terms abound, such as Islamism and Radical Islam, withou them being cogently defined, but you can be found to aid and abet them. You are guilty by association and without the defining what you are you are being charged with. Or, if you may, by not doing what others, like Ayan Hirsi, does or says, etc. Like I said, a sad article that serves soem other (ideological purpose?) and it does not help to explain Ramadaan's own thought and the merits thereof.

[email protected]

September 18th, 2010
1:09 PM

As with other major articles written by Nick Cohen, I had to take several breaks reading it, because what he says is so uncomfortably true. To oppose the tide of unreason and cowardice that he identifies means more than merely singing the words of the second verse of Jerusalem, it means getting up and doing them (morally, if not physically), of having the courage to stand against the tide of the cosy BBC/metrosexual narrative, sometimes to the embarrassment of friends and family. And courage is out of fashion these days, enfeebled by the steady drip, drip of liberal bromide and post-modern obfuscation. In 1938, the enemy was clear enough, and the remedy straight forward, if hard and costly - the Munich sell-out made the case clear enough for our leadership. The enemy today is more insidious, and is also among us. Despite even 9-11 and other horrors, we still only see the head of the snake that threatens everything we value - it is subtle, it is patient, it is insidious and many of our allies cannot see it through their rose tinted glasses. But face it we must, if to do so at the moment is lonely and courts unpopularity, even danger. Those who see clearly, like Berman, Cohen and others must stand firm and make the rest of us uncomfortable and to prepare us for the long struggle to come. Keep going, Nick

John

September 15th, 2010
7:09 PM

An excellent article, and a great exposé of the mindset displayed by the current crop of deluded liberals

Khalid

September 8th, 2010
8:09 AM

Isn't there something racist about leftists who support and apologize for rightwing Islamism - in that they are all white?

Larry in Tel Aviv

September 6th, 2010
7:09 AM

Nick Cohen continues to do good work here on the Left's alliance with reactionary right-wing Muslim extremists and their slick front-men like Ramadan. But Cohen continues to not follow through on the implications of his own writings, he does not take it further to its logical end-point, since Cohen has drawn his line at 'radical Islam' and that is that. Ramadan is spouting taqiyya, he is a master at it. Where does Cohen acknowledge this? And why not? It is an integral part of sigh radical Islam after all, but that would beg further questions. And Cohen doesn't want to go there. How does radical Islam differ from the canonical texts of Islam itself? Will Cohen let us know? Which religious texts in Islam do radical Muslims misrepresent and misinterpret and how? Will Cohen let us know one of these days? I'm not holding my breath. An irony here is Cohen is not that much more clued up on Islam and radical Islam than the know-nothing dhimmis in Ramadan's Manhattan audience. At the end of the day, Cohen like Ramadan's naive audience, simply doesn't want to know. It shows you how bad things are in the West and how dhimmified we are, when Cohen (who skirts around the elephant in the room) is considered a brave maverick speaking politically incorrect truths that people don't want to hear. To a degree this is true, but only to a degree. Cohen cannot take the logical steps and do the necessary research, because at the end of the day he does not want to face a terrible truth, and it is the truth about radical Islam and its roots.

Gareth

August 31st, 2010
2:08 PM

Great post, Nick. But I would take issue with cowardice being the main motivation of today's fellow travelers. Isn't it more my enemy's enemy is my friend? And given there's been a shortage of such friends post-1989, the most unlikely people are liable to be roped in.

John L Murphy

August 30th, 2010
9:08 PM

A good corrective to Pankaj Mishra's 'Islamismism' in The New Yorker, 7 June 2010 critique of Berman on Ali vs Ramadan.

Jon da Silva

August 30th, 2010
8:08 PM

"Accusations of betrayal, of selling out or of becoming a craven compromiser flow too readily from leftish lips. Tony Blair was on the receiving end of this kind of abuse when he was in power." Blair never explained in his 100 revolving reasons for war that this is what he was opposing - indeed he settled on the palatable and rhetorically easy overcoming an 'evil' dictator. Indeed Labour pushed the patronising racist creed of multiculturalism (as opposed to its opposite multi cultural - never has a space made a bigger difference in a word or two). The Blair Govt did what you say we should not and cosied up to Muslim Council of Britain an organisation that pumps the kind of thing you write against here. Whilst many of us realise that the oppressive side of Islam needs resisting trying to jemmy us into supporting seemingly mindless military strategies those charged with pushing cannot or will not explain is not working. I would love it if the loss of our soldiers, however many civilians, drone strikes and collateral damage was serving an actual purpose to end the oppression of 10s of millions of women. Blair has never said he opposed Islamic fascism explicitly. Indeed at Chilcott his reasoning whether you agree with the policy or not came across as delusional rantings of a religious loon. The problem is not the analysis it's the way forward. Not more self aggrandisement trying to fill cracks in egos for supporting acts in the past.

Paul Owen

August 30th, 2010
1:08 PM

Superb piece, Mr Cohen. The confusion of so called liberals on the issue of Islamism is one of the most infuriating and perplexing of our time. Brave writers like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Rushdie and yourself are to be applauded and encouraged. I shall be linking to this on my blog.

Mentat

August 29th, 2010
10:08 PM

In his excellent book, The Killing of History (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2000)Keith Windschuttle says, among many other intelligent things, as follows: "The late Ernest Gellner pointed out the basic logical flaws in cultural relativism. In his book Postmodernism, Reason and Religion, Gellner showed that relativists are saddled with two unresolvable dilemmas. They endorse as legitimate other cultures that do not return the compliment. Some other cultures, of which one of the best known is Islam, will have no truck with relativism of any kind. The devout are totally confident of the universalism of their own beliefs which derive from the dictates of God, an absolute authority who is external to the world and its cultures. They regard a position such as postmodern cultural relativism as profoundly mistaken and, moreover, debasing. Relativism devalues their faith because it reduces it to merely one of many equally valid systems of meaning. So, entailed within cultural relativism is, first, an endorsement of absolutisms that deny it, and, second, a demeaning attitude to cultures it claims to respect." (p. 301-2)

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