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The Battle is Joined

February 5, 2007 12:07 PM

NOTE: Updated with criticism from Paul Cliteur below.

If you've been missing it, there's a fascinating debate continuing to unfold at signandsight.com over the recent Pascal Bruckner essay, excerpted below. Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash have each responded separately to Bruckner's allegations (i.e. that they withhold Enlightenment liberalism from those who try to escape oppressive cultural archaisms). Both are a tad puzzled - not to say alarmed - by Bruckner's suggestion that their views are shared by Bush and Blair, and somewhat amused by Bruckner's evidently indestructible reverence for the "French model." Now comes feminist Turkish-German author Necla Kelek with a rebuke for the respondents. Buruma and Ash overlook the sinister measure of conformity in the Muslim Ummah as they laud the "diversity" among Muslims, she charges. So here's the current state of play:

Buruma - Islamic practice is not monolithic; where it is extreme, it won't likely be reformed by a shrill apostate (and avowed atheist) like Ayaan Hirsi Ali; Bruckner is a French wanker who probably hasn't left the inner confines of Paris in awhile.

Garton Ash - "Pascal Bruckner is the intellectual equivalent of a drunk meandering down the road, arguing loudly with some imaginary enemies." No further description can improve on that.

Kelek - Buruma (mostly) and Garton Ash ignore the startling degree to which extremist Muslim dogmas, if not universally accepted, are nonetheless the status quo in the societies where most Muslims live.

I recommend you give all the essays a read-through. This is going to continue for awhile.

UPDATE: Dutch law professor Paul Cliteur joins the fray, with a very thoughtful piece. He argues that "postmodern" tendencies among Western intellectuals have created categories of equivalence that are in fact illusory and, at the furthest end, fundamentally dangerous, because they deny even the right of self-defense to the heirs of the Enlightenment. Buruma's book "Murder in Amsterdam," about the death of Theo Van Gogh, continues to lie at the center of the debate:

What remains a mystery is why many intelligent people stick to the postmodern frame of mind, even though so many intelligent writers - Terry Eagleton and John Searle, to name just two - have thoroughly deconstructed its tenets. I think this has to do with the postmodernist conviction that an attitude that they see as relativistic and pragmatic would help in the struggle against religious terrorism. They hope that, if we abstain from radical criticism of the terrorist mindset, we can pacify the most radical elements. This is a great delusion, as Buruma himself would have understood had he thought more deeply about the material in his own book. For Buruma profiles not only protagonists of radical Enlightenment but also Amsterdam alderman Ahmed Aboutaleb and the city's mayor, Job Cohen. Buruma writes that he met Aboutaleb - a Moroccan-born Muslim who advocates pluralism - "surrounded by bodyguards. Like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, he needed full-time protection." That should have stimulated Buruma to further reflection on the nature of religious terrorism. As for Cohen, he has a reputation of being much too soft. He never employs strong language against ethnic and religious minorities. He is a man of "dialogue" and "respect," refraining from almost any kind of critique that might disturb the sensitivities of religious minorities. Yet Cohen was criticized by name in the letter that was left on the body of Theo van Gogh.

More to come.

Europe | Modern Islam