Paul Berman (1) (1949–)

These two (speaking here of his earlier, Terror and Liberalism) little books by Berman are amongst the most insightful works on terrorism and the reactions by the Left and in the press that I have ever read. Berman leads us down a journalistic tour de force that grasps the achievements of the Enlightenment and the abysmal application of contemporary Leftism to the uncomfortable truths revealed by anti-jihadists.

In his first book, Terror, Berman wrote a bit on Tariq Ramadan who is the darling of the CAIR (Council on American Islamic Relations) and other non-indicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation trial and thus of interest. In his latest missive though Berman describes in much more detail the ideas of Ramadan and his reception in the press which is much more revealing. The promise of the book lived up to its billing. Berman convincingly demonstrates that the Western press is not seriously considering Islamist ideas. At an early age Ramadan distinguished himself and although he has denied it he apparently was a motive force behind the cancelling of Voltaire's play, Fanaticism, or Mahomet the Prophet. Nevertheless, he seems to have lived a charmed intellectual life; even polemicizing against Darwin in favor of Islamic theology and not suffering any condemnation as a result. There has more recently been some criticisms but Berman in his little book is very illuminating on the appeal and the danger of the Islamist Ramadan.

Caroline Fourest's Brother Tariq has been a critical appraisal which was followed by Paul Landau's work which I have not seen translated into English as of yet although the French original of The Saber and the Koran is available. The New York Times Magazine, in an article by Ian Buruma, remains a crucial source, and one which Berman delves into deeply in his work. The upshot of the discussions though is the undeserved reputation that Ramadan is something of an Islamist modernist, adapting the vagaries and barbarisms of Islam to the modern age, and performing this needed prospect well. Berman is more circumspect on this point and far more penetrating as a thinker.

Hassan al-Bana (Chapter Two) is too seminal a figure to ignore and Ramadan's family connection is bound to be critical. Al-Bana is a key player in the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood and if there is any truth to the notion that they are violent, then Ramadan at some level supports religious violence, although he is careful and nuanced in distancing himself from his famous forebears. The issue is clarified once we consider who was formerly attracted to the Brotherhood. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, dedicated himself to similar ends. The union is ominous considering that as al-Bana was developing his cult of death the Mufti was forging an alliance with Adolf Hitler. Al-Bana created Islamism (p. 33), political Islam, to be distinguished from historical Islam. Unusual in the intricacies of academic politics, a second dissertation committee was formed for Ramadan so that he could pass his PhD thesis off, without honors, since it was an apologia of his grandfather's ideas. An adaptation of these ideas has never been published in English but one of Ramadan's French works is a recasting of his dissertation in which al-Bana is the hero of the Islamist modern age. No wonder the dissertation committee balked; Hamas is al-Bana's ideas personified. In fact, Hamas is the name of the Muslim Brotherhood opposing statehood for Israel. In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood is headed up by the prolific writer, Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, leader of the Egyptian revolt against Mubarak in 2011. In the grand revival of the Caliphate as envisioned by the related figures the infidels will a doubled humility tax for remaining non-Muslims. The re-casting of a modern -ism, Islamism has been picked up as a theme in several Muslim intellectuals as well. Shorn of fascism and Nazism, Islamism centers around a totalitarian Muslim vision of modernity: religious fascism.

A Mufti is a scholar of Islamic law and Haj Amin al-Husseini is the key link between Islamism and Nazism as Jeffrey Herf has shown in Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World. One of the elements in the Nazi propaganda to recruit Islamism to its banner are the radio broadcasts that are long gone today. However, Herf discovered that the U.S. State Department translated those broadcasts for intelligence purposes and he reports the startling revelations in Propaganda. Hitler in these propaganda efforts become God's agent to defeat the News. Herf also reports that after Hitler's defeat leading Nazis fled to the Middle East, numerous of whom actually converted to Islam as well. Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader today, echoes the exact same Nazi propaganda from the period during the 1930s and 1940s.… (more)

This is one of the most idiosyncratic, short, but compelling studies of the topic available. This is an original contribution to an overlooked connection between violence and the Left, along with an insightful study of terrorists amongst the Islamists. Berman postulates that a war against liberalism, the classical bulwark against barbarism is a century-old battle waged in the world. The Islamists and contemporary liberals are engaged in an ideological conflict against 19th Liberalism.

Berman writes:

[Camus] had noticed a modern impulse to rebel, which had come out of the French Revolution and had very quickly, in the name of an ideal, mutated into a cult of death. And the ideal was always the same, though each movement gave it a different name. It was not skepticism and doubt. It was the ideal of submission. It was submission to the kind of authority that liberal civilization had slowly undermined, and which the new movements wished to reestablish on a novel basis. It was the ideal of the one, instead of the many. The ideal of something godlike. The total state, the total doctrine, the total movement. "Totalitarian" was Mussolini's word; and Mussolini spoke for all.

The death cult infected the French Revolution and found its resurgence with the Western totalitarian death movements of the early 20th Century.

Moreover, Berman notes that the death cult migrated to the Arab Middle East as well. Berman sees Sayyid Qutb, an Egyptian writer executed in 1966, as one of the most important influences on the modern Islamic world.

Qutb states:

The Surah [No. 2] tells the Muslims that, in the fight to uphold God's universal Truth, lives will have to be sacrificed. Those who risk their lives and go out to fight, and who are prepared to lay down their lives for the cause of God are honorable people, pure of heart and blessed of soul. But the great surprise is that those among them who are killed in the struggle must not be considered or described as dead. They continue to live, as God Himself clearly states.

"Khomeini," Berman notes, "whipped up ... a belief that to die on Khomeini's orders in a human wave attack was to achieve the highest and most beautiful of destinies." In turn, Iran inspired the Hezbollah guerillas to introduce suicide terrorism to the modern world.

"It was the politics of slaughter -- slaughter for the sake of sacred devotion, slaughter conducted in a mood of spiritual loftiness, slaughter indistinguishable from charity, slaughter that led to suicide, slaughter for slaughter's sake. It was a flower of evil."

The battleground is a conflict of ideas: anti-liberal and violent, or liberal, Western, and democratic.

George Packer, in his work, The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq, relates a compelling story, not the least of which is his account of Kanan Makiya (b.1949, Baghdad). Makiya is an Iraqi academic, who gained British nationality in 1982. He is the Sylvia K. Hassenfeld Professor of Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Brandeis University. As a former Saddamist exile, he was a prominent member of the Iraqi opposition, a "close friend" of the quixotic and notorious Ahmed Chalabi, and an influential proponent of the 2003 Iraq War. His life is documented in British journalist Nick Cohen's book What's Left (there is also information about Makiya in Paul Berman's Terror and Liberalism, pp. 54-57, 108).… (more)

As this was not my intended library selection, but merely sat on the same shelf as the one on which I was supposed to find my chosen book, I had no idea what I was getting into. After finishing page 339, I still have no idea what I’m supposed to be reading!

Not that this is uninteresting or poorly written. To the contrary it’s quite engaging and the prose flows smoothly (well, he does spastically race around from one reference to another, but it’s mostly legible). What I don’t understand is the overall intent. As this promises a “tale” about two “utopias,” the first part seems logical as a hyperactive overview – covering the origins and ultimate demise - of the sundry groups, figures, and ideas that culminated with the dynamic global happenings circa 1968. Good start. Then we come upon what I assume to be his “two utopias” – the incongruous chapters about the “Gay Awakening” within the US and the Czech Velvet Revolution through the lens of Vaclav Havel with cameos by Frank Zappa and Shirley Temple. Huh??? I assumed the “Goodship Lollipop” might somehow relate to the gay thing, but no.

I stuck with it (as mentioned, interesting stories in and of themselves) with the assumption that the concluding chapter would serve to reweave such disparate things. Hardly. The conclusion now takes us, among other random things, to a dissertation about the parallel, yet contrasting theories proffered by a French philosopher and a dude working for the RAND corp. under the Reagan and Bush administrations. The ultimate goal I suppose is to articulate prophecies about “the end of history” and propose a third Hegelian reading (that is, adding “Yankee Hegelian” to the already common “Right” and “Left” Hegelian political readings). I dunno. Are these early 90’s theories the “Two Utopias”?

So no conclusive weaving as far as I can tell. This had all the consistency of adjacent SNL skits (including the inevitable 8 minute commercial break between). I was hoping it was more akin to the film Mystery Train or Crash where all this stuff comes together somehow. Perhaps I’m stupid and the indubitable logic flew right past me. Wouldn’t be the first time. After all, I blindly assumed that the utilization of THREE libraries in a major Northeastern city would eventually yield at least one book on my now dog-eared list of 27 relatively mainstream titles. Silly me…… (more)